http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/136176American Immigrant 'Exiled' Back to US for 3 Months
by Hillel Fendel
(IsraelNN.com) A Jerusalem court has agreed to a precedent-setting compromise: A student who was supposed to be administratively detained in a procedure normally reserved for terrorists - will travel to the United States instead.
Yeshiva student Ephraim Hantzis, 21, stands accused of praising Yaakov Jack Teitel and Baruch Goldstein in private conversations, and was nearly sentenced to three months of administrative detention – a special arrangement originally meant for terrorists, but increasingly used against Jews in Judea and Samaria over the past decade. It involves total secrecy; neither the accused nor his lawyers are informed of the exact charges against the accused.
However, in this case, a compromise arrangement has been found, under which Hantzis will return to the U.S. for the three-month period, and will then be permitted to return to Israel.
The Praised: Teitel and Goldstein
Teitel is in prison, facing charges of murdering two PA Arabs and attempting to murder three people, including a radical-left professor and a missionary teenager in Ariel. Goldstein killed 29 Arabs in Hevron, on the Purim holiday of 1994, after receiving word of an impending large Arab terrorist attack against Jews there.
“I’m not sure that it was just some words in praise of Teitel and Goldstein that got [Defense Minister Ehud] Barak to sign these administrative detention orders,” Hantzis’ lawyer Naftali Wurtzberger told Arutz-7 on Tuesday. “I don’t know exactly what the charges are, but the circumstances do not appear to be simple. I know he was ‘treated’ to a visit from agents of the Jewish department of the Israel Security Agency (Shabak) after they learned of his remarks.”
Wurtzberger said that the “entire process of administrative detention is a strange one, and is only supposed to be used in extreme cases such as ticking time bombs… On the other hand, I asked him why he had to ‘draw fire’ by making such statements, and he said that he does not believe in being two-faced… He’s not your every-day type of character.”
The fact that the Defense Ministry and the courts agreed to “exile” to the U.S. for Hantzis may indicate that Barak knows he went one step too far in this case… Hantzis is not happy about it; he made Aliyah [immigration] to Israel for idealistic, Zionist reasons, but I advised him to accept this compromise because when you fight against administrative detention, you’re fighting with your hands tied behind your back and your eyes blindfolded.”