Meir Ettinger

Later, his administrative detention was prolonged for four months. Eventually, two suspects were indicted, one of them a minor. Ettinger was not directly linked to the attacks, and was released in June 2016. He was placed under several restrictions, which included bans from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and he was barred from making contact with 93 people.

The rabbis behind the hilltop youths argue that Jewish redemption must be positively assisted by acts to help bring it about. The Hilltop youth is a radical group believed to be responsible for an arson attack on the Christian Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes on the 17 July 2015 Some in Israel regard them as a Jewish version of ISIS. Orthodox settlers speak of them as "hotheads", with some rabbis, among them the West Bank settlement leader rabbi Ezra Tubi, stating that, while troublemakers, these youths were correct in their belief that the West Bank formed an integral part of Biblical Israel, a territory Jews were entitled to claim possession because it was a right given to them by God.

Ettinger was known to undertake price tag assaults on nearby Palestinian villages. On 7 January 2014, he and a band of between 8 and 10 other settlers were surrounded and detained at Qusra, which had already lost half of its land to Israeli settlements, had hundreds of olive trees destroyed, 18 sheep killed and 6 cars torched. Settlers at the Esh Kodesh outpost had planted olive trees on privately owned Palestinian land, and the Israeli civil administration had them removed. From 20 to 30 youths set out to attack Palestinian villages in protest at the army's action. On descending a hill, while "stoning" farmers and damaging olive trees at Qusra, they were cornered, and either "retreated" or were "pushed" into a partially built local house. Village elders ensured their safety for 2 hours until a Palestinian liaison officer contacted the IDF which sent a platoon to escort them out of the village. The group said they were on a harmless unarmed hike in the hills when assaulted by Palestinians. A prayer leader of the local mosque replied that they were masked and armed with pipes and clubs, showing a reporter a sledgehammer. A week later, on 15 January, the door of a mosque nearby was set alight after being daubed with graffiti reading "Blood for blood, Qusra". Ettinger laid the blame for the incident on the army for refusing to allow them to carry weapons, commenting:

According to the Shin Bet, the internal Israeli security service, Ettinger set up in September 2013 an organization dedicated to the overthrow of the state in four stages by striking it where it was most vulnerable. In 2012, Ettinger was arrested for complicity in what Israeli media termed the "spy affair". According to the indictment, 5 settler youths had organized an "operations room" for monitoring IDF movements in the West Bank in order to intercept communications and forewarn settlers in outposts of IDF plans to evacuate the sites. Ettinger was subsequently sentenced to a 6-month term for "conspiracy to collect information of military value". Israeli media regarded Ettinger as "the most-wanted figure by the Jewish division of the Shin Bet".

Meir Ettinger is said to have become a disciple of Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, after meeting settlers from the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar. Around 2011, he studied under Ginsburgh at the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva. Ginsburgh is on record as being opposed to price tag assaults on Palestinians and their property. Meir Ettinger is said to have disagreed with Ginsburgh's pacifistic approach in this regard, as Ettinger advocated the adoption of violence in order to undermine the foundations of Israel.

Meir Ettinger (born 4 October 1991) is an Israeli Kahanist, and activist who is known for leading the Hilltop Youth, a group that pursues the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, conducts punitive price tag attacks on Palestinian villages, and targets Muslim and Christian sites. Ettinger has called for the demolition of the secular state of Israel, and its replacement by a religious society based on Biblical principles.

Meir became a charismatic leader among the militant settler movement known as Hilltop youth. Shlomo Fischer, a sociologist at Hebrew University, states that Ettinger represents violent activists who trust themselves to be endowed with prophetic authority, and compared the group to the militant 1980s Jewish Underground, Ettinger's rise to dominance, also as leader of a movement called The Revolt, was earmarked by acts, observed at the time by Israeli security officials, such as attacking a Palestinian shepherd's flock, stoning a sheep, and then slaughtering it in front of the terrified herder. He has played a leading role in setting up illegal Israeli outposts on Palestinian land, and attracted police attention for his militancy in two outposts - one, Ramat Migron, just outside the settlement of Migron, and another, Givat Ronen, near Har Brakha. He was part of a group that infiltrated Joseph's Tomb in 2011, against explicit IDF orders to keep away from the site. Migron was dismantled by force, and Ettinger served a spell in jail for his disruptive attempts to hinder the military's evacuation of such outposts.