Hilltop Youth, Jewish Al-Qaeda

If Muslims does a fraction of the efforts done by this group to fulfill Quranic Covenant they will be branded as hardcore terrorists!


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/3337812
Sept. 4, 2005, 1:01AM

Religious rebels stir unease across Israel
'Hilltop youth' fight withdrawals and fear no law
By LAURA KING and KEN ELLINGWOOD
Los Angeles Times


Video, audio, multimedia courtesy The AP. (Requires Real Player and Flash plug-in)
SANUR, WEST BANK - They spend their days in primitive hilltop encampments deep in the big-sky territory of the far northern West Bank, sleeping rough among their sheep and goats, as fervent in their chanted prayers as in their belief that all of the biblical Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people forever.

The "hilltop youth" who battled police and soldiers with homemade weapons during the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a sliver of the West Bank decisively failed in their attempt to prevent the relinquishing of 25 Jewish settlements.

But after witnessing the zeal of these messianic-minded teenage boys and young men, many Israelis were left with the uneasy impression that they could prove a force to be reckoned with if the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon seeks to cede any more territory to the Palestinians.

"They are very small in number — we are talking about hundreds, not thousands," said Uri Dromi of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonprofit research organization. "But from the way they act, it is clear they have really broken loose from everything. They don't fear the law, and there's not much law to fear in the no-man's land where they live."

When these youth came down from their hilltops to join in the fray in Gaza and the small West Bank settlements that Israel had designated for evacuation, they stood out from the family-oriented settler crowd with their sidelocks and scraggly beards, their knitted yarmulkes and dusty sandals, their hip-hop-style T-shirts and baggy shorts.

Deep-rooted beliefs
Religious bohemians of a sort, their beliefs reflect a melange of New Age and Hassidic influences, laced with a passionate mistrust of Israel's institutions — the army, the courts, the Knesset, the prime minister.

"They're 'anti' just about everything," said Gideon Doron, a Tel Aviv University political scientist. "Anti-everything, that is, except for 'balagan' " — the Hebrew expression for chaos.

When it suits them, the youths heed the admonitions of selected rabbis. But just as often, religious authorities are considered part of the larger establishment they are in open rebellion against.

In the West Bank settlement of Sanur, the last to be emptied, the hilltop youth appeared to be taking marching orders from an extremist rabbi, Shaul Halfon. He urged them onward, telling them the Israeli troops they faced were not "real Jews" because they had failed to keep faith with the biblical covenant between God and the Israelites.

But other rabbis, even those who had led the opposition to the Gaza withdrawal, found themselves shoved aside, in some cases literally, by young protesters who went on to make a frenzied last stand Aug. 18 on the rooftop of the synagogue in the Gaza settlement of Kfar Darom.

They hurled rocks, debris and caustic liquid at Israeli troops. Dozens were arrested, and some may face serious charges.