This Russian-Israeli member of a neo-Nazi cell is one of eight arrested by Israeli police. Police on Sunday said they've cracked a cell of young Israeli neo-Nazis accused in a string of attacks on foreign workers, religious Jews, drug addicts and gays.

Jerusalem ? With eight young immigrants from the former Soviet Union under arrest, Israeli authorities said Sunday they had broken up a violent neo-Nazi gang that desecrated synagogues and staged at least 15 attacks on religious Jews, Asian workers, drug addicts and homosexuals.

The news shocked Israelis, whose state was founded as a refuge for Jews in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. Video said to have been taken by the skinhead gang to document its beatings was shown at Sunday’s Cabinet meeting, triggering urgent debate over what to do about immigrants who came as Jewish offspring but grew up to commit hate crimes and shout “Heil Hitler!”

Voicing outrage on radio talk shows, Israelis faulted a lax standard that allowed many families with Jewish roots but weak ties to Judaism to immigrate from the Soviet Union nearly a generation ago and take Israeli citizenship.

Israeli leaders said they were appalled. “We as a society have failed to educate these youths and keep them away from dangerous and crazy ideologies,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, calling for harsh punishment of the arrested skinheads.

The Interior Ministry said it was studying the possibility of stripping the gang members of their citizenship and deporting them. All are young men in their late teens and early 20s who have “parents or grandparents who were Jewish in one way or another,” said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

A court decided Sunday to keep seven of the eight in custody, pending expected indictments this week. The suspects covered their faces with their shirts during the hearing.

“We didn’t beat anyone,” protested Arik Benyatov, 20, the gang’s alleged leader, claiming his innocence.

Israeli newspapers said six of the eight alleged gangsters had confessed to police that they carried out assaults in and around Tel Aviv over a period of months before their arrests in August.

The arrests were made public Saturday, capping an investigation begun following the desecration of two synagogues sprayed with swastikas in the city of Petah Tikva more than a year ago.

Rosenfeld said the young men would be charged with “causing bodily harm to individuals and sabotaging synagogues.”

Legal experts said the young men could be deported if judged to have committed acts that constitute a breach of loyalty toward the state and the foundation of its existence.