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Photo: In 2005, several Israelis threw a pig's head on the lawn of the mosque, wrapped in a keffiyeh [file photo of the Hassan Bek Mosque]
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by Middle East Monitor:

A number of extremist Israeli settlers in Jaffa attacked the Hassan Bek Mosque yesterday and attempted to burn it, eyewitnesses told Arab48.

Mohamed Ashqar, head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, said: “The settlers broke into the mosque from its main gate, threw big stones inside and smashed its windows.”

“The settlers planned to destroy and burn the mosque like what happened in the past when they burnt it, threw a pig’s head inside.”

Meanwhile, eyewitnesses said that they saw the settlers, who wanted to damage the mosque, but they undermined the settlers’ plan as they burst into it. “Therefore, the settlers fled,” the eyewitnesses told Arab48.

According to Ashqar, this assault is “completely related to the assaults on Al-Aqsa Mosque” and it is an “expansion” to the “continuous” assaults of the Israeli settlers all over the country and in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

Ashqar noted that mosques in Jaffa have been under continuous Israeli aggression at the hands of Israeli settler “gangs” and they have been “given the green light from the official Israeli institutions”.

He added: “This aggression proves the racist and barbaric Israeli mentality, which is increasing among Jews. This is an aggression on the right to live and perform religious rituals.”

He reiterated that this aggression is a call for the Palestinians in Jaffa and in all Palestinian cities occupied in 1948 to be cautious regarding the protection of their mosques and holy sites from the plans of the Israeli settlers, which have recently increased.