Arrest of ‘Jewish terrorist’ in Israel

A US-born Israeli settler in the West Bank was arrested by Israeli security services amid allegations that he waged a 12-year campaign of murder and violence against Palestinians, homosexuals and a Holocaust survivor who defended the rights of Palestinians. Israeli media have dubbed the case of Yaakov Teitel one of Jewish terrorism. Teitel was arrested a month ago and has been charged with murdering a Palestinian taxi driver in East Jerusalem, apparently in “revenge” for Palestinian suicide attacks in the 1990s, and a Palestinian man near a settlement in the West Bank. He is also suspected of having planted the explosives last year that wounded Zeev Sternhell, an Israeli history professor who survived the Holocaust in Poland and is opposed to Israel’s presence in the West Bank.

The 37-year-old Teitel, who was born and raised in Florida but became an Israeli citizen in 2000, is also believed to have left an explosive device outside the home of a family of Messianic Jews in the settlement of Ariel. He reportedly accused them of being “missionaries who intended to entrap weak Jews”. A 15-year-old boy was wounded in the blast. In another attack for which he is blamed, a bomb was placed near a monastery because the suspect “heard that the monks there were enticing Jewish children with candy.” The explosion wounded a Palestinian tractor driver. Teitel is also suspected of having stabbed an Arab Israeli man who he believed was making sexual advances towards him.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had to fight a "marginal minority" of extreme nationalists threatening its democracy.

On Wednesday, Israeli police said they had arrested Teitel’s neighbor Yossi Spinoza, 50, in connection with the accusations against Teitel. Both men live in Shevut Rachel, a settlement in the central West Bank between Ramallah and Nablus.