Jewish Fighting Organization

views updated

Jewish Fighting Organization

LEADER: Avishai Raviv

USUAL AREA OF OPERATION: Israel

OVERVIEW

Jewish Fighting Organization (Eyal) was an obscure extreme right Jewish nationalist group that emerged in Israel following the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. Its exact origins, goals, and fate remain murky and tainted by allegations that it was set up by a Shin Bet (Israeli Secret Service) agent provocateur. It was an extension of the Kach movement, which advocates the annexation of all disputed territories and the forced removal of Arabs from within them. It is most notorious for playing a part in the murder of the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin.

HISTORY

On November 4, 1995, in Tel Aviv's King David Square, the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was shot three times and died later in the hospital. His assassin, Yigal Amir, was an ultra-orthodox student, unhappy with the Arab-Israeli peace process, of which Rabin had been one of the principle architects.

During the course of the subsequent investigation, much emphasis was placed on whether Amir had been operating alone or under the orders of an extreme right-wing organization, the sort that had been among Rabin's most vociferous and potentially violent opponents.

Two key facts emerged during Amir's trial and the inquiry into Rabin's death by the Shamagar Commission. The first was that he had apparently acted of his own volition when killing Rabin. More significant, however, was Amir's association with an extreme right-wing political activist and, as it would transpire, with Shin Bet (Israeli Secret Service) agent and informer, Avishai Raviv. Raviv had been involved in the creation of a number of militant groups, including Eyal, and the subsequent tangle of events created an impression that Amir, despite both men's protestations to the contrary, may have been operating under the orders of Eyal.

Raviv had been recruited to Shin Bet in December 1987. He was a right-wing militant with primitive views that would frequently teeter over into violence, and he was also obsessed with the idea of "Jewish traitors." Nevertheless, according to an interview with his Shin Bet supervisor, Raviv was a valuable agent "who provided hundreds of intelligence tips. His warnings prevented violent acts like attacks on Arab property, attempted attacks on Arabs, attacks on mosques, including the Temple Mount, attempts to attack Jewish left-wing leaders and similar things."

Raviv is also credited with setting up a number of extreme right-wing groups, apparently under the direction of Shin Bet. According to Yossi Klein Havlei of The Jerusalem Report, many of these front groups—with names like Sword of David, Sword of Gideon, Fascist Zionist Youth, and Eyal—claimed acts of violence they had not actually committed, and put their name to incendiary leaflets inciting against Israeli "traitors." His recruits consisted of a "handful of teenagers who hung around him," and he conducted "a staged graveyard swearing-in ceremony … complete with blood oaths." All this received huge press coverage in Israel and created a false sense that a right-wing terrorist network existed.

Theories vary as to why Shin Bet would want to set up an extreme right-wing organization. It is likely that Eyal and similar groups were set up as a way of infiltrating the Israeli extreme right and as a way of recruiting young individuals who would progress to join groups like Kach. The British secret service, MI5, is widely rumored to have initiated a similar strategy in the 1990s, when it allegedly set up the neo-Nazi Combat 18 group as a way of infiltrating loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.

KEY EVENTS

1993:: Oslo Peace Accords; Jewish Fighting Organization emerges in response.
1995:: JFO plays a part in the murder of the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin.

Eyal was set up on the campus of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan around the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993. The extent of its activities remains unclear. Indeed, it is possible that it may have been nothing more than a "front group," literally a name that would be put on leaflets or graffiti, or claim responsibility for crimes that it did not commit. That was almost certainly the case on the only occasion the group actually claimed responsibility for an attack, after a Palestinian was shot dead in the town of Halhoul. That murder was later revealed to have been a robbery gone wrong that was actually carried out by other Palestinians.

One of the reasons Raviv has been so heavily implicated in Rabin's killing is because he and his various cover groups were among the most virulent and violent critics of the Prime Minister's role in the Oslo Accords and the peace process. Shortly before Rabin's murder, Raviv handed over a poster to a TV correspondent depicting Rabin in an SS uniform (which was widely shown in the Israeli media) and one of his fictitious front groups left a leaflet on the grave of the Hebron mass murderer, Baruch Goldstein, with the message: "A dictator traitor has arisen in our nation by the name of Yitzhak Rabin … His sentence is death."

Raviv was also a close associate of Yigal Amir, Rabin's assassin. The two had met at Bar-Ilan University and jointly led student protests and solidarity visits to West Bank settlements. Whether Amir was a formal member of Eyal or whether Eyal even had formal members remain the subject of intense dispute; however, the Shamagar Commission reported that "Raviv was connected to Amir more than to any other person in everything related to organizing student demonstrations, organizing weekends in West Bank settlements."

The Shamagar Commission found it likely that Raviv knew about Amir's intentions; but Amir's brother, Haggai, who was himself charged with involvement in the murder, testified that while Amir had considered involving Raviv, he had desisted because of rumors linking him to Shin Bet. It seems unlikely, therefore, that Yagil Amir killed Yitzhak Rabin under the orders of Eyal.

PHILOSOPHY AND TACTICS

Because of its shadowy roots and the fact that it probably only ever existed as a Shin Bet cover group with, at most, only a handful of members, Eyal never issued any sort of formal manifesto. Nevertheless, it can be assumed from the involvement of Raviv and Yigal Amir that its philosophy would be in the tradition of Kach, with unyielding opposition to the secession of any Israeli territory. Moreover, it would have used halachic concepts to justify the use of violence. Terms such as din rodef (meaning, the duty to kill a Jew who imperils the life or property of another Jew) and din moser (meaning, the duty to eliminate a Jew who intends to turn another Jew into non-Jewish authorities) would have justified the assassination of Rabin in their eyes.

Tactically, Eyal was not a conventional extremist group. It seemed set on achieving notoriety by claiming crimes it never committed and by putting its name to leaflets denouncing its opponents in frequently obscene terms.

OTHER PERSPECTIVES

"Although most Israelis accept that Amir was alone when he pulled the trigger," wrote David B. Green in Middle Eastern Policy, "there are those who still ask if he wasn't decisively encouraged to act by the national-religious circles he moved in, and specifically if he didn't have rabbinical sanction to murder the Prime Minister. Others ask what responsibility Rabin bore for his own killing, in particular by treating his political enemies in the national-religious camp with a contempt that verged on provocation. That the Shin Bet security service, entrusted with protecting Rabin, failed at its job is a given, but many Israelis wonder whether the failure included advance knowledge of Amir's plans, and even his incitement by one of the service's operatives. Then there are those who have taken refuge in far-fetched conspiracy theories that see Rabin's No. 2, Shimon Peres, engineering the murder so that he could assume power."

LEADERSHIP

AVISHAI RAVIV

Avishai Raviv was a Shin Bet undercover agent credited with the formation of numerous small extreme-right groups. These groups essentially served as cover for extremists to be spied upon, but were sometimes so obscure they had no formal members.

Opinion is divided about the extent of the Israeli state's involvement with Raviv. Certainly his links to Yigal Amir have seen allegations exaggerated and conspiracy theories abound. The Shamagar Commission, which investigated the Rabin assassination, found that Raviv was merely a Shin Bet agent who was not properly controlled. On the other hand, a Likud deputy, Michael Eitan, insists that Raviv was the "biggest agent provocateur in the history of Israel," a view that many subscribe to.

A Shin Bet agent since 1987, Raviv not only received cash but also immunity from prosecution. Witnesses to the Shamagar Commission portrayed him as an unreconstructed thug with a visceral hatred of Arabs. He would tour Hebron, vandalizing Arab property and assaulting Arab shopkeepers. He was arrested sixteen times, but convicted only once—and on that occasion, received a suspended sentence.

Since Rabin's murder, Raviv has kept a low profile, apparently fearing reprisals either from right-wing extremists who feel he betrayed them by his involvement with Shin Bet, or from Shin Bet agents seeking to cover up further revelations.

Reviewing the Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman account of Rabin's assassination, Murder in the Name of God, Guilain Denouex, associate professor of government at Colby College, believes that, far from being a complicated conspiracy, Rabin's killing had a degree of inevitability. "Rabin's murder should have come as no surprise," she wrote. "Indeed, it was forecast by several leading commentators … Second, Amir was neither deranged nor isolated in his belief. Far from representing a 'lunatic fringe' living on the margins of Israeli society, he came out of a world and subculture that represent an important component of Israel and its body politic. Third, several individuals on the mainstream right, most notably Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon, did not hesitate to rely on the religious and radical right to promote their own agendas. They repeatedly indulged and lent tacit support to zealots who called for violence to thwart the implementation of the Oslo agreements."

SUMMARY

Since the ending of the Shamagar Commission into Yitzhak Rabin's death, Eyal has disappeared into the shadows. If it ever existed as a conventional extremist organization—and there seems good reason to dispute that—its notoriety came by association, rather than for any acts it ever carried out.