Comments (0)Hamas Marks Anniversary, Vows to Hold Shalit
December 15, 2009Jerusalem
JTA Wire Service
A captive Israeli soldier will not be freed until Israel releases hundreds of Palestinians from its jails, Hamas said.
“These prisoners are a surety which we must redeem,” Hamas wrote in an official statement Monday that marked the 22nd anniversary of its founding. “We will not give up on them, no matter how long it takes. That is what we swore and that is our obligation, and we will not give up until every last prisoner is freed from the prisons of the occupation.”
Gilad Shalit has been held in Gaza by Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls the strip, for more than three years. Negotiations reportedly are at a standstill over Israel’s rejection of a few of the more than 450 prisoners Hamas has requested to be released.
Also in the statement, Hamas called for reconciliation with Fatah, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and said it believed in “resistance” to wrest land from Israel’s control.
Meanwhile, during a meeting Sunday in Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly told Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Maashal that Hamas should hold off on the prisoner exchange until it gets a higher number of prisoners released.
Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters attended a rally Monday in downtown Gaza City for the group’s anniversary.
“Those that plotted Operation Cast Lead did not imagine that we would mark the anniversary of Hamas’ establishment in such a large event,” Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said at the rally, referring to Israel’s military operation last winter aimed at stopping rocket fire in southern Israel. “Those that planned the war, and executed it, when they bombed Gaza and killed thousands, did not imagine that such a day would come in the Gaza Strip.”
Haniyeh added that “Hamas has not fallen despite the war, the Zionist enemy leaders are the ones that fell. Hamas has continued to grow and gain strength despite all the hardship it has suffered, all the arrests, the expulsions and the assassinations.”
Chief Rabbi Visits Vandalized Mosque
An Israeli chief rabbi visited the West Bank village where a mosque was vandalized.
Rabbi Yona Metzger visited the village of Yasuf on Monday under the protection of the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian police. Palestinian protesters hit Metzger, the chief Ashkenazi rabbi, with rocks as he left the village.
“I came here to express my revulsion at this wretched act of burning a place holy to the Muslim people,” Metzger said, Ha’aretz reported. “This is how the Holocaust began, the tragedy of the Jewish people of Europe.”
Vandals assumed to be extremist settlers raided a mosque in the village of Yasuf before dawn Dec. 11, burning furniture, prayer rugs and holy texts and defacing the mosque’s walls, according to reports. 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.
Metzger’s visit came a day after a delegation of rabbis and Israelis from the West Bank tried to enter the village to help refurbish the mosque and to deliver copies of the Koran to replace the Muslim holy books burned in the attack. The group from Gush Etzion, which is south of Jerusalem, was detained at a checkpoint, where they met with village elders, according to reports.
Also Monday, village residents threw rocks at Israeli army patrols.
Meanwhile, Jewish organizations condemned the attack over the weekend.
“This hate crime has correctly been condemned by the full political and religious spectrum of Israeli society,” said Simon Wiesenthal Center founder and dean Rabbi Marvin Hier, and associate dean Abraham Cooper, in a statement. “This ugly act violates the precepts of Judaism and the people of Israel’s commitment to freedom of religion for all.”
“We condemn the reported acts of vandalism, in which Israelis are alleged to have entered a mosque and set fire to its carpet, destroyed holy objects and wrote hateful graffiti messages on the walls,” Stephen Savitsky and Rabbi Steven Weil, president and executive vice president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, said in a statement. “There is no justification for such actions.”
“Jewish synagogues and holy sites, in Israel and across the globe, have been similarly vandalized and desecrated over the course of history and, thus, Jews should know very well that such actions are beyond the pale,” the OU statement continued.
The Israel office of the Anti-Defamation League also condemned the attack, saying it was “horrified and outraged by the acts of vandalism ... that are believed to have been perpetrated by Jewish extremists. As Jews, we know all too well what it is like to have our houses of worship targeted by violence and hate.”
“That Jewish extremists may have used such despicable methods to express political opposition is beyond the pale. We join with Israel’s political, military and religious leadership in condemning this disgraceful assault.”
Hamas Balks at Miss Palestine Contest
A Miss Palestine contest scheduled for later this month has drawn the ire of Hamas and other fundamentalist Islamic organizations.
Fifty-eight Palestinian women from the West Bank and from inside Israel will compete in the Dec. 26 contest, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported. Women from Gaza are unable to participate due to Palestinian political discord and Israel’s blockade of the territory.
Two hundred women aged 18-22 vied to be contestants.
The Trip Fashion Company is sponsoring the event, which will feature each of the contestants modeling four dresses—but not swimsuits, in deference to Muslim sensibilities, Ma’an reported. Judging will be on education, personality and beauty.
Some of the judges will come from the Palestinian Authority’s information and culture ministries, according to the news service.
In a statement, Hamas’ Culture Ministry in Gaza said the contest “is completely contradicting with the Palestinian values and traditions” and violates the current Palestinian status that is under the Israeli military occupation.
“Showing beautiful girls in front of the mass media and the audience while our people in Gaza are suffering and paying a high price due to the occupation is rejected and is considered as a blind imitation of the Western traditions,” the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry called on contest advisers to “stop it immediately.”
The winner will receive a 10-day trip to Turkey and 10,000 Israeli shekels—about $2,650.
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.