“In Blood and Fire We Will Redeem Sheikh al-Aqsa!”: Sheikh Raed Salah and His Endless Struggle Against Israel - by Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Shaul Bartal

Sheikh Raed Salah was recently sentenced to 28 months in prison for encouraging and supporting terror attacks by his followers, including the attack at the Temple Mount on July 14, 2017, that killed police officers Haiel Sitawe and Kamil Shnaan. Though Salah has been behind bars for security offenses on multiple occasions, legal verdicts have never prevented him or his illegal Northern Branch from continuing to incite Israeli Arabs against the country in which they live.

Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Shaul Bartal..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,496..
22 March '20..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/sheikh-raed-salah-and-his-endless-struggle-against-israel/

In his life story and the attitudes he espouses, Sheikh Raed Salah embodies the radicalization of Muslims in Israel.

Salah (literally “honest pioneer”) was born in the town of Umm al-Fahm in 1954. His father and two brothers served as officers in the Israel Police. After the 1967 Six-Day War, young Israeli Arab Muslims were able to attend religious institutions in the West Bank that were under the sway of the Muslim Brotherhood. Salah, along with Kamel Khatib, became the original nucleus of the Islamic cell at Hebron College (now Hebron University), which eventually turned pro-Hamas. Another member of that cell was Salah Aruri, founder of Hamas’s military wing and now deputy head of its political bureau.

Salah was arrested for the first time in 1981 for joining the Asrat al-Jihad (Family of Jihad) organization, which was set up by Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, the founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel. Members of this group, including Khatib, were arrested for belonging to an illegal organization, then freed in the 1985 Jibril Deal. After their release, some members of the Islamic Movement appeared to renounce their support for terror and focus instead on the political sphere.

Salah was elected Umm al-Fahm mayor and served from 1989 to 2001. During that period he began to formulate his worldview, which holds that Muslims in Israel must detach completely from governmental institutions and that the Islamic Movement must not take part in elections to the Knesset. That stance led to a division of the Islamic Movement into the Southern Branch, headed by Sheikh Darwish, and the more radical Northern Branch, led by Salah with Khatib as his deputy.

On June 24, 2003, Salah and members of his movement were served with an indictment that revealed the Northern Branch’s ties with Hamas, including use of their Israeli citizenship for purposes of fundraising and support for imprisoned Hamas terrorists and their families. Since the organizational split, and especially since stepping down as mayor of Umm al-Fahm, Salah has frequently come out in favor of anti-Israeli terror and violence.

Salah’s speeches are laced with antisemitism, and for that reason he was barred from entering Britain in 2012 (though he was granted entry after an appeal). His message contains several consistent themes: the Jews aim to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque, and Muslims are duty-bound to defend it by any means necessary; the struggle between Jews and Muslims is an eternal one that appears in the Qur’an; the Palestinian “nakba” is comparable to the Jewish Holocaust; and “martyrs” are praiseworthy and will only multiply on the path of jihad until victory. In the sheikh’s view, the entire expanse of the Temple Mount, which comprises 36 acres, is sacred and belongs solely to Muslims—not only the al-Aqsa Mosque area. The Jewish enemy, Salah claims, is deliberately planning a gradual takeover of the site, first by taking control of the gates to the mosque and then by building a Jewish temple in place of the “radiant Dome of the Rock.” He asserted as much during a conference he held for members of the Masatab al-Ilm (“Benches of Learning”) organization on November 27, 2013. Masatab al-Ilm eventually spawned the Murabitun and the Murabitat (the “Steadfast Ones,” in their male and female forms), groups that were themselves declared illegal in September 2015.

Israel's Islamic movement, the far more dangerous enemy within

...Is it reasonable and sensible to permit the northern branch of the Islamic Movement to function when their activities are obviously aimed at the destruction of Israel?

Moshe Arens..
Haaretz..
03 June '14..

Israel is not short of enemies – Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, terrorist gangs in Sinai, assorted terrorist groups near the border on the Golan Heights since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, and farther afield the atomic ayatollahs in Iran. But far more dangerous, there is an enemy within – the northern branch of the Islamic Movement headed by Raed Salah from the Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm in Wadi Ara.

The northern branch of the Islamic Movement is for years actively engaged in subversive activity aimed at destroying the State of Israel and establishing in its place an Islamic State. This is their openly declared aim and, believe it or not, they are making progress toward achieving that aim. Progress, toward achieving what to many might seem an impossible mission, is being made by gradually mobilizing the Muslim population in Israel in an anti-Israeli crusade. By preaching to them that Israel is their enemy, inciting them to violence against Israel, and fighting tooth and nail against any move toward integration by Israel’s Arab citizens into Israeli society.

If you don’t believe it just take a look at the Bedouin population in the Negev. Over 30 years ago the Bedouin Negev did not identify with the Palestinian national movement, they were friendly to Israel, many of their young men volunteered for service in the IDF and, although Muslim, were not particularly observant and did not see themselves as part of an Islamic army waging war against Israel.

That was before the Islamic Movement began its activity among the Negev Bedouin. Since then they have been sending religious emissaries from the north to the Bedouin in the Negev, teachers from the north have infiltrated the Bedouin school system in the Negev, and the Islamic Movement has been regularly organizing demonstrations and riots in the Negev. They are busy spreading anti-Israel propaganda. Their message to the Bedouin Negev is that they are Palestinians, that Israel is their enemy, and that they are not allowed to enlist in the IDF, the army of their enemy. In recent years this effort is being spearheaded by the northern branch of the Islamic Movement.

Once a year the northern branch holds a mass anti-Israel propaganda festival in Umm al-Fahm, under the slogan “The Al Aqsa mosque is in danger.” There tens of thousands of Israeli Muslims are being incited to believe that Israel is planning the destruction of the Al Aqsa mosque, and are urged to be prepared to give their lives to prevent this “abomination.”

Medad - More Disinventivity Reported

Yisrael Medad..
My Right Word..
05 May '12..





Reported

Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the Islamic movement in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 [i.e., Israel]...During an exclusive interview with the PIC on Saturday, Sheikh Salah asserted that the occupation is trying hard to judaize Jerusalem and build the alleged temple...

"Alleged"?

Maybe he is an alleged sheikh?

And to think the Romans went to all that trouble and built an arch showing them removing appurtenances from the alleged Temple they destroyed.

Link: http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2012/05/more-disinventivity.html

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Writing Jews out of Jerusalem's history

The whipping up of unrest around the Temple Mount is part of an insidious campaign to cast Jewish people as modern interlopers

Jeremy Sharon
guardian.co.uk
01 November 09

The Temple Mount, or al-Haram al-Sharif to Muslims, must rank as one of the most sensitive religious sites in the world. The sporadic riots of the past month at the site are therefore particularly alarming, as such incidents have the potential to ignite much wider unrest.

For that reason, it would seem to be in everyone's interest to reduce as far as possible tensions and friction at the Temple Mount to an absolute minimum. But the statements and actions of a number of Muslim clerics based in Israel, Palestinian politicians and even foreign governments have only inflamed and exacerbated an already explosive situation.

Of even greater concern is the underlying sentiment behind the recent riots, protests, declarations and denunciations. Whether or not "Jewish extremists" went up to the Temple Mount (and they did not) and irrespective of whether or not they planned to, the violent and vitriolic response to these rumours is indicative of a fundamental lack of tolerance for the religious beliefs of the Jewish people.

And the incitement has been widespread, coming from both political and religious sectors. The Islamic Movement in Israel, in particular, has made strenuous efforts to inform its flock that Jewish groups were planning to "desecrate", "storm" or otherwise "endanger" the al-Aqsa mosque and arranged buses for worshippers to come and "protect" the site.

Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Islamic Movement's northern branch and one of the principal provocateurs, declared to a crowd, "We'll liberate al-Aqsa with blood and fire" and stated that Israel was seeking to build a synagogue on the al-Aqsa mosque. Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad told a meeting of foreign ambassadors that the riots were due to "an assault by extremist religious settlers on the Temple Mount compound". The Syrian foreign ministry decided to stir the pot too, stating "[Damascus] believes the Israeli security forces' invasion of al-Aqsa was part of Israel's scheme to Judaise Jerusalem and destroy the mosque."

Not one shred of evidence has been presented to back up any of these accusations, the reason being that there simply is none.

Such baseless incitement over one of the most sensitive places of worship in the world is incredibly irresponsible. The destabilising effect of this agitation undermines whatever small amount of trust there may be between Israeli and Palestinian interlocutors. Additionally, it further inflames wider Arab and Muslim opinion, which is similarly deleterious to the project of tolerance and coexistence in the region. Inventing wild myths about Jewish designs on Muslim holy places can only harm any prospects for the normalisation of ties between Israel and its Arab and Muslim neighbours.

Aside from the agitation is the disturbing notion that Jews seeking to visit, or even pray at, their holiest place of worship (the Temple Mount and not merely the Western Wall) should be seen as provocation, desecration or in any other way unacceptable. Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are an indelible part of the Jewish national consciousness. The very term for the movement to re-establish the Jewish national home, Zionism, derives from a synonym for Jerusalem, Zion. Every day, three times a day, Jews all over the world turn towards Jerusalem and pray for it to be restored to its former glory; they have done so for nearly 2,000 years. That Jews are actually banned by the Israeli government from praying on the Temple Mount is a quite astounding concession to the demands of the Islamic waqf that administers it.

But preventing Jews from praying at the Temple Mount is not the only goal. A far more insidious campaign is afoot, one that rewrites history by arguing that there never was any Jewish temple at the site, thereby seeking to delegitimise any connection that Israel and the Jewish people may have to it, and by extension, the land as a whole. In a region in thrall to an epidemic of conspiracy theories, the irrefutable archaeological and historical evidence attesting to the Second Temple alone is sadly deemed insufficient.

The failure to acknowledge the connection the Jewish people have to Jerusalem is symptomatic of a problem which goes to the heart of the political conflict; that the Palestinian body politic has never reconciled itself to the fact that the Jewish people have deep-rooted historical ties to the land and are not simply foreign invaders who wandered in a few decades ago.

However politically expedient, Palestinian and Muslim leaders must desist from the incitement against Israel and the delegitimisation of the Jewish people's connection to the land, if there is ever to be any political accommodation between the two sides. If the Palestinian public never appreciates the depth of feeling Jews have for their holy places and their historical homeland, then the state of Israel, within any borders, will forever be illegitimate in the eyes of the Palestinians and will remain a target for eventual removal. Such an attitude poses a tremendous obstacle to the future prospects of peace between the two peoples.
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Playing With Matches On the Temple Mount

Honest Reporting/Backspin
1 November 09

The Palestinians and the MSM like to describe the Temple Mount as a tinderbox and Israeli actions could spark a new intifada or regional conflict. Two weekend Israeli media reports knock holes in that conventional wisdom.

First there's Haaretz, which reports that Fatah has been helping organize the latest violence at the Jerusalem holy site:

As is the case with his fellow Fatah activists, it's doubtful that [Hatem] Abdel Qader really wants the escalation on the mount to spark a conflagration throughout the territories. Their main intention seems to be to make their presence felt, to let off steam and then to return to routine in the compound. But the political environment, and especially the media, pushes them to make very aggressive statements against Israel, including accusations of attempts to damage the Al-Aqsa Mosque, even though nothing has changed on the ground at the Temple Mount in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reports that Waqf officials who oversee the Temple Mount are quietly pleased that Israel finally clamped down on Qader and Sheikh Raed Salah. As Vered Levine argued two years ago, Salah's another troublemaker whose media fame is disproportionate to the constituency he actually represents.

So if another "the second Al-Aqsa intifada" breaks out, just remember the Palestinians and the big media were playing with the matches beforehand.

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