by Nadav Shragai
There are plenty of signs that last week's shooting attack on the Temple Mount was part of a broader context of incitement by the outlawed Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement
The site of the terrorist shooting inside the Temple Mount compound
|Photo credit: Reuters
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Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel
Photo credit: Noam Rivkin-Fenton
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In September 2015, two months before it was outlawed, the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, based in Umm al-Fahm, held its last demonstration under the clarion call "Al-Aqsa is in danger."
The three murderers from the Jabarin clan who turned the Temple Mount into a bloody battlefield last week were at that demonstration. So was Alaa Ahmad Ziwad, who two months later steered his car into a crowd of civilians near Kibbutz Gan Shmuel.
That event was the last one orchestrated by Sheikh Raed Salah, the man behind the "Al-Aqsa is in danger" blood libel. At the protest, Salah shouted -- not for the first time -- that Muslims were ready to die, to shed blood and become shahids (martyrs) for the sake of Al-Aqsa mosque, which Israel was supposedly planning to destroy. The crowd gave a thunderous, rhythmic response: "In spirit and in blood we will redeem Al-Aqsa." Later, Hamas media outlets and websites disseminated an even more radicalized version of Salah's words, paired with a battle march as a soundtrack and hard-to-forget images of terrorists, terrorist attacks and terrorist attack victims. The message was as sharp as a knife and did the trick, prompting dozens of stabbers, car rammers and shooters to set out to kill Jews and die "for the sake of Al-Aqsa."
Many of the terrorists believed in the story originally outlined by the Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini early in the 20th century, which said the Zionists planned to demolish the Temple Mount mosques. Salah and his partners built on that story. Many of the terrorists had been exposed to horrifying cartoons of Jews wielding axes or burning torches against the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque or the drawings of bulldozers knocking down the Al-Aqsa compound and all its mosques. They also drank in false "information" like the fabrication about the man-made earthquakes that Israel was supposedly planning to set off around Al-Aqsa mosque as a way of bringing it down.
The media and mentality on which the Jabarins and other terrorists from the Umm al-Fahm area were raised -- no matter whether they were members of the Islamic Movement or the Islamic State -- put Al-Aqsa mosque being "under attack" at the center of the radical religious discourse. There was little room left over for facts. Visits to the Temple Mount by Jews were portrayed as "settlers attacking the Temple Mount" and "takeover and occupation." Police activity was described as activity by the "forces of evil." The fact that Israel restricts Jews' visits to the Temple Mount, stops Jews from praying there and takes care not to carry out any archaeological excavations underneath it was in no way relevant to them.
Salah and his cohort in Umm al-Fahm, along with their partners, took a similar approach on the issue of the status quo. They repeatedly reported that Israel intended to divide the Temple Mount between Jews and Muslims, and stuck to their baseless story that the Israeli government was planning to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. They described imaginary Israeli plots to burst out onto the Temple Mount from underneath, via secret tunnels, to take control of Islamic holy sites, and often illustrated the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa as a falling tear facing threatening soldiers and police officers.
In Umm al-Fahm, like in the Palestinian refugee camps and in West Bank cities, the awareness of Al-Aqsa being "in danger" did not exist only in the incitement of preachers at the mosques. Any self-respecting school or public institution covered its walls and doors with pictures of Al-Aqsa, often marked with threatening arrows and sometimes with snakes and fire-breathing dragons that bore the Star of David and threatened to annihilate the mosques.
For years, a well-oiled system of private transport bused operatives from the Morabiton and Morabitat groups to the Temple Mount from Umm al-Fahm and other places in the Triangle region and the Galilee where the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement had traction. The operatives received monthly salaries for their work on the Temple Mount: preventing Jews from visiting and harassing those who did come. A recent Israel Hayom report report revealed that the salaries were partly funded by Turkish and Qatari organizations.
Where Hamas and the Northern Branch meet
A week after the terrorist attack on the Temple Mount that left everyone shaken, the various branches of Israel's security establishment are adamant that the shooting had been locally organized, but that the same local organization -- and this is still under investigation -- might be part of a larger context. One sign of that is that one of the killers, Mohammed Jabarin, served as the muezzin of Al-Faruk mosque in Umm al-Fahm. That isn't one of the city's major mosques; it's a sort of a clan mosque associated with the Jabarins.
The mosque's doors were open to the Islamic Movement's Northern Branch, as well, and its leaders visited there. In 2010, senior members of the Northern Branch, including Salah himself, celebrated the Prophet Mohammed's birthday there. In 2012, Salah paid another visit, and in 2014 one of the leading intellectuals of the Northern Branch and the man who formerly headed the movement's Islamic Council for religious rulings, Raed Fathi, put in two appearances. It wouldn't be farfetched to assume that the Jabarins, including the three killers, took in at least something of the Northern Branch's ideology.
Does it really come as a surprise that the Northern Branch slid from incitement into terrorism? The Shin Bet security agency warned of that possibility before the organization was outlawed, and also that its then-open activity would move underground, and possibly turn into terrorism.
The writing was on the wall for months. Last December, the Shin Bet ferreted out a terrorist cell that included members with ties to the Northern Branch. The cell had been planning to attack soldiers at a number of places in the Negev desert -- Dimona, Arad, and at the entrance to the Israeli Air Force base at Nabatim -- to avenge the movement having been outlawed. Two Northern Branch operatives -- one from Qalansawe and Mehmad Mitzri from Beersheba -- planned the attack. Mitzri had previously belonged to the terrorist group Shahada Al-Aqsa and served 12 years in prison for planning a terrorist attack at a wedding venue in Herzliya. Mitzri has also been caught on film standing next to Salah.
The terrorist Masabah Abu Sabih of Silwan, known as the "elder brother of the [Hamas-linked] Shabab al-Aqsa" also had ties to the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement and gave lessons in religion on the Temple Mount. In October 2016, Sabih opened fire at a group of people waiting at a light train stop on French Hill in Jerusalem, killing two and wounding several others. Prior to that, he took part in riots and disturbances on the Temple Mount and even wrote some things that could have hinted his intentions: "Jerusalem is on the mouth of the volcano and is about to blow up. Jerusalem is beginning a revolution that is not a revolution of rocks alone."
Only a few years ago, security forces thwarted a combined terrorist shooting and abduction that had been conceived to attack Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount. Five residents of east Jerusalem planned an attack along very similar lines to the one that was carried out last Friday. It included shooting police officers at the gates to the Temple Mount, as well as the murder of Jewish visitors. That cell had ties to Hamas as well as ideological links to the Northern Branch.
Two years ago, the Shin Bet arrested the members of another Hamas cell who members threw Molotov cocktails at police on the Temple Mount, which at the time was considered particularly brazen. Last month, the Shin Bet arrested five Shabab Al-Aqsa member who also had plans to attack Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount. The five have already been indicted, but the details of the case are still under a gag order.
Mosques are no longer off limits
After the attack last Friday, three members of the Muslim Waqf were arrested on suspicion of helping the Umm al-Fahm terrorists stockpile the weapons they used in the attack inside Al-Aqsa mosque. This is nothing new, either. In recent years a number of Waqf employees who were identified with Hamas and who even took part in organizing terrorist activity, have been arrested and indicted.
Years ago, the Shin Bet thwarted a plan to make pipe bombs and use fishing line to plant them in the caper bushes that grow out of the cracks in the Western Wall. The bombs were to detonate at a time when the site was crowded, and the attack would have inflicted shrapnel wounds, mainly to the Jewish worshippers, who lean against the wall as they pray.
Not only is the concept of a terrorist attack on the Temple Mount nothing new, attempts to smuggle weapons are old hat. In recent years, large quantities of firecrackers were smuggled into the Temple Mount in worshipers' clothing. They were later fired directly at Israeli security forces. There was one case of a bomb being smuggled onto the Temple Mount, which was luckily discovered in time.
After last week's attack, police deployed to the Temple Mount, which was closed, and conducted a thorough clean-out. Although the details are still under a gag order, the Muslims are describing "raids on the Waqf offices, the guard posts, the clinics, the libraries, the museum and even the muezzin's position" and saying that police "broke the locks on all the wells and the locked rooms, conducted searches inside the Dome of the Rock and took the keys to some of the gates to the Temple Mount [compound] such as the Lions' Gate [and] the Mughrabi Gate ... during the night." They also report that a white van, similar to the ones used by the police special forces, "entered the [Al-Aqsa] mosque and drove around with lock-breaking equipment."
In comparison to other countries that have been forced to confront terrorism coming out of its mosques, Israel is practically Mother Theresa. For years, it has demonstrated almost inconceivable restraint in the face of the terrorism organized inside the Temple Mount, rioting and disturbances there, and the severe incitement that has been voiced there for years. When I was researching the development of the "Al-Aqsa is in danger" story, I reviewed files from Jordan's intelligence services that had fallen into Israel's hands in the 1967 Six-Day War. Only then did I discover the draconian restrictions Jordan had placed on religious leaders at the Temple Mount. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, incidentally, has taken the same line against Hamas activity in PA mosques, removing dozens of Hamas-affiliated imams from their positions.
Mosques elsewhere in the world are no longer taboo, either. After the 9/11 attacks, Saudi authorities took drastic action against the mosques that were sheltering operatives from al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. In July 2007, the Pakistani army raided the main mosque in Islamabad, the Red Mosque, after it became a hot spot of terrorism and incitement.
Abbas' position on the Temple Mount issue, like that of his Fatah party, should be looked at separately. Not many people know that a near-anonymous branch of Fatah called Fatah al-Intifada claimed responsibility for Friday's Temple Mount shooting. Although the Israeli security establishment is assuming that this is nothing more than an attempt to ride the coattails of the shocking attack, which came out of Umm al-Fahm and the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement's ideology. Nevertheless, it is no coincidence that Fatah operatives jumped up in an attempt to score points from the ensuing response.
In September 2015, Abbas himself accused Israel of aiming to divide the Temple Mount and declared: "Al-Aqsa mosque is ours. They [the Jews] have no right to defile it with their impure feet." He said at the same time that "every drop of blood shed in Jerusalem is pure, and every shahid that falls for it [Jerusalem] is a martyr who has a place in paradise."
A Fatah spokesman in Jerusalem spoke at the time about "ongoing Israeli invasions of Al-Aqsa," in exactly the same manner as Salah and his Northern Branch. Inciting materials such as a drawing of an Israeli bulldozer demolishing the Dome of the Rock were running rampant on Fatah's culture and public relations website. After Masabah Abu Sabih's terrorist attack on Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem some two years ago, the Fatah Facebook page ran a picture of a hand holding a gun poking out of the Dome of the Rock. The incitement reached a peak with one cartoon that hinted at similarities between Israel and the Islamic State, showing Israel cutting off the head of Al-Aqsa mosque.
Now, too, Fatah is having a hard time keeping itself in check. Jordan, on the other hand -- despite King Abdullah's moderate remarks -- has allowed itself to hurl accusations at Israel about its supposed plans to change the status quo on the Temple Mount.
Israel purportedly "understands" the Jordanian need to showcase its credentials in front of the Muslim world by making delusional accusations against Israel. Nevertheless, and given the close cooperation between Israel and Jordan on Temple Mount issues, Israel is having a tough time accepting Jordan's game, and the matter has been brought to the king.
Jordan and Israel have a common enemy: the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement and its ilk -- Qatar, Turkey, Hamas, and the entire Muslim Brotherhood family. Jordan has cooperated with Israel in the past to torpedo attempts by Salah to fill the water reservoirs on the Temple Mount with water from the Zamzam spring in Mecca, a plan intended to make the Temple Mount the equal of Mecca and Medina in holiness.
Still, Israel lost its battle against the Islamic Movement, which built and uses two subterranean mosques at the Temple Mount, one in Solomon's Stables and the other beneath the Al-Aqsa Mosque itself. The Northern Branch and its sub-groups on the Temple Mount made life miserable for Israel. Israel is now facing for the first time terrorist on the Temple Mount itself that stems from the ideology of the Northern Branch.
Nadav Shragai
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=44025
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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