The Associated Press reports: The Islamic State group has launched an unprecedented media campaign calling on Palestinians to step up attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians, taking advantage of a wave of violence between the two sides to deliver rare incitement against Israel.
In a video posted Monday, the group urged Palestinians to carry out attacks using every means at their disposal, including knives, vehicles, poison and explosives.
In the past two days, IS posted six videos in which militants deliver speeches to the backdrop of scenes from recent stabbings and other attacks carried out by Palestinians against Israelis. The extremist group also published several articles written by prominent IS writers.
The videos coincide with a wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence and ratcheted-up tensions among Israelis after a series of seemingly random lone-wolf attacks by Palestinians.
In the video titled “Return Terror to the Jews,” a masked fighter praised Arabs who are attacking Israelis, describing them as “lone wolves who refused to be subdued and spread fear among the sons of Zion.”
The Islamic State group, which has established a self-declared Islamic caliphate in the third of Iraq and Syria that it controls, operates a sophisticated media machine and often releases high-tech propaganda videos. Although IS operatives often describe Jews and Christians as infidels, the group has rarely issued videos that touch on Israel.
The IS group 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. [Continue reading…]
Unless there are reports of Palestinians involved in the current wave of attacks who say that they actually were inspired by ISIS, what appears to be behind ISIS’s media campaign is an utterly cynical attempt to elbow its way into the issue.
ISIS calls for attacks and when they happen, it takes credit as an inspirational force.
At the same time, Israeli politicians prattle on about terrorists, and a public that prefers to ignore the political roots of the violence will become amenable to the idea that ISIS is gaining a stronger foothold among Palestinians. The propaganda thence serves both ISIS and the Zionists.
