According to a Shebab news agency tweet on Wednesday, yet another home has been redeemed in the formerly Jewish neighborhood of Kfar Ha’Shiloach, a.k.a. Silwan.
تسريب “عقار جديد” في بلدة سلوان جنوب الأقصى لصالح جمعيات استيطانية pic.twitter.com/hYfL2lLiE1
— وكالة شهاب للأنباء (@ShehabAgency)
Last April, Sheikh Ekrima Sa’id Sabri, who was appointed by Yasser Arafat to serve as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem between 1994 and 2006, issued a fatwa (a legal opinion on a point of Islamic law given by a qualified jurist – DI) against sellers and real estate brokers of homes and land to Jews. The fatwa followed an announcement that 15 Jewish families had settled in their homes in Kfar HaShiloach in eastern Jerusalem.
According to the writ, the traitors should be boycotted, marriage to them is forbidden, they may not buy or rent homes, and when they die their bodies should not be washed and wrapped in shrouds, nor be buried in Muslim cemeteries.
In 2002, Sabri issued a pamphlet entitled “Palestine – the Man and the Land,” published by the Arab information Center, which included anti-Semitic motifs drawn from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, denied the historical right of the Jews to the Land of Israel and Jerusalem, and challenged the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel.
In a 2000 interview with the Italian newspaper la Repubblica, said, “Six million Jews dead? No way, they were much fewer. Let’s stop with this fairytale exploited by Israel to capture international solidarity. It is not my fault if Hitler hated Jews, indeed they were hated a little everywhere. Instead, it is necessary to denounce the unjust occupation endured by my people. Tomorrow I will ask John Paul II… to support our cause.”
Mahmoud Abbas removed Sabri as mufti In July 2006, replacing him with Muhammad Ahmad Hussein.
Until the 1938 Arab riots, the Silwan neighborhood was primarily Jewish, known as Harat al-Yaman. After the riots forced the Jewish population to leave, no Jews lived there for many years. Ateret Cohanim has taken on the mission of returning Jewish life to areas of east Jerusalem, especially those previously included in the City of David, like Silwan.