On Monday Israel's Tazpit News Agency reported that hundreds of residents of the Gush Etzion area were ‘astounded’ to find a Nazi flag flying next to a mosque in the Palestinian town of Beit Ummar. The IDF were notified immediately. Local resident Uri Arnon said, ‘I felt we were going back 75 years, losing our hold on the land. The Arabs no longer feel the need to hide their murderous tendencies, announcing out loud that they wish to destroy us.’ Gush Etzion is a cluster of Israeli settlements of 70,000 people founded in the 1920’s south of Jerusalem. After the Six-Day War in 1967 many settlements, and a number of new ones, were rebuilt. There has been a history of Nazi sympathizers in the area among some Palestinians since the 1920’s when the Palestinian leader Haj Amin al Husseini (an outspoken Nazi collaborator) recruited Muslims to serve in the SS.
Pray: against violent sectarian incidences in the area. (Ps.46:9)