JERUSALEM: Dozens of cars in an Israeli Arab village were vandalized overnight, police said on Tuesday, with slogans sprayed on a mosque indicating the involvement of Jewish extremists.
The slogans “Jews awaken” and “Stop assimilating” were scrawled on a mosque and another building in Jish, a small village in the Galilee just south of Israel’s border with Lebanon.
Police said they were investigating the incident, which they condemned along with “all nationalistic hate crimes.”
ww council head Elias Elias said the tires of more than 150 cars were punctured.
He said it was not the first time the mixed Muslim and Christian village had been targeted and asked what the reaction would have been if the place of worship defiled had not been a mosque.
“I can only imagine what would happen if things like this would have been sprayed on a synagogue in the US or Europe,” he said. “The whole world would be in an uproar.”
The incident bore the hallmark of a “price tag” attack — a euphemism for Jewish nationalist-motivated hate crimes targeting Palestinians and Arab Israelis and their property, as well as Muslim and Christian holy sites.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “firmly condemned” the Jish vandalism and slogans, vowing to “find the outlaws and bring them to justice.
“We won’t tolerate any attacks on our citizens,” he said in a statement.
The head of the Arab-led Joint List, Ayman Odeh, condemned the attack and blamed the prime minister’s rhetoric for stoking such hatred.
“For weeks Netanyahu is sending us one message — you’re not wanted,” Odeh said of Israel’s Arab minority.
“Today we see the results.”
Netanyahu has been accused of using anti-Arab rhetoric ahead of Israel’s March 2 election, the country’s third vote in a year.
Separately, thousands of Palestinians rallied in the West Bank to reject President Donald Trump’s Mideast initiative and to express support for the Palestinian leadership as it tries to gain support at the UN for a resolution opposing the plan.
Protesters packed Al-Manara Square in Ramallah, the West Bank headquarters of the Palestinian
Authority.
They waved Palestinian flags and held banners condemning the plan.
An English-language banner read “Trump is part of the problem not the solution,” while another condemned the “theft of the century.” Arab officials and media refer to the plan sarcastically as the “deal of the century.”
“All Palestinian people and all the factions, national and Islamic, are standing behind President Mahmoud Abbas,” Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh told
the crowd.
“All the streets are full,” he said. “This is the Palestinian response.”
Abbas has tried to rally international support against the Trump plan, with limited success.
The Arab League unanimously sided with the Palestinians against the plan.
