(JTA ) — Nearly 1,000 rabbis in Israel and America have signed a petition condemning the burning of a mosque in a Bedouin town in northern Israel.
According to the New Israel Fund, which circulated the petition within 24 hours of the Oct. 2 arson, it was presented Thursday to the imam of the Tuba-Zangariya village, where the attack took place.
On Wednesday, the Islamic Society of North America praised a statement released by major American-Jewish rabbis representing the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements that called attacking a mosque or any religious building “antithetical to the most basic values of Judaism, and cannot be justified for any reason.”
The rabbis’ statement also praised North American Muslim leaders for increasingly opposing Holocaust denial and appealing for Gilad Shalit’s release.
“Just as these Muslim leaders bravely spurned noxious calls to communal solidarity and spoke up on behalf of Jews when they saw that doing so was the morally correct course to take,” the statement reads, “so we Jewish leaders now stand in solidarity with Muslims who have been wrongfully attacked, even if the attackers may have been deeply misguided members of our own community.”
Categories: Israel, Middle East