Patrol 35 was an Israeli neo-Nazi organization led by Erik Bonite, who goes by the alias "Ely the Nazi". The group's members were aged 16 to 19 and it was based in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv. In 2008 Bonite was sentenced to jail time, along with seven other members of the group, who desecrated a synagogue with swastikas and carried out attacks on religious Jews, foreign workers, drug addicts, and gay people. According to the Daily Telegraph, the men's families were allowed to settle in Israel under the Law of Return, meaning that they had some Jewish ancestry, although they did not practice Judaism. Bonite reportedly said he would never have children because his grandfather was half Jewish and he did not want to father a "piece of trash with even the smallest percentage of Jewish blood". Patrol 35's members reportedly had tattoos with the number 88 (a reference to Heil Hitler) and were stockpiling guns, TNT, knives, and portraits of Adolf Hitler. The group produced videos of their own attacks, which were found on computers seized by police.[1][2][3] [4][5] [6] Their discovery led to renewed calls amongst politicians to amend the Law of Return.[7] Effi Eitam of the National Religious Party and the National Union, which represent the religious Zionist movement and have previously attempted to advance bills to amend the Law of Return, stated that Israel has become "a haven for people who hate Israel, hate Jews, and exploit the Law of Return to act on this hatred."[8]
Judge Tsvi Gurfinkel, who issued the guilty verdict, opined that "the fact that they are Jews from the ex-Soviet Union and that they had sympathised with individuals who believed in racist theories is terrible." BBC reported that the news of the attacks and of the men's arrests in 2007 "shocked the nation" because Israel was founded in the wake of the The Holocaust. One of the members who was arrested and sentenced was the grandson of a Holocaust survivor.[2]