Israeli authorities yesterday charged the three - Shlomo Dvir, 26; Yarden Morag, 25; and Ofer Gamliel, 42 - with attempted murder and weapons offenses for placing a powerful trailer-truck bomb in front of an Arab girls' school in East Jerusalem last month.
Dvir is a yeshiva student; Morag, a father of four. Gamliel is a carpenter who handled munitions in the Israeli army.
Noam Federman, 33, of Hebron, a leader of the outlawed, anti-Arab Kach party, was charged Monday in connection with the plot, which involved extensive scouting to pick a spot that would cause maximum damage, authorities said.
"I think the government should put bombs in [Palestinian] hospitals, but unfortunately the government doesn't do it, so it's up to the people to do those things," the Jerusalem Post has quoted him as saying.
Yosef Ben Baruch, 22, described as a shepherd from the Hebron area, is alleged to have helped prepare the bomb. He is scheduled to be charged today. Israeli internal security chief Avi Dichter has reportedly warned of the potential danger of a Jewish underground movement similar to the one that operated in the mid-1980s before its members were jailed on charges of conspiracy to bomb buses used by Arabs and blow up the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic holy site.
What these Jewish militants have in common with the Muslim fundamentalists is a sense that the world is against them, "so they don't subscribe to conventional morality," says Yossi Klein Halevi, a onetime follower of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the radical Jewish Defense League.
"It's rage disguised as faith driven by revenge," says Halevi, a well-known author, who recounts his falling out with Kahane in his book, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist.
Daniel Winston, a marriage and family therapist born in the United States, has lived at Bat Ayin for two years.
