Muslims convening at a Jaffa mosque on Sunday were greeted with graffiti scrawled on the building stating "Muhammad is a pig" and "Death to Arabs." The head of Jaffa's Islamic Movement blamed residents of Judea and Samaria for the attack.
Other graffiti included "Kahane was right", referring to the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, an American-born Rabbi and Knesset member who was a vocal proponent of Jewish sovereignty and strength in Israel prior to his murder by an Arab in 1990.
"No peace without the House of Peace," was also written, a seeming allusion to Beit HaShalom, the "Peace House" purchased by a wealthy American Jew for use by the Hebron Jewish community, which was forcibly emptied of Jewish residents two weeks ago at the behest of Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
In 2005, a severed pig head was thrown into the courtyard of a Jaffa mosque on the border with Tel Aviv following the expulsion of the Jewish population from Gush Katif. The convicted perpetrator, Shimon Ben Haim, was sentenced to nine months in jail after admitting to throwing the kaffiyah-wrapped head, upon which was written "Prophet Muhammad", in the courtyard of the Hassan Bek Mosque in Jaffa.
Jaffa is mentioned four times in the Torah, as one of the cities given to the Tribe of Dan (Book of Joshua 19:46), as port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon for Solomon's Temple (2 Chronicles 2:16, Book of Ezra 3:7), and as the port from where the prophet Jonah embarked for Tarshish (Book of Jonah 1:3).
Jaffa was also a Seleucid-Greek port until it was taken over by the Maccabean rebels. In the Roman suppression of the Jewish Revolt, Jaffa was captured and burned by Cestius Gallus. The Roman Jewish historian Josephus writes that 8,000 of its Jewish inhabitants were massacred.