Protest: Red Cross Headquarters or Hamas Base?

Hillel Fendel
A7 News

A group of concerned citizens held a protest outside the Red Cross offices in Jerusalem last night, demanding an end to what they called the “disgrace” taking place in the heart of the capital. Three Hamas leaders, fearful of arrest and/or deportation by Israeli authorities, have taken refuge in the Red Cross offices, near the Shimon HaTzaddik/Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. They have been receiving visitors for more than two months, giving press interviews, and in general making themselves at home there both personally and professionally.

David Ish-Shalom, who organized the protest, told INN TV, “The police and government are, for the meanwhile, allowing Hamas leaders safe haven just 100 meters away from the National Police Headquarters – precisely as Hamas plans more terrorist attacks, perhaps from this very place, of the kind they perpetrated last week in which four Jews were killed and two were wounded.”

“We are here to demonstrate against both the Israeli government and the Red Cross,” another protestor, Dr. Aryeh Bachrach of the Terrorist Victims Association, said. “How can the government allow this situation to continue, in which diplomatic asylum is given to Hamas leaders in the heart of the country? ... At the same time, we believe that it is an unacceptable disgrace for the Red Cross, which is supposed to be a neutral organization working for peace, to not demand and insist and receive the right to visit Gilad Shalit, while at the same time it hosts and gives support and asylum to the leaders of the very organization that is holding him captive. This is hypocrisy that we cannot ignore.”