On old mosque in Jerusalem was burned and covered with racist anti-Arab graffiti early on Wednesday morning in the attack by right-wing extremists. The mosque, on Strauss Street near downtown West Jerusalem, is no longer in use. Overnight extreme-right racists broke into the mosque and tried to set it on fire. The mosque was badly burned by not structurally damaged. The walls were covered with graffiti, including “A good Arab is a dead Arab,” “price tag,” “Muhammad is dead” and “Muhammad is a pig.”
The extremists also wrote “Mitzpe Yitzhar,” referring to an illegal settelment in the occupied Palestinian West Bank that could be demolished along with parts of Ramat Gilad in the coming days.
The head of Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality – Communist Party of Israel) MK Muhammad Barakeh visited the mosque early on Wednesday morning. “We must stop the racist extreme-right,” he said.
The burned mosque in West Jerusalem (Photo: Jerusalem Fire Dept.)
Meanwhile in the northern West Bank settlers raided Duma village south of Nablus and torched a car belonging to Razzaq Dawabsha and a water tanker truck, Palestinian security officials told Ma’an Palestinian news agency. The settlers also tried to set fire to a bus In neighboring village Yasuf, a settler set fire to a car owned by Muhammad Ibrahim Muslih, locals said. Witnesses said the settler arrived on a tractor near Zatara checkpoint shortly after midnight and torched Muslih’s car at the entrance to Yasuf. Settlers also set fire to a car belonging to Ahmad Abdul-Aziz Eid in Kifl Haris village in the Salfit district overnight, locals told Ma’an.
The incidents came just 24 hours after a group of extremist settlers attacked an army base in the northern West Bank and sabotaged vehicles there. Settlers also broke into a closed military zone along the Jordanian border and staged a protest on Monday night. For the most part, “price tag” attacks target Palestinians although there has been a growing number of attacks inside Israel in recent months following an arson at a mosque in a Bedouin village in Galilee in September, which sparked international condemnation. Israeli officials have been quick to condemn such attacks but the perpetrators are very rarely arrested.
