Posts Tagged ‘hamas’
 
December 19, 2012 0

Iranian Leader Embraces Social Media

There is now a Face­book page in Iran’s Supreme Leader Aya­tol­lah Ali Khamenei’s name, likely mak­ing him the world’s most socially-networked auto­cratic leader. The account, cre­ated on Decem­ber 13, cur­rently boasts over 16,000 ‘Likes’ and pro­vides Khamenei with another plat­form to dis­sem­i­nate his regime’s anti-West, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic messages.

Pre­vi­ously, Khamenei described Face­book as a “Zion­ist” tool. Face­book has been blocked inside Iran since the 2009 mass protests after the reelec­tion of Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad.

Although Khamenei’s Face­book account is only days old, a video from his Youtube chan­nel fea­tur­ing images of the Star of David and destroyed Pales­tin­ian vil­lages was uploaded to the page on Decem­ber 18. The video, called “New Mid­dle East, Islamic Mid­dle East,” begins with a clip of for­mer Secu­rity of State Con­doleezza Rice super­im­posed with a Star of David. The video also con­tains footage of Hasidic Jews stand­ing in front of a screen with an image of a cry­ing child and a dead Pales­tin­ian, and a mon­tage from a 2006 speech by Hezbol­lah leader Has­san Nas­ral­lah.

The five-minute video ends with a clip of a 2010 Khamenei speech in which he is pre­sented as pre­dict­ing the for­ma­tion of a new Islamic Mid­dle East and then declar­ing, “Pales­tine will be lib­er­ated” and insists that “Resis­tance is necessary.”

Khamenei first made his social media debut in 2009 with a Twit­ter account, @Khamenei_ir. The account con­veys what appear to be offi­cially sanc­tioned mes­sages from the Supreme Leader in Farsi, Eng­lish, Ara­bic and French. The tweets often make use of the regime’s typ­i­cal vit­ri­olic lan­guage against the U.S. and Israel, while prais­ing ter­ror­ist organizations.

For exam­ple, fol­low­ing Israel’s Oper­a­tion Pil­lar of Defense in Novem­ber against Hamas rocket fire from Gaza, Khamenei tweeted a gloat­ing mes­sage in Farsi, “Who would have believed that in a war between a sec­tion of Pales­tine and Israel, the Pales­tini­ans would be the ones set­ting the con­di­tions for a ceasefire/ Bravo to Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad.” In an English-language mes­sage in Jan­u­ary, Khamenei tweeted, “The Zion­ists, Great Satan-#USA-& West­ern pow­ers are inca­pable in fac­ing Islamic awak­en­ing, & they’ll fail more & more.”

The use of social media has also been increas­ingly uti­lized by U.S. Gov­ern­ment des­ig­nated For­eign Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tions (FTOs).

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

November 21, 2012 1

Iranian Leaders Admit Providing Hamas With Missiles And Rockets To Fight Israel

Par­lia­men­tary Rally in Tehran (sign reads “Death to Israel”)

Sev­eral Iran­ian lead­ers have taken credit for pro­vid­ing arms and rock­ets to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, accord­ing to state­ments trans­lated by the Anti-Defamation League from the orig­i­nal Farsi.

Among those boast­ing of Iran’s aid to Hamas was Ali Lar­i­jani, Speaker of the Iran­ian Par­lia­ment and close con­fi­dant to Supreme Leader Aya­tol­lah Ali Khamenei. Dur­ing a par­lia­men­tary rally for Pales­tine on Wednes­day, Lar­i­jani admit­ted Iran’s involve­ment in arm­ing Hamas with weapons, “We announce with pride that we sup­port the peo­ple of Pales­tine and Hamas. We are proud that our help to the peo­ple of Pales­tine includes mate­r­ial and mil­i­tary (support).”

At a Basij cer­e­mony on Wednes­day, Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards Corps (IRGC) Major Gen­eral Muham­mad Ali Ja’afar acknowl­edged that Iran “can­not send weapons there (to Gaza),” but made it clear that Iran has “given theme (Hamas) the nec­es­sary tech­nol­ogy for the Fajr 5 and today mass quan­ti­ties of this mis­sile are being pro­duced.” At the same cer­e­mony, Vice Chief of State of the Armed Forces Masoud Jaza­y­eri warned Israel that “No Iran dome will be able to tol­er­ate the mis­siles of the resis­tance,” and that Pales­tin­ian ter­ror groups have many weapons capa­bil­i­ties “that have not arrived on the war scene yet.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 20, 2012 0

Militant Organizations Weigh In On Operation Pillar Of Defense

Has­san Nas­ral­lah speaks about Oper­a­tion Pil­lar of Defense

In response to Israel’s mil­i­tary oper­a­tion against key Hamas and Islamic Jihad tar­gets in Gaza, Hezbol­lah, Al Shabaab and the Tal­iban have issued state­ments con­demn­ing Israel and Jews for the renewed violence.

Al Shabaab, Al Qaeda’s branch in Soma­lia, has con­demned “in the strongest pos­si­ble terms, the sav­age Jew­ish assault on the inno­cent Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion of Gaza.” Al Shabaab issued a state­ment on Twit­ter call­ing “on all Mus­lims, par­tic­u­larly those liv­ing near Gaza, to answer the call of the oppressed & come to the aid of their brothers.”

Although Al Shabaab is geo­graph­i­cally removed from the con­flict, it has pre­vi­ously declared an “open bat­tle” against Jew­ish inter­ests in Africa and against Israel, which it has described as the “oppress­ing Zion­ist entity.” In Novem­ber 2009, it announced the estab­lish­ment of Al Quds Brigade, a mil­i­tary unit specif­i­cally tasked with attack­ing Israel and free­ing “Islamic holy places” from the Israelis.

Al Shabaab appears to be the only affil­i­ate of Al Qaeda to have issued a pub­lic state­ment on the con­flict so far. Since mes­sages from the senior Al Qaeda lead­er­ship rou­tinely take time to reach the pub­lic, offi­cial state­ments are likely to be made in the com­ing weeks.

Hezbol­lah, the Lebanese For­eign Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tion (FTO), has also con­demned Israeli actions and expressed its sup­port for the Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tant fac­tions via its satel­lite tele­vi­sion sta­tion, Al-Manar. While Hezbol­lah has not yet entered the fray, Lebanese secu­rity forces report that they dis­man­tled two rock­ets aimed at Israel from south­ern Lebanon on Monday.

Has­san Nas­ral­lah, Hezbollah’s leader, encour­aged Arabs to “open bor­ders to Gaza and deliver more mis­siles to the resis­tance,” adding that “Arab coun­tries are required to sup­port and arm Gaza and not to work as inter­me­di­aries between the Israeli enemy and Gaza.” Nas­ral­lah also said “the Zion­ists returned to their crim­i­nal nature with killing large num­bers of chil­dren, women and civilians.”

Hezbollah’s Al Manar also reported on state­ments made by Ziad al-Nakhala, the Deputy Sec­re­tary Gen­eral of PIJ, that “the weapons which the resis­tance uses to fight, includ­ing those of Hamas, are Iran­ian weapons, from the first bul­let to the mis­sile; even the locally man­u­fac­tured ones are Iranian.”

The Tal­iban in Afghanistan issued a state­ment con­demn­ing “the bru­tal attacks on the land of Palestine.” The mes­sage calls on “the Islamic peo­ples and espe­cially the lead­ers of the Islamic world… to take a stand… to put an end to the Israeli injus­tices.” The state­ment also high­lights Amer­i­can sup­port for Israel, which it claims demon­strates “sup­port for inter­na­tional terrorism.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Older Posts
Newer Entries