Thirty-nine years ago, on February 10th 1983, Peace Now activist Emil Grunzweig was murdered by an extreme right Jewish terrorist at a Peace Now demonstration in Jerusalem.

Not far from the Prime Minister’s Office, the terrorist, Yona Avrushmi, lobbed a hand grenade at the front row of the Peace Now marchers. It killed Emil and injured nine of his friends.

It was the first in a series of terrorist attacks by extremist right-wing Israelis against Israel’s peace camp. The Israeli right’s campaign to crush peace efforts culminated with the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin twelve years later.

In court, Avrushmi said that he was influenced by the right’s incitement against Peace Now, just as Yigal Amir, Rabin’s assassin, was influenced by the extreme right’s inciting statements and religious edicts.

Israeli right-wing political violence has since mushroomed. On the receiving end are chiefly West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinians, sometimes Palestinian citizens of Israel as well. But right-wing zealots still target Israeli peace advocates, as we witnessed three weeks ago, when settlers attacked Jewish activists with the Israeli human rights organization Rabbis for Human Rights, who came to plant olive trees together with Palestinians near the West Bank village of Burin.

This week, on PeaceCast, we spoke with the chair of Rabbis for Human Rights’ Board, Rabbi Michael Marmur.

A link to the conversation with Rabbi Marmur: https://peacenow.libsyn.com/223-rabbis-for-human-rights-with-michael-marmur

More on Emil Grunzweig: https://peacenow.org.il/en/about-us/emil-eng

APN’s short history of Israeli right wing political terrorism: http://archive.peacenow.org/entries/short_history_of_israeli_right_wing_terrorism