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Chief Rabbi on mosque arson: This is how the Holocaust began
by Ma'an News
17 December 2009
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BETHLEHEM – Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger on Monday visited the West Bank village of Yasuf, following an arson attack against the local mosque, allegedly started by settlers, according to Israeli media on Monday.

Escorted into Yasuf by the Israeli military and Palestinian police, Metzger said “I came here to express my revulsion at this wretched act of burning a place holy to the Muslim people.”

“This is how the Holocaust began, the tragedy of the Jewish people of Europe,” the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported.

On Friday, following the attack, the Israeli settlement of Tekoa’s Chief Rabbi Menachem Froman condemned his fellow settlers for allegedly causing the arson.

“This is just insanity, blasphemy, an insult to Judaism before Islam”, Rabbi Froman told Ma'an over the phone.

“What [these] settlers did does not represent the settlers, nor Jews,” he added.

The rabbi vowed that a group of settlers, including himself, would help the Palestinian village rebuild its mosque as penitence for “the crime that was committed by the settlers”.

Israel’s chief Sephardic rabbi, Shlomo Amar, will issue his own denunciation on Sunday, Froman said. Amar had intended to condemn the arson on Friday, but was apparently unable to do so by sundown, the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, he added.

Froman, however, asked that his deep regret be expressed to Palestinian society for what happened. The Jewish religion prohibits attacks on religious sites, he said.

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* This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) with permission from Ma’an News.

Source: Ma’an News, 14 December 2009, www.maannews.net
Copyright permission is granted for publication.
 
 
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Other articles in this edition
Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem a real threat to peace by Yudith Oppenheimer
Religious dialogue in the service of citizenship by Rev Dr & Canon Trond Bakkevig
I am a Zionist and therefore I am pro-peace: Reflections after J Street’s first national conference by Moriel Rothman
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