Lieberman Urges Crackdown On Islamic Movement

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Thursday that Israel must learn from the terror attack in Paris, and put the domestic Islamic Movement outside the law, The Times of Israel  reported.

“If there is an important lesson that we learn from the terror attack, it is that extremist groups, which are distinguishable from terror organizations only by semantics and legal minutiae, must be dealt with preemptively. Those who tolerate such movements and organizations in the end pay for this [tolerance] with the blood of many innocents and with a threat to the very democracy that allowed them to function. Therefore, we must not dally any longer or allow the continued activities of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement headed by Sheikh Raed Salah.”

Salah, former mayor of the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm, spent two years in jail for organizing financial support for Hamas. The Islamic Movement’s northern branch, led by Salah, is a major source of incitement, claiming Israel is secretly planning to destroy the Muslim places of worship on Har Habayis.

“This movement is an inseparable link in the chain that includes the terror organizations of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaida and Islamic State, and over the years its members, led time and again by Sheikh Salah, have demonstrated that they support terror and identify with it,” Lieberman declared on Thursday. “Salah espouses the exact same values as the perpetrators of the massacre in Paris…” Lieberman said.

This article appeared in print on page 7 of the January 9th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.