Israeli Extremist Leader, Others Arrested in Raids : Slaying: Right-wing activist accused of conspiracy in Rabin death. Some fear roundups jeopardize civil rights.

Launching a crackdown on the Jewish extreme right, police on Wednesday announced the arrest of the leader of an anti-Arab group and rounded up several other far-right activists for interrogation.

A judge in Tel Aviv ordered Avishai Raviv, founder of the tiny Eyal movement, held for a week of further investigation, accusing him of conspiracy in the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

At least three other right-wing and religious extremists were detained for questioning, Israel Radio reported. One of them also was believed to be a member of Eyal.

In addition, a senior security services official resigned and another was suspended for failing to protect Rabin adequately as he left a Tel Aviv peace rally Saturday night. Two lower-ranking security officials were transferred to different jobs.

Rabin was shot to death by Jewish law student Yigal Amir, 25, who was captured at the scene. He confessed to the slaying with satisfaction, saying he acted alone as a sacred duty, but police also have his 27-year-old brother, Hagai, in custody for allegedly altering the bullets used in the killing.

The assassination has devastated Israel and cast a giant question mark over the prospects for Rabin’s search for peace with the Palestinians and neighboring Arab states.

Whether Rabin was slain as part of a conspiracy by Jewish extremists who hated him for his willingness to trade West Bank land for peace is a burning issue for the shaken nation.

“There is a serious danger of a grave disruption of the rule of order--up to the point of another political murder,” Atty. Gen. Michael Ben-Yair told the newspaper Haaretz on Wednesday.

Later, Ben-Yair asked Israeli radio and television not to broadcast any new broadsides from extremist groups. Since the slaying, there have been death threats against successor Shimon Peres and other Cabinet ministers.

“Rabin was a victim of peace. Peres is next in line,” said graffiti scrawled Wednesday on a wall in Jerusalem.

Police told Judge Edna Beckenstein that Raviv, 28, whom they arrested Monday, had known in advance about Yigal Amir’s plan to kill the prime minister. Prosecutor Nissim Daodi said Raviv had conspired in the killing and failed to prevent the shooting.

“I have presented the court with several pieces of evidence that link the suspect with the crime and contradict the suspect’s claim of a political arrest,” Daodi told the judge.

Beckenstein said confidential documents submitted by police justified holding Raviv. He was remanded on suspicion of committing a felony and failure to prevent a felony, said police spokesman Eric Bar-Chen.

“Dictatorship! False arrest!” screamed the stocky Raviv as he was led into court wearing a blue-and-white knitted skullcap, a blue shirt and jeans.

Standing before the judge with his hands in his pockets and chewing gum, Raviv said, “It hurt everyone”--an apparent reference to the killing of Rabin.

Police call Raviv “a catalyst” for Amir.

Raviv told the judge that Amir talked with Eyal members about a big event he intended but that “nobody took him seriously.”

“Words are one thing and actions are another. According to Jewish law, murder is forbidden,” Raviv said, charging that the police are using Rabin’s death as a pretext to harass the political right.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that this suspect, who knew the suspected murderer, indeed failed to prevent the crime and conspired to commit the crime. For these reasons, I am ordering him held for seven days,” the judge said.

Eyal, a Hebrew acronym for Jewish Militant Organization, has the reputation of being a blowhard group better known for words than action. A few months ago, Eyal claimed responsibility for the slaying of three Palestinians in the West Bank village of Halhoul, but they were later discovered to have been killed by fellow Arabs.

“They brag and posture, talk about the ‘underground,’ like to be thought of as ‘Arab killers,’ that sort of thing,” said Ehud Sprinzak, a specialist in Jewish extremist groups at Hebrew University. “Are they a threat? Every once in a while some one may arise who takes this seriously. Then they’re a threat.”

Eyal, said Sprinzak, is small, with perhaps no more than Raviv and a handful of followers as members. “Their touch with reality is not that strong,” he said.

The group was born about 1992 at the University of Tel Aviv, Sprinzak said, but eventually moved to Kiryat Arba, a Jewish settlement outside the disputed city of Hebron. Kiryat Arba is a stronghold for the followers of the extreme right-wing American rabbi Meir Kahane, who was killed in New York City on Nov. 5, 1990--five years nearly to the day of Rabin’s slaying.

“It would be wrong to call Eyal an offshoot of Kahane’s followers, but Raviv did tell his followers to respect Kahane’s teachings,” Sprinzak said in an interview.

Police are seeking to determine if Amir’s jailed brother, Hagai, was a member of the Kach sister group, Kahane Chai.Like Amir, Raviv was dismissed from a Jewish study group on the campus of Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University.

A reporter for an Israeli newspaper who claimed he infiltrated Eyal said he had spent 48 hours at rallies and other activities of the group at which Amir was present.

While most Israelis apparently welcome a crackdown on violent fringe groups, they have mixed emotions about the means that justice and security officials are suggesting they need to rein in radicals and are concerned about possible infringements on civil rights.

Among the legal steps being considered is the possibility of jailing extremists without charges--a measure previously reserved for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

The attorney general had suggested such steps to Rabin earlier this year, but he refused because he feared such measures would intensify the conflict between his government and its opponents.

Times staff writer Christopher Reynolds in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.