Court adds 6 months to sentence of Temple Mount preacher

The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday extended by six months the sentence of an Islamic preacher who was convicted of racism and incitement to violence against Jews in a sermon he gave on the Temple Mount.

The court accepted an appeal from the Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office that an initial sentencing last year of eight months was too short for the crimes committed by Sheikh Omar Abu Sara and lengthened it to 14 months behind bars.

Abu Sara was originally sentenced in September 2016 by the same court that also gave at the time gave him a six-month suspended sentence, to be applied if he commits similar offenses within three years.

The judges ruled Tuesday that Abu Sara’s crimes were a “matter of extremist calls, calls that included clear and unequivocal expressions calling for the ‘slaughter’ and killing of Jews, and soon.”

The court said that due to the severity of the crime, the punishment “must also have an element of deterrence to the respondent and those who are destined to follow in his footsteps.”

Sara delivered the controversial sermon at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, located on the Temple Mount in the capital, on November 28, 2014. In the address, which was recorded and uploaded to YouTube, Abu Sara, 51, described Jews in vile terms, comparing them to pigs and monkeys, and urged the worshipers to commit acts of violence against them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhrQgqHVN8w

“I say to the Jews loud and clear: The time for your slaughter has come. The time to fight you has come. The time to kill you has come,” the sheikh preached, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “Please do not leave in our hearts a single grain of mercy toward you, oh Jews, because when the day of your slaughter arrives, we shall slaughter you without mercy.

“Jews are a people and God made them monkeys and pigs,” Abu Sara continued.

In his defense, Abu Sara claimed during his trial that the sermon was not incitement but rather religious teachings. He claimed he had no intent to be racist, but that he was simply quoting verses from the Quran and views of religious commentaries. He said that he was describing a vision of the future, after the return of the Prophet, rather than a call to action.

Those claims were rejected by the court, which found no evidence that most of the sermon was quoting others. Instead, most of the speech came from Abu Sara’s imagination, according to court documents. The judges also ruled that the sheikh should have known that his words would be interpreted as a call to action.

The court took freedom of expression into account, but ruled at the time that incitement to violence and racism contravenes the basic rights of others and therefore cannot be applied in his case.