Inside the Jewish Terrorist Underground

Abstract

Above the parched hills of Hebron, on the West Bank of the Jordan River, Kiryat Arba's stone-hewn apartment towers rise into the clear desert air. fortress-like quality they create is appropriate. Kiryat Arba is ringed by barbed wire. Israeli soldiers man the checkpoints and prowl the yard at night. For several years now, militant bands of Orthodox Jews have moved down the slope from Kiryat Arba into Hebron's squalid, fly-blown Casbah, where they have carved out a Jewish foothold in the heart of this fiercely nationalist town of 75,000 Arabs. settlers have journeyed to seeking a messianic kingdom on land that was once part of ancient land they claim was given to them by God and to which their return is divinely ordained. Hebron-the site of King David's first throne and Abraham's tomb-is to the settlers the essence of Zion resurrected. Today there are three Jewish enclaves in with some two hundred settlers; about 65 percent are of American origin. Most are fervent supporters of the major right-wing religious-nationalist organizations that dominate life on the West Bank-Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) and Rabbi Meir Kahane's avowedly anti-Arab Kach party. Leaders of both groups have vowed to secure and defend the West Bank at any cost, even threatening to take up arms against the Israeli government if it tries to trade territory for peace with the Arabs. Yona and Malka Khaykin came to from Boston. With their five children, they live in the Casbah next to the Abraham Synagogue inside a heavily fortified compound, surrounded by wroughtiron gates and guarded by teenage yeshiva students who tote Uzi submachine guns as unself-consciously as they wear yarmulkes and prayer shawls. Twenty-eight families live in the compound, most in restored houses wrested from Arabs. Hebron is the first place Jews bought property in ancient Israel, says 35-yearold Yona Khaykin, a thin, intense computer programmer with a master's in physics from MIT. The house where Abraham lived is nearby. may say the fact that Jews lived here 2,000 years ago is no reason for Jews to live here now-that it's an Arab city and it's not ethical to force them out. Well, I say Western European values are bullshit. Messiah will come. There will be a Jewish kingdom. Jews will be the spiritual bosses of the world. . . . can't create a messianic Jewish state with 1.9 million Arabs! Khaykin boasts that he and his friends deliberately provoke Arabs into violence, hoping that the army will respond by driving them off the West Bank. Several months ago, Khaykin told me, he and fifty armed settlers broke into a mosque in nearby Halhoul during Friday afternoon prayers to give his three-year-old son a ritual haircut. set up a table on prayer rugs. A rabbi cut the child's hair; then the settlers brought in watermelon from a truck. offered the Arabs some melon, Malka Khaykin, Yona's 31-yearold-wife said, recalling the shock on the Arabs' faces. They refused. We spit the seeds all over the floor. Malka, a small, severe-looking woman, told me that it's not enough to merely live in the land of Israel: You have to live in the realm of perfect faith, a world in which God, the Torah, the land, and the