Israel Muslim Cleric Hate

Terrorist imam shot dead while firing at Hebron Jewish community

The terrorist, well-known as a Hamas activist, had targeted two Jewish children, according to Religious Zionism Party MK and Hebron resident Orit Strook.

(March 17, 2024 / JNS)

Israeli forces killed a Hebron imam on Saturday after he opened fire on the city’s Jewish neighborhood with an automatic rifle.

No Israeli casualties were reported.

Mahmoud Nofal was captured on video as he fired toward the city’s Jewish neighborhood from a cemetery in the Abu Sanina neighborhood.

IDF forces reacted quickly, neutralizing the terrorist and carrying out an extensive search to ensure he had acted alone.

Maj. Israel, company commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ 92nd Brigade, said that around noon on Saturday his forces had responded after hearing a burst of gunfire. His forces flanked the terrorist from the left and right and neutralized him.

“We understood afterwards that only one terrorist was involved. Thank God no one was hurt,” he said.

The terrorist had served as imam of Hebron’s Al-Qassam Mosque, and was a known Hamas activist.

According to Religious Zionism Party Knesset member Orit Strook, a resident of the Hebron, Nofal was not shooting randomly.

“This damned terrorist…did not fire ‘against the settlement in Hebron.’ He shot from point-blank range at two children, who walked innocently on the only street allowed for Jewish movement in Hebron.

“I will bring my neighbor’s soccer ball—a 5th grade student—to the Cabinet meeting tomorrow,” she said. “The ball took a bullet instead of the boy, who was saved by God’s grace.”

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Otzma Yehudit Party called on the Prime Minister to embrace his policy of putting “as many barriers and restrictions as possible on the residents of the P.A.”

The shooting proved once more that Israelis’ right to life takes priority over Palestinian Authority residents’ freedom of movement, he said.

“Whoever wakes up in the morning and all he thinks about is how to murder as many Jews as possible should not be given freedom of movement and allowed to carry out his plan,” he said.

On Thursday, a terrorist killed Israeli soldier Uri Moyal at a gas station near Beit Kama in the northern Negev.

The terrorist, Fadi Abu Latif, 22, was born in the Gaza Strip and lived there till the age of 18. He was granted Israeli citizenship in 2019 after getting married and was a resident of the Bedouin city of Rahat.

COVID-19 Omicron outbreak due to homosexuality and Israel - Al-Aqsa Imam

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF - Dec 23, 2021

The LGBTQ+ community, as well as the Israeli government and media, are to blame for the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, Imam of al-Aqsa Mosque Issam Amira has claimed, according to N12.

The Palestinian Islamic scholar and preacher made the controversial statements in a sermon during Friday prayers at the Islamic holy site in Jerusalem.

According to Amira, the Omicron variant "did not spread until the government and media announced its existence."

Amira went on to claim that the government and media that "brought the variant" are the same that "allow and encourage homosexuality."

This is not the first time that the Imam has made controversial and problematic comments.

In 2020, Amira was arrested by Israel Police and received a six-month ban from al-Aqsa Mosque for praising the Muslim who murdered and beheaded French teacher Samuel Paty for using illustrations of the prophet Mohammed.

Right-wing Zionist NGO Im Tirzu reportedly responded to Amira's controversial comments, calling for the "dangerous person who should sit behind bars" to be arrested by Israel Police as soon as possible.

"His incitement poses a danger to the LGBTQ+ community and to the Jewish people," the NGO said.

Sheikh Raed Salah, who was charged over speech praising Temple Mount attackers, also found guilty of supporting illegal group

A prominent Arab Israeli Islamic cleric was convicted Sunday of incitement to terrorism over a 2017 speech in which he praised a deadly attack at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The Haifa Magistrate’s Court also convicted Sheikh Raed Salah for supporting an outlawed organization. Salah was leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, which Israel banned in 2015 over alleged links to terror groups and for inciting deadly violence.

Salah was arrested and charged two years ago for praising three Arab Israelis who shot dead two police officers in a July 2017 attack at the Temple Mount compound. The attack, and Israel’s ensuing decision to beef up security at the holy site, significantly ramped up tensions between Israel and the Arab world.

Police officers Haiel Sitawe and Kamil Shnaan, both hailing from Druze villages in northern Israel, were killed in the attack.

The cleric was surrounded by supporters as he arrived at court on Sunday, including by lawmakers from the Joint List of four mostly-Arab parties. Following the ruling, Salah’s backers chanted “We’ll sacrifice our lives for Al-Aqsa,” referring to the holy site, according to the Ynet news site.

Joint List MK Youssef Jabareen called the ruling “political persecution that has no ‘security’ considerations.”

Jabareen linked the conviction to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent campaigning against a theoretical minority government led by the centrist Blue and White party and propped up by the Joint List.

“The conviction of Salah is another step in the political persecution of the Arab public and its leadership and the dangerous radicalization of ‘securitization’ in relation to them,” he added.

The ruling was praised by a number of prominent right-wing lawmakers, with Jewish Home chief Rafi Peretz also linking it to the proposed minority government.

“For all those who imagined a minority government that leans on the Joint List, I suggest they take a good look at who arrived to the court this morning and supported this same inciting discourse,” Peretz, whose party backs Netanyahu, wrote on Twitter.

Welcoming the ruling, Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman again called the Joint List a “fifth column” in Israel.

“I hope the punishment to be imposed on him will be appropriate and that whoever saw the pilgrimage today of Joint List members to the court and their show of support for a terrorist will understand this is a fifth column,” he tweeted.

Salah has previously been convicted on a number of occasions for terror charges and in 2017 was released from prison after serving a nine-month sentence for incitement to violence and racism.

JERUSALEM: Israeli police arrested a firebrand Islamic cleric on Tuesday who has been repeatedly accused of inciting violence over a sensitive Jerusalem holy site where tensions again flared last month.

Raed Salah, released from prison in January after serving a nine-month sentence, is accused of inciting violence and terrorism as well as support for and participation in an illegal organisation, police said.

His group, the radical northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, was outlawed in 2015 after it was accused of inciting violence linked to Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Police said in Tuesday's statement that Salah, an Arab Israeli, is accused of having publicly supported violent acts against the country on several occasions following the ban on his organisation.

It was not clear whether the accusations were linked to last month's deadly unrest surrounding the holy site, which includes the revered Al-Aqsa mosque and the golden-topped Dome of the Rock.

Violence erupted in and around the compound after three Arab Israelis shot dead two Israeli policemen on July 14.

Israel responded by installing metal detectors at the entrance to the complex, used as a staging point for the attack.

For nearly two weeks, worshippers refused to submit to the checks and staged mass prayers in surrounding streets.

Ensuing protests and clashes left seven Palestinians dead, while three Israelis were fatally stabbed by a Palestinian assailant.

The crisis abated when Israel removed the detectors.

Salah served a nine-month prison term after being convicted of fomenting violent protests over the holy site.

He was convicted of having incited violence in a 2007 speech. He was convicted in 2014 and his appeals were later denied.

Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said in a statement following Salah's Tuesday arrest that he hoped "this time justice will be done and he will be sent behind bars for a long time."

The compound, central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is the third-holiest in Islam and the most sacred for Jews.

It is located in east Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in 1967 and later annexed in a move never recognised by the international community.

Palestinians fear Israel will gradually seek to assert further control over it, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said repeatedly he is committed to the status quo. — AFP

Top Israeli Muslim cleric: Jerusalem will be ours

A top Israeli Arab Muslim cleric told 50,000 followers in northern Israel Friday that Jewish rule over Jerusalem would soon come to an end, and the city would become the capital of a new Muslim caliphate.

Despite modern Muslim efforts to claim Jerusalem as a city important to their religion, history shows that Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Muslim entity.

While it is mentioned hundreds of times in the Bible, Jerusalem does not appear even once in the Koran.

Israeli Arab Muslim cleric Sheik Ra'ad Salah declared that Jerusalem will soon become the capital of an Islamic nation at a rally in the northern town of Umm al-Fahm, Israel Radio reported on Friday.

The leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement Salah, told a crowd of 50,000 gatherers that Israel's occupation of the Temple Mount was nearing its end.

He then said comatose former-prime minister Ariel Sharon and President Moshe Katsav, who is currently under investigation for alleged sex crimes, were "paying the price" for damaging Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque.

Salah also responded to Pope Benedict XVI's remarks on Mohammed, saying he hoped they were an accidental slip of tongue.

On the issue of abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, Salah urged Hamas not to agree to a prisoner exchange with the Israeli government which will not include the release of jailed Israeli Arabs.

Salah and three other Islamic Movement officials were held by police in detention for 21 months under suspicion of contacting militant Palestinian groups

Israel police to investigate Muslim cleric

JERUSALEM, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- A Muslim cleric who called for an uprising is facing a police investigation for inciting violence, Israel's Justice Ministry said.

A ministry spokesman said assistant state attorney Shai Nitzan Thursday ordered police to investigate Sheikh Raed Salah following statements he allegedly made in Jerusalem and Nazareth. Salah heads the more militant faction of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

He raised a storm over a salvage excavation that Israel's Antiquities Authority started along a collapsed ramp to the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site that is also known as the Muslims as the al-Aksa, Islam's third holiest site. The excavations are a step before building a bridge to the mount's southwestern gate.

Salah ceclared "it is now the duty of every Arab and Muslim to start a new intifada...to save Jerusalem and the Mosque of al-Aksa." He also said officers rank insignia "are made of martyrs' skulls" and that "the most beautiful time in our lives will be when we meet Allah (God) as martyrs in the Mosque of al-Aksa."

Israeli officials denied any intention to harm the al-Aksa or that the digs will reach the mount. To prove that, Israel posted cameras at the site and is relaying pictures, live over the internet at www.antiquities.org.il . Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will send over a team to view he works.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said accusations against Israel are false and "part of an attempt made by the most radical anti-Israeli Islamic group in Israel to stir the emotions and to provoke violence between us and Arabs."