The Muslims in and around Israel showed the famous Muslim respect for other religions, in only the way they can.
First, Syria has moved thousands of soldiers to its border with Lebanon. So it’s no surprise that the IDF scrambled jets as an unidentified aircraft approached Israel’s northern border.
Inside Israel, we had Arab “youths” racing their cars on the empty highways. Israel effectively shuts down on Yom Kippur, except in the Muslim areas. When the police came to stop the “youths” from racing, they did what Arab “youths” in and around Israel always do when confronted with Israeli authority figures: Threw stones.
Some 400 Arab-Israeli youngsters on Wednesday hurled stones at police officers who were trying to prevent them from racing their cars along Route 65 in Wadi Ara, which was empty due to Yom Kippur. Four officers were lightly injured in the incident, and one Arab was arrested.
Next, we have the riot in Acre, a mixed Muslim and Jewish city, where a Muslim man drove his taxi into the Jewish section of town. There are conflicting reports:
Police say the disturbances were sparked deliberately on Wednesday evening when an Arab driver, Tawfik Jamal – a resident of Acre’s Old City – made his way to the predominantly Jewish Ben-Gurion neighborhood in the eastern part of the city, blasting loud music from his vehicle as a provocation on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.
Speaking to Channel 2 News, Jamal denied he had intended to provoke local residents, saying he had driven with his 18-year-old son and the son’s 20-year-old friend carefully and quietly from the Old City to the Ben-Gurion neighborhood, three kilometers away, to pick up his daughter from her fiancé’s home.
But police dismissed Jamal’s claims.
“This was a provocation. An Arab driver arrived in a Jewish neighborhood on Yom Kippur with blaring music, and refused to leave when asked to by local residents. We believe he was intoxicated. This was a deliberate act,” Galilee Police spokesman Ch.-Supt. Eran Shaked said.
The verbal confrontation between Jamal and the local residents quickly deteriorated into violence, as rocks and bottles were thrown at Jamal’s vehicle.
According to Jamal, he and his two passengers fled the car. The three were taken to hospital where they were treated for light injuries and released.
In the meantime, police said, “False rumors that Arabs were seriously harmed or killed by Jews reached the Old City, and caused a far more serious and organized incident in Acre.”
Responding to the rumors, hundreds of Arabs set out from the Old City toward the Ben-Gurion neighborhood, walking down a main road, smashing store windows and cars along the way. Reports said the mob shouted “Kill the Jews,” “Allahu Akbar,” and “If you come out of your homes, you will die.”
Lovely. Living together in one binational state—isn’t that what the Palestinians are now threatening? It will work so well, too. Just look how well it worked on the holiest day of the Jewish year.
But you keep telling us about that wonderful Muslim respect for other religions. Especially on the heels of news that Iran will be passing a law making apostasy a capital crime. I wonder how Ahmadinejad will duck that question next time he is interviewed by fawning American reporters.
What concerns me is not just Palestinians calling for a single bi-national state, but deluded Western liberal anti-Zionists calling for a single bi-national state.
I’m a liberal, but there is no question in my mind that anti-Zionism, with the accompanying anti-Semitism, is growing as a movement on the left and this movement can only result in the alienation of Jewish people from the progressive movement because the great majority of Jews, and obviously the Knesset, will never submit to the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state.
Furthermore, of course, how likely is it that a single bi-national state would end up being a secular democracy with equal rights for all? Not bloody likely. What’s far more likely is that it would end up being, like all the other Arab states, some form of authoritarian dictatorship and, perhaps, a theocratic one, at that.
Idiots.
It’s interesting how the ‘false rumors’ only flow one way.
Not really. They’ve always flowed against the Jews. Every single pogrom in Europe was started by false rumors about Jews.
Well poisoning and the blood libel are two examples of continually recurring false rumors about Jews, going back many centuries. The Arabs have revived both in modern guises in their propaganda campaign against Israel and the Jews. They’ve even extended the blood libel to Purim, so that they write that Jews use the blood of gentiles in making hamentaschen, not just Pesach matzoh.