Israel Incarcerates Inciting Islamic Leader

By: Atara Beck, World Israel News, AP and JNS

Radical Muslim leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, was sentenced to prison for incitement to violence and terror against Israel.

An Israeli court has sentenced Sheikh Raed Salah, a radical Islamic cleric, to 11 months in prison on Tuesday for incitement to violence and racism against Jews.

The Jerusalem District Court rejected Salah’s appeal of a previous sentencing, and he will begin to serve his sentence in November.

Salah, the head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, was sentenced for “incitement to violence” and “incitement for racism” he committed in a 2007 sermon, during which he called on the Muslim world to arise against Israel.

After his sentencing, Salah vowed to carry on with his fight “for Palestine and Jerusalem.”

While in court two weeks ago, the Muslim leader apparently continued with his fiery rhetoric when he shouted “In spirit and blood we will defend Al-Aqsa.”

Salah has recently called on Jordan to bar Jewish visitors from the Temple Mount and accused Israel of seeking to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque to “build an imaginary temple on its ruins,” relating to the two Jewish Temples that stood on the mountain top in antiquity.

The Islamic Movement in Israel, which has ideological ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Hamas terror group, has been blamed by Israeli leaders for stoking the incitement behind the recent wave of Palestinian terrorism.

As a result, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has supported a bill seeking to outlaw the northern branch of the Islamic Movement.

The sentencing Tuesday came amid a wave of  Palestinian violence that erupted, in part, over Palestinian rumors and lies that Israel was altering prayer arrangements on the Temple, which were spread in part by the Islamic Movement, under Salah’s leadership, and Salah himself often made that claim.

Salah, a former mayor of the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm in Israel, has had repeated run-ins with Israel and was previously imprisoned for funneling money to Hamas.