Israel’s far-right national security minister on Thursday vowed to remove the grave of Arab nationalist leader Ezzedine al-Qassam, whose tomb lies in Israel and whose name was given to the armed wing of Hamas.<\/p>\n
Itamar Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory remarks, posted a video on X showing him accompanying security forces as they dismantled a prayer tent next to the grave of the Syrian-born militant.<\/p>\n
Al-Qassam, who was killed in a firefight in 1935, fought against the British and Zionism in mandate Palestine before Israel’s creation in 1948.<\/p>\n
His grave is situated near Haifa in northern Israel and has been vandalised on several occasions over the years.<\/p>\n
“The tomb of arch-terrorist Ezzedine al-Qassam in Nesher must be removed. And yesterday at dawn, we took the first step,” Ben Gvir wrote on X.<\/p>\n
He had already called for the grave’s demolition during a parliamentary debate in August.<\/p>\n
Right-wing Israeli daily Israel Hayom reported that security forces also took down surveillance cameras around the burial site and removed a person guarding the premises.<\/p>\n
When asked by AFP about the incident, Israeli police insisted they had not been involved and referred inquiries to the authority in charge of cemeteries.<\/p>\n
In a Hamas statement, senior official Mahmoud Mardawi decried the threat as “an unprecedented level of transgression against sanctity and desecration of holy sites, and a violation of the sanctity of graves”.<\/p>\n
“Targeting the grave of al-Qassam… is not merely an attack on a grave, but rather an attempt to erase the memory of a nation and remove a testament to our ongoing struggle,” the statement added.<\/p>\n
“Extremism has become an official, declared policy, requiring international action to curb this barbarity,” it said.<\/p>\n
avm-crb-acc\/raz\/jfx<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israel’s far-right national security minister on Thursday vowed to remove the grave of Arab nationalist leader Ezzedine al-Qassam, whose tomb lies in Israel and whose name was given to the armed wing of Hamas. Itamar Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory remarks, posted a video on X showing him accompanying security forces as they dismantled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20605,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[2609,95,487,93,146],"class_list":["post-20604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional","tag-bengvir","tag-conflict","tag-hamas","tag-israel","tag-palestinians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20607,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20604\/revisions\/20607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}