A new phenomenon has made its appearance in the Galilee city of Tzfat: Arabs buying heavily into one of the four holiest cities in the country (the others are Jerusalem, Hevron, and Tiberias). Tzfat Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu told Arutz-7 today:
\"There have been just too many people coming to me lately with a similar problem, which goes something like this: They wish to sell their apartment, worth for example $150,000, and then an Arab comes to them with an attache case containing $170,000 or $180,000, wishing to buy. It is of course very hard for them to withstand the temptation - yet many of them do, and I am very admirable of them for this. I explain that selling to the Arab is a clear prohibition in the Torah, much worse than eating pig… In addition, this ruling is very logical: Jews and Arabs lived here very pleasantly together [in the 1920\'s] - yet this did not stop the Arabs from slaughtering their Jewish neighbors in 1929 [as they did in Hevron and elsewhere], attempting the same in 1948, and even more recently last Tishrei [October]. These are the facts. No one is attempting to stop the Arabs from living with dignity - but why must it be [in the middle of a Jewish town]?\"
Rabbi Eliyahu accused the government leaders of ignoring the question of \"where all these hundreds of thousands of dollars are coming from. Maybe the money is coming from Saudi Arabia, or [other Arab elements], who thus buy themselves great influence among the residents here. We cannot close our eyes to this! I would also note that the number of Arab judges in the Galilee has increased by 400% in the past ten years. And this is not the only example… We are not afraid; we know that in the end we will overcome this phenomenon. But why are we making it harder for ourselves?\"
\"There have been just too many people coming to me lately with a similar problem, which goes something like this: They wish to sell their apartment, worth for example $150,000, and then an Arab comes to them with an attache case containing $170,000 or $180,000, wishing to buy. It is of course very hard for them to withstand the temptation - yet many of them do, and I am very admirable of them for this. I explain that selling to the Arab is a clear prohibition in the Torah, much worse than eating pig… In addition, this ruling is very logical: Jews and Arabs lived here very pleasantly together [in the 1920\'s] - yet this did not stop the Arabs from slaughtering their Jewish neighbors in 1929 [as they did in Hevron and elsewhere], attempting the same in 1948, and even more recently last Tishrei [October]. These are the facts. No one is attempting to stop the Arabs from living with dignity - but why must it be [in the middle of a Jewish town]?\"
Rabbi Eliyahu accused the government leaders of ignoring the question of \"where all these hundreds of thousands of dollars are coming from. Maybe the money is coming from Saudi Arabia, or [other Arab elements], who thus buy themselves great influence among the residents here. We cannot close our eyes to this! I would also note that the number of Arab judges in the Galilee has increased by 400% in the past ten years. And this is not the only example… We are not afraid; we know that in the end we will overcome this phenomenon. But why are we making it harder for ourselves?\"