Jerusalem police have arrested three suspects in connection with disturbances outside the Prime Minister’s Office February 10 in which Emil Grunzweig, a 33-year-old teacher was killed and nine persons were wounded when a grenade was thrown into a group of Peace Now members demonstrating for the dismissal of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. They were the first arrests made in the case.
The three were reportedly charged with harassing the Peace Now demonstrators. It is not clear whether the police link them to the fatal grenade attack or only with the disturbances and threats that preceded it. The police have reportedly identified other persons picked out by Peace Now members from photographs and television films as among those who threatened and harassed them.
Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader of the extreme nationalist Kach group, was summoned for interrogation Sunday in connection with the disturbances. He was asked to return for further questioning yesterday but won a postponement on grounds that he had to attend memorial services marking the first anniversary of his father’s death. Kach activists said later that Kahane refuses to appear before the police and has gone underground.
KAHANE DENOUNCES THE ‘LIBERAL LEFT’
Meanwhile, Kahane issued a statement which was released in New York today denouncing the “liberal left” for trying to make Jews “feel guilty and conscience-stricken so that they will turn silent in the face of the destruction of Judaism, of the Jewish faith and the Jewish people.”
According to Kahane, “Ever since the death of a member of Peace Now at the hands of unknown assailants it has become impossible to escape the ‘Jewish morality’ of the liberal left. Blessed with the power of the communications industry, television, radio, newspapers, officials and semi-official ‘intellectuals’ of all kinds and aided by the Jew-hating foreign press, the nation (Israel) has been subjected to an unprecedented barrage of moral injunctions and ethical mournings.”
(Another statement released today in New York by Shifra Hoffman, executive director of the Jewish Unity Movement, said “We deplore and denounce the alleged arrest and allegations against Rabbi Meir Kahane.” The statement went on to praise Kahane as “an Orthodox and ultra-nationalist Jewish leader” who “has sacrificed himself for more than a decade on behalf of oppressed Jewry in the Soviet Union and wherever Jews are being persecuted.”)
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
