Israel – Vandals torched a mosque in an Arab village in northern Israel early Monday, setting off protests and clashes with police. Graffiti spray-painted on the mosque’s walls suggested Jewish radicals were involved.
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About 200 residents of the village of Tuba-Zangria, Arab citizens of Israel, marched to a major intersection nearby with the intention of blocking the road in protest, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Some of the demonstrators set tires on fire and threw stones at police officers, who dispersed the crowd with tear gas, Rosenfeld said. No one was injured.
Police were mobilized in the area to prevent further disturbances and were meeting with village leaders in an effort to defuse tensions, he added. No unrest was reported inside the village.
Rosenfeld said a carpet was burned inside the mosque and interior walls were damaged. Copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, were also burned, Israeli media reported.
Rosenfeld said the words “price tag” were spray painted on the building — reference to a settler practice of attacking Palestinians and their property in retaliation for Palestinian attacks and government operations against settlements.
Several weeks ago the government destroyed unauthorized structures in an unauthorized Jewish settlement outpost in the West Bank, and the operation that was followed immediately by another mosque torching.
Army Radio reported that the family name of a settler and his infant son killed last week in a car crash near the West Bank town of Hebron was also scrawled on a wall. Israeli police have said Palestinian rock-throwers struck the man in the head, causing him to lose control of the car.
Rosenfeld said security was heightened across northern Israel following the attack. A large concentration of Israeli Arabs lives in northern Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the mosque attack, and ordered the Shin Bet internal security agency to act quickly to locate the assailants. A text message from his office said he “was fuming when he saw the pictures” and said the attack “ran counter to the values of the state of Israel.”
Most “price tag” actions are carried out in the West Bank, and attacks on mosques inside Israel are more rare. This particular village is near Safed, where a rabbi urged followers last year not to rent or sell homes to Arabs, who account for one-fifth of Israel’s population of some 7.6 million.
Thats a terrible thing to do. There is no justification for this. It ain’t gonna help anything.
please provide evidence there is a Jewish culprit behind “price tag” so far in a country with more cameras than a hollywood movie set theres never been any video released of Jews carrying out these attacks. any Falsistinian Arab can write price tag on there mosque while they burn it. so wheres the proof?
These are not “vandals”. These are terrorists.
if it was done by settlers they need to be treated as any other terrorists
how long before we see suicide bombers by settlers?
Oh no! This isn’t going to help matters any! What were they thinking?!
The mosque may have meant nothing to the vandals… but it probably meant everything to the worshippers who go there!
Just wait: they’ll try to burn 3 times as many synagogues now because of this! When’s the craziness gonna end?!
As a prior poster correctly noted, a mosque has the same “kedushah” to a muslim as a syngagoue does to jews and these kind of terrorist acts by jewish settlers (as appears to be the case) will only trigger a new round of violence against jewish property and individuals.
As a previous comment stated, how do we know it was Jews who did this. We are assuming it because the Arabs said so.
As far as I am concerned, unless you can prove that it was Jews, it is more likely that it was torched by them (Muslim agitators), to put Jews in a bad light.
Use your heads to think critically.
we forget far too easily what they did to us. does no one see that this is in retaliation for the murder of the father and ONE YEAR OLD SON murdered by palestinians? if this was a german government building in the 30’s, i doubt any of you would be calling those who burned it terrorists.