Media outlets two months ago touted “coexistence” as Muslim Arab Mahmoud Mansour (26) married Moral Malka (23), a Jewish woman he met in their native Yafo – now Mansour has been arrested for drug trafficking and assaulting a police officer.
Mansour was arrested last weekend after more than 10 grams of cocaine were found on him, Channel 2 reported on Sunday.
Police say that he was riding on a motorcycle in Yafo (Jaffa) when he saw officers in the area, at which he threw aside a bag containing 20 additional grams of cocaine. As he was being arrested, police say Mansour struck one of the officers.
“Relating to the suspicions attributed to Mahmoud and his claims against them, they will be clarified in court,” said Yaniv Segev, Mansour’s lawyer. “But from this to infer or conclude something about his right to marry a Jewish woman – that’s a cheap manipulation, and there’s nothing between it and the suspicions.”
However, not everyone agreed with the claim that the arrest was disconnected from the instance of assimilation.
Bentzi Gopshtain, director of the Lehava anti-assimilation group, said Sunday “as we expected, the fake balloon of coexistence of Mahmoud and Moral has exploded.”
“We warned that there is no future for such marriages. We in Lehava call to Moral to return to the Jewish people and we will help her. I hope that other girls will learn the lesson and realize that daughters of Israel are only for the nation of Israel,” said Gopshtain.
Gopshtain’s Lehava organization led a protest against the wedding, warning against the phenomenon of assimilation; Moral’s father likewise vocally opposed the wedding and refused to attend.
At the protest former MK Dr. Michael Ben-Ari said “they tell us that we’re racist – let’s see one Arab woman come marry a Jew at this hall…then we’ll see who’s racist.” He was referring to the fact that a Muslim woman who marries a Jew can expect to be murdered by her co-religionists in what is termed an “honor killing.”
In nearly all cases of mixed marriages with Arabs in Israel, the Jewish partner is the bride, as Ben-Ari noted. It is a well documented phenomenon that such wives often suffer abuse from their Arab husbands, and many require help to escape.
