Yasuf, December 14: A top Israeli rabbi evoked the Holocaust on Monday as he deplored an arson attack against a mosque in the occupied West Bank blamed on hardline Jewish settlers.
“Seventy years ago, the Holocaust, the biggest tragedy of our history, began with the torchings of synagogues during Kristallnacht,” Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, said as he stood in front of the mosque in this village in the northern West Bank.
He was referring to a pogrom in 1938 during which synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses were torched and ransacked in Germany.
Metzger had come to Yasuf to protest against the vandalism of the village mosque on Friday, when assailants, suspected to be hardline settlers angry over a temporary moratorium on settlement construction, sprayed hate messages in Hebrew and burned Korans.
“I hope that my visit here will help ease tensions,” Metzger said.
As he spoke, protected by Palestinian police forces, dozens of protesters blocked the entrance to the mosque, chanting “No peace with settlements.”
Elsewhere in the village residents threw rocks at Israeli soldiers patrolling the area, the army said, adding that the protesters were dispersed.
The mosque attack has been condemned across the political spectrum in Israel.
On Sunday, a group of moderate Zionist rabbis came to the village to express their support and to bring new Korans to replace those burned in Friday’s attack. They were not allowed into the village because of security concerns, the army said.
The area around Yasuf is home to hardline settlers who advocate a “price tag” policy under which they target Palestinians in retaliation for any Israeli government measure they see as threatening Jewish settlements.
—Agencies