Patrol 36

All gang members were from the USSR , young people aged 16 to 21 years. Their families arrived in Israel through the Law of Return , which requires at least one ancestor whose mother was Jewish to repatriate. None of the gang members professed Judaism, and only one person was an ethnic Jew. The gang included ^[1] :

• Eric Bunyatov (born 1988), received the name Eli Bonite during repatriation, known as “Nazi Eli”
• Dmitry Bogatykh (b. 1987), during repatriation he changed his name to Bogotich
• Alexander Palikh (b. 1988)
• Ilya Bondarenko (b. 1987)
• Vladimir Nizavtsev (born 1989)
• Denis Novik (born 1989)
• Ivan Kuzmin (born 1989)
• Kirill Belinkov (born 1989)

According to one of the audio recordings, Eric Bunyatov’s grandfather was half Jewish, which made Eric himself abandon plans to create a family ^[2] . Ivan Kuzmin complained that in Russia he was called a "dirty Jew", and in Israel - a "Russian stink," and in protest he began to profess a racist ideology ^[3] . Another member of the gang was the grandson of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust ^[4] .

Patrol 36 was involved in various types of criminal activity, ranging from vandalism (painting the walls of synagogues with swastikas or neo-Nazi slogans) to robberies against migrants from Africa and Asia, drug dealers, homosexuals, ultra-Orthodox Jews and the elderly. The gang members had tattoos with the number 88 — an encrypted Nazi salute — and also carried firearms, explosives, and knives. In the house of each hung a portrait of Hitler. The group videotaped their attacks, and later by the police all the videos were found on the computers of the gang members ^{[5] [4] [6] [7] [8] [9]} .

According to some journalists, the gang’s activities have long been known to the police, but they have hidden this information for at least 4 years, denying the presence of neo-Nazi gangs in Israel ^[10] . The official investigation began only in 2006 after the discovery of two graffiti in Petah Tikva. On September 9, 2007, police arrested seven gang members, but Bonite managed to escape from the country. Police at the court presented evidence of the gang's activities: numerous videos of the attacks, Nazi symbols, explosives and a gun ^{[11] [7]} . Everyone was accused of organizing a criminal gang, several attempted murders on the basis of racial hatred and the spread of prohibited symbols. The Tel Aviv District Court found everyone guilty, sentencing gang leader Eric Bunyatov to 7 years in prison, Dmitry Bogatykh to 5.5 years in prison (he also managed to escape from the country), the remaining defendants were sentenced to at least one year in prison. The case was led by Judge Zvi Gurfinkel, who, reading out the verdict, stated that he advocated the most severe punishment in order to suppress further precedents ^{[12] [13]} .

The escaped Bunyatov was arrested at the Israeli airport in January 2011 and sent to prison ^[14] . A month earlier, Dmitry Bogatykh was arrested in Bishkek, and another criminal case was opened for evading military service. As a result, Bogatykh received a term of 5 years and 9 months in prison, which put an end to the gang’s case ^[15] .

The country was shocked by the very presence of a neo-Nazi gang, and disputes over the amendment of the Law on Returns resumed in the Israeli Knesset ^[16] . Effie Atam , a member of the MAFDAL parties and Ihud Leumi , demanded that the law be amended immediately to remove citizenship and deport all those who advocate neo-Nazism from Israel; According to him, Israel began to turn into a paradise for all anti-Semites and haters of the State of Israel ^[17] .