Islamic Movement Leader Off to Prison, again

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the Islamic Movement's northern branch in Israel, will be spending another eight months in jail for incitement to violence.  In November, the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court convicted him of the incitement charge, but dropped several other charges, including incitement to racial hatred.  

As he was escorted out of the courtroom, Salah, smiling, told reporters he "got off cheap."

"We would now be on sacred land if it weren't for the intrusions and interruptions of the Israeli occupier, whom Allah will soon banish as he did those before them," Salah proclaimed in 2007. "Our best moments will be when we meet Allah as martyrs while Jews are still in the al-Aksa Mosque [on the Temple Mount]."

Salah's rhetoric has often sparked his followers to riot, especially on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City. His latest conviction stems from a riot in 2007 that injured three border policemen.

The court dropped charges of racism for invoking the Islamist blood libel that Israelis murder Arab children and use their blood to make Passover matzo because it said that despite his rhetoric it couldn't prove that unrest ensued because of it.

"We [Muslims] have never allowed ourselves to knead the bread we eat after the Ramadan fast with the blood of children," the sheikh said at the time. "Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the holy bread."