Militant Jews Take Anger to the Streets

The mobs are out on both sides now. Like their Palestinian counterparts, hard-line Jews are taking to the streets to vent their rage and exact revenge for 12 days of riots.

The retaliation began in Nazareth on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when scores of Jewish youths went on a rampage in an Arab neighborhood--a confrontation that ended in the deaths of two Israeli Arabs.

By Monday night, Jewish mobs were hurling fire and rocks at Arab targets across the country, setting up roadblocks and chanting, “Death to the Arabs!” About 500 Jews tried to storm mosques in Tiberias before Israeli police dispersed them with tear gas.

In Tel Aviv, another mob of 500 Jews surrounded a restaurant where they believed Arabs were working and set the building on fire, along with a store and three apartments where Palestinian workers had slept.

And for a third night running, Jewish residents of Jerusalem fought pitched street battles with their Palestinian neighbors.

What began as clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli security forces nearly two weeks ago is now a fight between Arabs and Jewish civilians drawing on deep wells of hatred that have survived half a century of coexistence.

Enraged by the riots by Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, and humiliated that three Israeli soldiers were captured by Lebanese guerrillas Saturday, militant Jews decided that it was time to fight back. They were venting their fury where they could--against Palestinians in Jerusalem and Arab citizens of Israel.

“Arabs are controlling the streets in Haifa, Akko, Jaffa, so we decided to go to the streets in Jerusalem,” said 16-year-old Eli of Pisgat Zeev, a Jewish neighborhood built in the early 1980s in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War.

Eli, who declined to give his last name, joined dozens of his friends to do battle with Palestinians from neighboring Beit Hanina. The student said he was seething over the soldiers’ capture and the destruction of Joseph’s Tomb in the West Bank town of Nablus by Palestinians, and was fearful for his soldier brother serving in the West Bank.

“Whenever I go to the street and see an Arab, I think this Arab could hurt my brother. Any Arab, they are all the same,” Eli said to nods from half a dozen friends.

Like many of the Palestinians on the front lines of daily battles with Israeli soldiers, these youths have given up any hope--or pretense--of peacemaking. They are meeting mob with mob, stone with stone, and they have heartfelt support from others who see the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories today as tribe against tribe.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak called the riots in Nazareth a “red warning light” and urged Israelis to restrain themselves.

“I am calling on all citizens of the country to avoid violence. I am calling on the Jewish citizens to avoid at all costs hurting Arabs and their property, and on the Arab citizens to avoid being dragged after an extremist minority that wants to undermine coexistence in the country,” Barak said.

The prime minister reminded Jews that they have suffered as a minority in the Diaspora and that to harm the minority in Israel “undermines the image of Israel.”

But his call apparently came too late as Israeli radio and television broadcast vivid accounts of Jewish assaults against Arabs.

The first attack began in Nazareth about 8 p.m. Sunday, after the start of Yom Kippur, the holiest Jewish holiday. Arab witnesses said scores of secular and religious Jews descended on their neighborhood in eastern Nazareth amid a hail of rocks. When the Palestinians came out of their homes to fight back, police arrived and started shooting--toward the Arabs, they said.

“The Jewish people attacked us, and when we tried to alert police, they came and started shooting at us,” said resident Falesteen Ismael.

Arab leaders of Nazareth asserted that the two dead were hit by live bullets. Police officials said they did not believe that their officers had used live ammunition but said they were investigating. A police spokesman for the Nazareth area said it appeared that Jews had initiated the confrontation but that he could not be sure.

Azmi Bishara, an Israeli Arab member of the Israeli parliament from Nazareth, called on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to protect the Arab minority in Israel.

“Barak says that [Palestinian Authority President] Yasser Arafat is not controlling the streets; well, Barak is not controlling the streets,” Bishara said.

At a joint funeral for the two Nazareth residents, thousands of Israeli Arabs, anger in their eyes, called the victims shehid, martyrs for Islam; many chanted rhymes calling for the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas who are holding the Israeli soldiers to bomb Tel Aviv.

Rage fueled rage. By Monday night, Israeli police officers were scurrying to put down dozens of demonstrations and attacks on Israeli Arabs and respond to calls for more security in Jewish neighborhoods. Again and again, Israeli political leaders beseeched citizens not to take the law into their own hands, but the calls fell on deaf ears.

In East Jerusalem, Palestinian youths took up rooftop positions and gathered on street corners of Beit Hanina in anticipation of a repeat of the previous night’s clash.

“The last five or seven years of the game of peace were just a farce,” said Rami Kutzi, a 24-year-old shopkeeper in Beit Hanina. “If you and I know each other for five years, and then we have a problem, in 24 hours you want to kill me? It’s as if nobody knows anybody.”

As it turned out, there were skirmishes in surrounding neighborhoods--Shuafat and French Hill--but the teenagers from Pisgat Zeev decided not to go out again to battle the residents of Beit Hanina.

“We went out last night because it was Yom Kippur and they were driving their cars, blasting their radios. They were desecrating our holy day and provoking us,” Eli said. “Our soldiers weren’t doing anything, so we decided to get back at them ourselves.”

In nearby Neve Yaakov, where Palestinians had attacked soldiers with stones and Molotov cocktails Sunday night, residents applauded the Jewish street fighters.

“The Arabs are the ones who start it, we just react. It’s excellent that this is happening,” said Gaby Cohen, 36.

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson contributed to this report.