ISIS calls for Israeli bloodshed
ISIS has launched an unprecedented media campaign calling on Palestinians to step up attacks on Israelis, taking advantage of a wave of violence to deliver a rare incitement against the Jewish state.
In a video posted Monday, the terrorist group urges Palestinians to attack using every means at their disposal, including knives, vehicles, poison and explosives.
“What we are seeing here is a combination of the radical Islam and the Internet,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a meeting of his Likud party Monday.
“Osama bin Laden meets Mark Zuckerberg. The incitement in the social networks is moving the murders. We are seeing this clearly.”
In the past two days, ISIS posted six videos in which militants deliver speeches against a backdrop of scenes from recent stabbings and other attacks by Palestinians against Israelis.
The group also published several articles by prominent ISIS writers.
The videos coincide with a wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence and high tensions among Israelis after a series of attacks by Palestinians.
In a video titled “Return Terror to the Jews,” a masked fighter praises Arabs who are attacking Israelis, describing them as “lone wolves who re fused to be subdued and spread fear among the sons of Zion.”
Although its operatives describe Jews and Christians as infidels, ISIS has rarely issued videos that touch on Israel.
It has no organized presence in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.
But dozens of Palestinians in Gaza are believed to be inspired by the group’s extremist ideology, seeing Gaza’s Islamic militant Hamas rulers as too soft.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu denounced the Israeli attackers of an African man who was mistakenly identified as a terrorist involved in an assault at the bus depot in Beersheba.
“Someone who witnesses an attack needs to leave the scene and allow security and rescue forces to work,” Netanyahu said at the Likud meeting.
“We’re a nation of laws. No one may take the law into their hands. That’s the first rule.”
Eritrean national Haftom Zarhum, 29, died Monday in a Beersheba hospital after being shot by a security guard, who thought he was a terrorist, and beaten by a mob.
A 19yearold Israeli solider, Sgt. Omri Levi, was killed and 10 civilians were wounded when a man opened fire inside the bus station in the latest Palestinian attack on Israelis.