Far-right minister calls Jaffa mosque members who alerted cops of attack ‘terrorists’

Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu brands members of Jaffa’s al-Nuzha Mosque “terrorists,” even though they called the police to alert authorities of an ongoing shooting attack in the city last week.

Police issued a recording shortly after the terror attack in which one of the mosque’s members can be heard telling officers that one of the shooters had just entered, warned those inside not to leave and began opening fire outside.

Shortly before that recording was released, the head of Eliyahu’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, threatened to demolish the mosque if it was revealed that its members were tied to the attack. At that point, there was no such evidence and police have since only further exonerated the mosque members.

The mosque has still come under heavy criticism due to Ben Gvir’s comments, leading Adina Bar Shalom, the daughter of the late chief Sephardi rabbi Ovadia Yosef, to pay a solidarity visit on Wednesday, which was organized by the Tag Meir grassroots coexistence group.

Eliyahu tweets an article about Bar Shalom’s visit and writes, “Supporting terrorists is not my Judaism.”