Who would have thought...
ISRAELI police have broken up a neo-Nazi cell that had been attacking religious Jews, in a case that has shocked the Jewish state.
The youths, who had Nazi tattoos and allegedly celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday, belonged to Soviet Jewish families who had migrated to Israel under its law of return, which allows people with at least one Jewish grandparent to become Israeli citizens.
Under strict religious rules, however, many of the former Soviet immigrants are not considered to be Jewish.
“It is difficult to believe that Nazi ideology sympathisers can exist in Israel, but it is a fact,” said Major Revital Almog, the police officer in charge of the year-long investigation that began when vandals daubed swastikas and Hitler’s name on synagogues in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv.