Sheikh Raed Salah gets 8 months for incitement to violence
Islamic Movement leader jailed for 2007 Jerusalem speech in which he urged third intifada; "Blessed is God, I got off cheap," he says after sentence.
By JPOST.COM STAFFRaed Salah(photo credit: REUTERS)
Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch, was sentenced to eight months in prison Tuesday for inciting to violence in a 2007 speech.Salah, who also received three years’ probation starting after the prison term, told reporters after the hearing, “Blessed is God, I got off cheap.”Judge Miriam Lump wrote in the decision that in Salah’s speech “he repeated the words ‘blood’ and ‘martyrs’ which can lead to violence, and there is a serious potential for explosiveness.”Salah was convicted in November 2013 for a sermon he gave at Jerusalem’s Wadi Joz neighborhood in 2007.In the speech, Salah urged supporters to start a third intifada in order to “save Al-Aksa Mosque, free Jerusalem and end the occupation.”Salah’s speech also attacked Jews: “They want to build their temple at a time when our blood is on their clothes, on their doorsteps, in their food and in their drinks. Our blood has passed from one ‘general terrorist’ to another ‘general terrorist’... We are not those who ate bread dipped in children’s blood.”
