Raed Salah goes to jail for 5 months
By REBECCA ANNA STOIL AND JPOST.COM STAFF
25/07/2010
Islamic Movement leader accompanied by 100 supporters, Arab MKs.
Islamic Movement leader Raed Salah began his incarceration Sunday, having been sentenced to five months in prison by a Jerusalem court for leading a violent demonstration and assaulting a police officer in the capital in 2007.
Salah was accompanied by some 100 supporters, including Arab MKs, to the jail. His sentence was reduced earlier this month from the original nine months when the Jerusalem District Court ruled that the initial sentence “was severe beyond appropriate measure.” At the same time, the court slammed Salah's actions as ultimately harming the right to demonstrate and to freedom of expression.
MK Otniel Schneller (Kadima) blasted Arab MKs for “taking a stance against peace” Sunday after he received reports that a number of his Arab colleagues accompanied Salah to prison earlier in the day.
“I would expect Arab society and its representatives in the Knesset to demonstrate responsibility in distancing themselves from Salah's actions,” said Schneller. “Salah is a figure who has made a goal of inciting against peace and ruining our chances at achieving it.”
Salah is no stranger to prison. His latest five-month sentence comes after he was convicted of a 2007 attack on a police officer during a Jerusalem protest. Salah was found guilty of assaulting and spitting on a police officer who was guarding a demonstration sponsored by Salah.
Around 100 people, including far-left activist Tali Fahima, accompanied Salah to the Ayalon Prison. Support for Salah, complained Schneller, proved that Arab Mks were, like Salah, not interested in reaching any final agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
In a press conference before he entered the prison, Salah warned that the second half of 2010 would be “a fateful year for the al-Aksa Mosque” and reiterated calls for his supporters to guard the Temple Mount site from alleged Israeli aspirations to turn it into a place of Jewish worship. Jerusalem, he said, and not his detention, should be the major issue of the day.
“It is clear that the Israeli establishment, through its various arms, always returns to the detestable logic of conquest,” said the Northern Front in a statement released Sunday. “The Israeli occupation carries out a crime against al-Aksa, but it is we who are being jailed. We greet the jail with satisfaction because it is the price of our stance for the blessed al-Aksa. On the other hand, we also greet the prison with anger because of the occupation and the crimes that [the Israeli establishment] has committed.”
Why did he only get five months?
He deserves 5 years.
What of the Israeli citizens both Arab and Jew that marched in support of Salah, should Israel allow such actions under the name of democracy?
I think not, democracy should not allow treason and terror in the name of liberty. For it then becomes anarchy and suicide.
