Israel’s national poet Hayim Nahman Bialik believed that the ultimate success of the Zionist enterprise would come when we finally have Jewish thieves and ladies of the night in the Holy Land. So this report should probably gladden Bialik’s weary bones: according to Israeli police, the kibbutz hotel rooms of Jewish-American kids who came to Israel as part of the Birthright program were sacked by a gang of four very Jewish burglars. You’ve got your kibbutz, you’ve got your US kid Zionists, and you’ve got Zionist criminals. That’s three Bialiks.
According to the Police Spokesperson (Judea and Samaria District), Israel Police received a number of complaints during July, from students who arrived in Israel as part of the Taglit-Birthright Israel project, about break-ins and the theft of property and money from their room while they were staying at a guest house in Kibbutz Almog near the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea in the Jordan Valley.
OK, add a Bialik for this story taking place in the liberated territories.
Police launched a covert investigation, and after “various and complex investigative activities,” they succeeded in tracking down a squad of burglars from central Israel. The “various and complex investigative activities” revealed that the suspects collected information about the students’ stay at the guest house and after making sure that the students were not in the rooms they would break into their room using a customized key, and steal valuable items including cellphones, jewelry, credit cards and cash.
The members of the cell—a woman and three men in their twenties—were arrested in central Israel over the past two weeks.
In a raid carried out by police in a Tel Aviv motel where members of the cell were staying, they found a large cache of property that had been stolen in the hotel break-ins. A raid of the home of one of the suspect yielded as a large amount of forged money, which was seized promptly.
OK, we don’t know if Bialik expected currency forgery to be a milestone of the Zionist revolution. We’re giving it half a Bialik.
The investigation also revealed that in a number of cases the Birthright Bandits used the stolen credit cards to purchase goods “in various locations throughout the country.” Hey, that’s a legitimate Bialik.
The suspects have been remanded to jail awaiting their indictments which should be filed in the coming days.
