Israel\’s attorney general has opened a criminal investigation on suspicion of incitement to racism against the chief rabbi of Safed.
Police are investigating vandalism on four synagogues in Safed as possible retaliation for a mosque arson in northern Israel.
Two Jewish teens from Safed have been indicted for setting fire to two cars owned by Arab students. The teens were indicted Thursday for torching the cars as revenge for the murder of five members of the Fogel family in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Itamar. They deny the allegations.
Two cars owned by Arab students at the Safed Academic College were set alight following a campus event to promote dialogue between Jews and Arabs. Anti-Arab graffiti also was spray-painted on the walls of the college following Tuesday night\’s event, according to reports. \”Arabs get out,\” \”Death to Arabs\” and \”Kahane was right\” were among the epithets.
The Chief Rabbi of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, said he would refuse to respond to a police summons for questioning on suspicion of incitement to racism. Eliyahu reportedly did not present himself to Jerusalem police on Sunday, as ordered, over a letter signed by nearly 50 municipal rabbis calling on the Jewish public not to rent or sell homes to non-Jews, specifically Arabs. The official reason given for not answering the summons was time restrictions, the Jerusalem Post reported. But Eliyahu reportedly said, according to the Jerusalem Post that he “asked whether David Grossman, Yossi Sarid and Shulamit Aloni, who demonstrated against Jewish presence in the Shimon Hatzadik (Sheikh Jarrah) neighborhood, were also summoned for questioning. Were there summonses for the heads of the Jewish National Fund, whose constitution prohibits selling apartments to non- Jews? If not, double standards are being applied here, and I don’t intend on playing into the hands of a legal system that acts in a non-egalitarian manner.”
The Israeli prosecutor\’s office has ordered Safed police to investigate anti-Arab leaflets that were distributed throughout the city.
When it comes to spirituality, Safed lacks nothing. But the Israeli mountain town (also spelled Tzfat) has been struggling economically since last year\’s war with Hezbollah. That\’s why local tourism authorities are hoping a Rosh Hashanah visit by the Material Girl will bring real material benefits to its 30,000 residents. Madonna, returning to Israel for the first time since September 2004, plans to visit Safed – the world center of Jewish mysticism – along with Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and other points of interest as part of a tour being organized by the Los Angeles-based Kabbalah Centre.
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