Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

2 Jewish Extremists Charged in Bedouin Arson Attack

Two Jewish extremist teens were indicted for an arson attack last month on a Bedouin tent in the West Bank.

Avi Gafni, 19, and a minor were indicted on charges of incitement, threats, conspiring to commit a felony, and obstructing justice in the mid-August attack , the Shin Bet security service said in a statement after a gag order on the case was lifted Monday.

Gafni, originally of Beit Shemesh, is “a violent ‘hilltop youth’ activist and a member of a Jewish terror group, which is behind the attack,” according to the Shin Bet. He has been ordered by the military several times to stay away from the West Bank after being suspected of involvement in other attacks, according to the Shin Bet.

Graffiti spray-painted on a rock near the burned-down tent, which was used for storage and unoccupied at the time of the attack, included a Star of David and the words “administrative revenge,” which could have referred to the recent administrative detention orders for three suspected Jewish extremists arrested after the July 31 arson attack on a West Bank Palestinian home. Under administrative detention, prisoners can remain in custody for up to six months without a hearing or charges, renewable indefinitely. Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners remain in administrative detention in Israeli prisons.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.