Israeli media is reporting that Israeli Muslim Brotherhood leader Raed Salah has been sentenced to eight months in prison Tuesday for inciting to violence in a 2007 speech. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post:
Raed Salah
March 4, 2014 REUTERS Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch, was sentenced to eight months in prison Tuesday for inciting to violence in a 2007 speech.
Salah, who also received three years’ probation starting after the prison term, told reporters after the hearing, ‘Blessed is God, I got off cheap.’
Salah was convicted in November 2013 for a sermon he gave at Jerusalem’s Wadi Joz neighborhood in 2007.
In the speech, Salah urged supporters to start a third intifada in order to ‘save Al-Aksa Mosque, free Jerusalem and end the occupation.’
Salah’s speech also attacked Jews: ‘They want to build their temple at a time when our blood is on their clothes, on their doorsteps, in their food and in their drinks. Our blood has passed from one ‘general terrorist’ to another ‘general terrorist’… We are not those who ate bread dipped in children’s blood.’
The GMBDW reported in November 20011 that Salah had been convicted by an Israeli court of incitement to violence in connection with the 2007 speech.
Raed Salah is the leader of the Northern branch of the Islamic Movement, essentially comprising the Israeli Muslim Brotherhood. He is noted for often alleging that Israel is conspiring to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. (The Al-Aqsa Mosque is often the subject of various Global Muslim Brotherhood conspiraciestheories involving alleged Israeli plots and plans to destroy the mosque.) In May 2003, Salah was arrested along with other Northern Islamic Movement officials on suspicion of transferring funds to Hamas under the pretense of humanitarian aid. He was released after two years under the terms of a plea bargain. In August 2007, Salah was indicted for “inciting racism and violence” for calling for a “third Intifada,” or uprising, to defend the Al-Aqsa mosque and in 2008 Israeli security forces raided the offices of the Islamic Movement in northern Israel accusing it of aiding Hamas. In 2009, Salah said that Israel had a ‘diabolical plan” to cause the Al–Aqsa Mosque to collapse “in a way that would appear as is happening as a result of natural causes, such an earthquake.” In January 2010, Salah was convicted of assaulting an Israeli policeman and participating in a violent demonstration. In April 2012, Mr Salah won an appeal against a deportation order issued by the UK where he had been residing on the basis that his presence “would not be conducive to the public good”. Mr.Salah had been arrested in 2011 after he was allowed to enter the country despite being banned on the basis of “virulent anti-Semitism”. In September of 2012, Mr. Salah predicted that Israel actions toward the Al-Aqsa Mosque will “speed up the demise of the Zionist entity” and deliver the West from “Global Zionism.” In March 2013, Mr Salah warned U.S. President Obama not to visit the Al-Aqsa mosque during his upcoming visit to Israel.
A BBC producer has described the anti-Semitic and extremist views of Mr. Salah and a MEMRI report also describes Mr. Salah’s history of extremism.
