A mosque once stood here

[Violet_Crumble]

It was as if Sami Hilmi of the Al-Aqsa Institute was waiting for a phone call. The scenes of destruction of the synagogues in Gush Katif had put Muslims in Israel on the defensive. On the physical defensive the police announced it was stepping up its security around the country's mosques for fear of Jewish attacks; and on the political defensive for years, Arab public leaders have spoken of the damage done to mosques and Muslim cemeteries in Israel. But now live on television a Palestinian crowd was inflicting damage on Jewish synagogues.

A few hours after my first request for information on the fate of abandoned mosques, Hilmi, a member of a non-profit group affiliated with the northern faction of the Islamic Movement which keeps track of abandoned mosques faxed over seven handwritten pages, which included two lists. One list, with 34 names, enumerates mosques that now serve a different purpose: most were turned into synagogues or museums, a few became residences or storerooms, at least two are cafes, and one became a cowshed.

The second list, 39 names, catalogs abandoned mosques to which access has been cut off. "A partial list," Hilmi wrote. He also noted that it did not take into account the mosques and Muslim houses of prayer destroyed since 1948.

How many were destroyed? Twelve hundred, Hilmi writes. Evidently, he is exaggerating the number, but clearly the real figure is in the hundreds, considering the fact that about 600 villages were expelled or chased off or abandoned in 1948.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/625854.html