Hebrew U. students not surprised by al-Qaida arrests

[notfullofit]

After two students from Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus were indicted for their suspected ties to the al-Qaida terrorist organization on Friday, fellow students said they weren't surprised by the news, citing an "atmosphere of radicalism" on campus that paved the way for such activity.

The joint operation of the police and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) netted six suspects altogether, four of whom are east Jerusalem residents. The other two students, Ibrahim Nashef and Muhammad Najem, are Israeli Arabs from Taiba and Nazareth, respectively.
All of the suspects were charged with membership in a terrorist organization, and some of them will be tried for aiding the enemy in a time of war, possessing propaganda material supporting a terror organization and soliciting and attempting to solicit others to join a terror organization.
According to the indictments filed against them on Friday, the six would often meet at the Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem. They surfed al-Qaida Web sites featuring radical Islamic content, where they also found instructions on how to build explosive devices.

"There are a lot of radical students here," said one man at the Givat Ram campus, who gave his name as Giuliani.

"There are protests and political rallies for radical groups all the time, so I'm not surprised at all that these guys were involved with a terrorist group."
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"It makes me very uncomfortable," said Abu Dahad, who hosts a joint Jewish-Arab forum in the food court on campus to try and bring the two sides closer together.

"I don't agree with radicalism at all. I am from Lod, where Arabs and Jews have lived together for a long time. Maybe because many of them were from east Jerusalem, which is not mixed, they were able to carry on with their radical ideas."
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They were set up," said one girl, her hijab pulled tightly against her head. Al-Qaida is too big for anyways, there's no way it's true. You can never trust the state."
Another girl chimed in, saying the charges had been trumped up to keep the students from their studies, in which they were successful.

But Tamar, another student at the Mount Scopus campus, said radicalism on that campus was worse than at Givat Ram.
"There's a large Arab student body here," she said. "At the beginning of the year, they held a large protest against the blockade of Gaza. They were out there with keffiyehs on, shouting and antagonizing the Jewish students. When the Jewish students responded, it got violent. Things have been quiet since then, but we know is there."

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