“Just before the lynching, MK Ofer Cassif stood there and inflamed the Arabs,” wrote B’Tzalmo in an open letter to Israel’s Attorney General.
By World Israel News Staff
Zionist NGO B’Tzalmo is urging Israel’s attorney general to launch an investigation against an MK who reportedly egged on Arab rioters moments before they attacked Jews.
MK Ofer Kassif, a member of the anti-Zionist Arab Joint List party, was present at the tense scene outside of the tomb of the biblical prophet Samuel in Jerusalem.
Jewish worshippers visiting the site had attracted the attention of local Arabs, who objected to two of the visitors holding Israeli flags.
An Arab mob holding Palestinian flags is shown rushing the two Jewish men, knocking one of them to the ground. One of the victims was brutally beaten until he was extracted from the fray by Border Police.
“Just before the lynching, MK Ofer Cassif stood there and inflamed the Arabs and said to them: ‘We will continue the fight against the occupation and against all these dirty people.’ Immediately after his words, the crowd began rioting against the Jews,” B’Tzalmo wrote in an open letter to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.
“There is no doubt that his words about these ‘dirty’ Jews constitute racism.”
The organization urged that a probe immediately be launched against Cassif for “inciting violence and racism that led to physical harm against Jews.”
Cassif is already under investigation for a separate incident in which he was caught on video striking a police officer, then falsely accusing the cop of beating him.
Earlier in August, Cassif visited hunger-striking Islamic Jihad prisoner Khalil Awawdeh, who is currently hospitalized in Israel.
In a video Cassif posted to his social media accounts, he referred to Awawdeh’s arrest as “kidnapping” by the Israeli government and said that administrative detention is a “draconian tool of repression” that is used by “tyrannical regimes.”
He demanded that Awawdeh, who is a senior member of the Islamic Jihad terror group, should be “released immediately.”