Vandals sacked a West Bank mosque and left graffiti on its walls.
The vandals raided the mosque before dawn on Friday, burning furniture, prayer rugs and holy texts and defacing the mosque’s walls, Ha’aretz reported.
One graffiti read “Price tag - greetings from Effi.” Effi is a Hebrew name and “price tag” refers to the strategy extremist settlers have adopted to exact a “price” in attacks on Palestinians in retribution for settlement freezes.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government recently announced the launch of a 10-month settlement freeze with an eye toward accommodating the Obama administration’s attempts to revive peace talks.
Ehud Barak, the defense minister, slammed the attack. “This is an extremist act geared toward harming the government’s efforts to advance the political process for the sake of Israel’s future,” Ha’aretz quoted him as saying.
The Israeli army is investigating the incident.
Wothout retaining the moral high ground we are lost. This behavior is absolutely wrong and disgusting no matter who did it to whom. . Let's not forget how outraged we are when Jewish holy sites are desecrated. Do unto others as you would have them do to you, and that which you despise do not do to others. . Shamefull.
These zealots want to live in the Kingdom of Judah, not the State of Israel. To wax Isaiah, they are eroding our moral high ground and will eventually lead to all of our destruction... I really believe that.
For further discussion see Richard Silverstein, in Tikun Olam: "On This Day of Rededication of Holy Temple, Settlers Desecrate Palestinian Mosque."
[Excerpt] "Tonight is the first night of Hanukah. As Ori Nir so aptly points out below, it is ironic that at the beginning of this holiday in which Jews celebrate the rededication of their Holy Temple after years of defilement at the hands of the Greeks, settlers from the extremist Tapuah settlement torched and desecrated a Palestinian mosque (not the first either" . . . .
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/12/12/on-this-day-of-rededication-of-the-holy-temple-settlers-desecrate-palestinian-mosque/
More discussion: David Shulman's "Report on E J’lem arrests: ‘150 stand in the courtyard of the stolen house, double what we had last week’"
[Excerpt] "Early this morning, at Kafr Yasuf in the northern West Bank, settlers set fire to a mosque. They left some graffiti on the walls: "We will burn you all." Copies of the Koran were torn and torched, prayer-rugs burnt. Jews did this. It’s important to understand what this sentence means. Burning means something to us. No doubt the occupation system will protect the perpetrators; and even if, by some miracle, they’re pursued and arrested and, by a still greater miracle, brought to trial, you can depend upon the Israeli courts to set them free without punishment. It’s been that way for decades now. Soldiers, border police, probably plain-clothes intelligence agents too—they’re the ones beating my students, spraying us with gas, prodding us like cattle along the street; all this to protect the settler hooligans who have taken over these homes. These same soldiers and policemen routinely protect the settlers all over the territories. So I guess Hanukah doesn’t really count any more when it comes to freedom; or maybe it merely celebrates our freedom to lie to ourselves and to others, as Bibi does when he pretends he wants peace as he hurts and humiliates the Palestinians ever further. There’s no end to it, either, only deepening darkness, early winter of the soul. Suddenly I realize that we Israelis have never truly been free, despite what we say; for nature has a law: you cannot diminish another’s freedom without impairing or destroying your own. I hope a day will come when the Jews, too, will have the courage to be free." http://mondoweiss.net/2009/12/report-on-e-jlem-arrests-150-stand-in-the-courtyard-of-the-stolen-house-double-what-we-had-last-week.html
MK Michael Ben-Ari summed it up best:
"I have no tears left to cry after so many of my friends were murdered by the Arab enemy," Ben-Ari said. "I have no condemnations left after synagogues were burned in Gush Katif and Jewish graves were defiled in the Mount of Olives cemetery. Those who want us to erase the Jewish people should not expect us to sympathize with them."