Jewish Temple Mount activists are demanding that Likud Knesset Members order the removal of huge posters of Muslim and Hamas anti-Israel leaders from the Temple Mount compound. The display violates the status quo on the holy site and is offensive to sensitivities of Jewish worshipers, said Our Temple Mount activists.
The posters includes pictures of Islamic Movement leader Raad Salah and Hamas leader Mohammed Abu Tir, the red-bearded politician whom Israel has banned from Jerusalem several times. Salah recently was convicted for assaulting and spitting on a policeman during a Temple Mount protest. He was sentenced to nine months in prison, but an appeals court reduced the time in jail to five months.
The Muslim Waqf, the Islamic trust that is the Muslim authority at the holy site, is “exploiting the days of [the Muslim holy month of] Ramadan to desecrate the Temple Mount while no one dares open his mouth,” the Jewish activists charged.
Salah is former mayor of the Arab city of Umm el Fahm, located several miles east of Hadera and the Mediterranean Coast, and has been arrested several times for violent demonstrations at the Temple Mount.
He has expanded his activities to raise millions of dollars for the Hamas terrorist organization and has revealed a strategy to work for a global movement against Jewish association with the Temple Mount and to “expose the false claims of the Zionist discourse.”
Salah repeatedly has declared in sermons that Jews have fabricated their connection with the Western Wall, which he claims is part of the Al Aksa mosque.
Three years ago, he repeated the medieval libel that Jews use children’s blood to bake bread. "We have never allowed ourselves to knead the bread that breaks the fast in the holy month of Ramadan with children's blood," he said. "Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the [Jewish] holy bread."
More recently, Salah joined IHH Turkish terror activists who clashed with Navy commandos on the Mavi Marmara ship on May 31 when it tired to continue on course to Hamas-controlled Gaza and break Israel’s sovereignty over the coastal waters. The ship was led to the Ashdod port, and Salah is waiting trial on his involvement in the flotilla clash and on-board incitement encouraging violence against the Navy soldiers.