Terror Against Terror

Terror Against Terror (Hebrew: Terror Neged Terror, "TNT") was a radical Jewish militant organization that sponsored several attacks against Palestinian targets. The group was founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach organization, and took its name from Kahane's theory that Arab terrorism should be met with Jewish terrorism.[1][2] The group began committing violent acts against Arabs in 1975.[3] On March 3, 1984 a shooting attack against a bus of Arab workers left six injured; a group calling itself "the Shelomo Ben-Yosef Brigade of TNT" claimed responsibility. Three days later police arrested seven suspects in relation to the shooting and a recent string of fires and bombings directed against local Christians and Muslims. Charges were eventually filed against four of the men; Meir Leibowitz, Hazan Levy, Yehuda Richter and Mike Guzovsky, all members of the Kach party.[4]

On March 27, 1984, Israeli police arrested four youths from the Ein Kerem neighborhood in West Jerusalem for 14 hand-grenade attacks against Christian and Muslim holy sites. The attacks took place over a series of months in Jerusalem and Palestinian Territories and been claimed by "Terror Against Terror". Three of the suspects, Uri Ben-Ayun, David Deri and his cousin Amram Deri, were convicted and given six-year sentences with a three-year suspended sentence.[5]

General Yehoshafat Harkabi described them as :

serious people who occupy high positions among their public . .they have a rational state of mind and their chief motivation stems apparently from the awareness that annexation of the West Bank together with its Arab population would be disastrous and tantamount to national suicide - unless that population were thinned out and made to flee by terrorism. This reasoning is not moral, but it stems from the rational conclusion of the policy that aims at annexation. Such terrorism is neither a 'punishment' nor a deterrent; it is a political instrument.[6]