Israel: Police Say 7 Arab Men Arrested in April Had Planned Attacks on Jews and Christians

The Israeli police on Monday announced the April arrests of seven young Arab men who, they said, had militant Islamic sympathies and had planned attacks on Jews and Christians. Two of the men were charged with the murder of a Jewish taxi driver. The case had been under an order of silence. Six of the seven, all 19 to 27 years old, were from Nazareth, the largest Arab city in Israel, and the seventh was from a nearby village, the police said. Aviv Elgrisi, the police chief for the northern region, told Israeli Radio that the men had been inspired to act after watching speeches by Osama bin Laden and that two of them had tried unsuccessfully to go to Somalia to join the Islamic struggle there against the local Christian community.