Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that incitement by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was to blame for the shooting of a Temple Mount activist a night earlier
Netanyahu convened a meeting of top security officials Thursday morning, a day after Rabbi Yehudah Glick, a prominent activist for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount, was shot in an apparent assassination attempt.
“I said only days ago that we are facing a wave of incitement by radical Islamic elements and by Palestinian Authority head Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas], who said that the ascent of Jews to the Temple Mount needs to be prevented by every means,” Netanyahu said, according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office.
Netanyahu held the meeting with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, Shin Bet security service head Yoram Cohen, Israel Police commissioner Yohanan Danino, Jerusalem Police commissioner Moshe Edri, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, and representatives of the IDF and Justice Ministry, according to statement from the PMO.
“I still have not heard one word of condemnation from the international community against this incitement. The international community needs to stop its hypocrisy and act against the inciters, those who are trying to change the status quo,” Netanyahu said.
Police on Thursday said they killed the suspected shooter in a raid in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Tor.
The shooting came amid an uptick in violence in Jerusalem and a bolstered police effort to crack down on near daily incidents of rock throwing and Molotov cocktail attacks.
Netanyahu said that he ordered a further reinforcement of security forces in Jerusalem, and that the effort would take significant time.
The director of the Al-Aqsa Mosque called the site’s closure unacceptable.
“It is unacceptable that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is paying a toll for the events in Jerusalem,” he said.
Arab neighborhoods were reportedly awash in celebration.
Yehudah argued that Jews should be able to pray on the Temple Mount — just like Muslims and Christians do. The current situation is such that while Muslims are allowed on the Mount at any time, Jews have restricted hours.
Not only are the hours restricted, but so are our movements and rights. We can only go with escort of both Israel police and the Waqf (the Muslim authority of the Mount). This is not for our protection, but to ensure that we do not pray during our escorted walk.
Jews may not pray on the Temple Mount.
Rabbi Yehudah Glick has advocated for peaceful coexistence with Arabs and called on them to preach the same.
In this video, he speaks of the Dome of the Rock sitting adjacent to the Third Temple and the Muslims and Jews worshipping God in harmony.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations called late Wednesday for the anonymous US “senior administration official” who called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “chickenshit” to be “held to account” for his comments.
Robert G. Sugarman, chairman, and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman, of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, wrote that they were “deeply concerned by a number of recent public and private criticisms, personal insults and inappropriate characterizations emanating from official sources.”
The two welcomed statements from the administration distancing the White House fromcomments cited in a Tuesday column by Jeffrey Goldberg,published in The Atlantic, but believe that the administration’s characterization of the comments as “inappropriate” and “counterproductive” was insufficient.
A Conference statement called for “the person responsible be held to account and the appropriate steps be taken by the administration.”
Speaking with The Times of Israel, Hoenlein said that he would not specify what constituted “appropriate steps,” saying that such a decision was “for the administration to determine.” No apology has been issued, he noted, and while the administration criticized the comments, it did not call for any apology – an action that would presumably “out” the anonymous source of the comments.
“It is less important that we know who said it than that appropriate action is taken,” said Hoenlein, who characterized the views expressed by the official in Goldberg’s article as “very extreme.”
The organization led by Sugarman and Hoenlein represents 55 Jewish organizations in the United States, including all three major streams of Judaism and political groups on both the right and left.
Hoenlein said that he was concerned with “putting an end to the divisiveness, the name-calling and the sniping,” and added that “addressing this issue seriously will help put this issue behind us.”
Mideast experts are dismayed, GOP and Jewish leaders are enraged and the White House is conducting damage control while not actually apologizing, after a pair of senior Obama administration officials used an obscenity to describe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as cowardly.
This latest foreign policy crisis for the Obama administration was sparked when one White House aide anonymously told the Atlantic, using the prime minister’s nickname, “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickensh-t,” and another aide concurred.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called the remarks “pitiful” and tweeted, “The president should find out who said this, and fire them immediately. Anything else would be … well, the unnamed official put it best.”
Middle East expert and Iran specialist Clare Lopez of the Center for Security Policy told WND, “Such personal attacks on the leader of one of America’s closest allies are petty and very much beneath the dignity of America’s senior leadership.”
“It is foolish of the Obama administration to so alienate an ally like Israel. The vicious personal attacks on Netanyahu are beyond the pale and frankly unseemly, if coming from an administration official as reported,” she added.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was livid, releasing a lengthy and blistering statement that read, in part: “When the president discusses Israel and Iran, it is sometimes hard to tell who he thinks is America’s friend and who he thinks is America’s enemy … Over the last several months, I have watched the administration insult ally after ally. I am tired of the administration’s apology tour. The president sets the tone for his administration. He either condones the profanity and disrespect used by the most senior members of his administration, or he does not. ”
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