ISIS Video Series Encourages Palestinians to Slaughter Jews

ISIS has released a series of videos celebrating Palestinian knife attacks against Israeli Jews, and encouraging more such violence.

“Bring back horror to the Jews with explosions, burning and stabbings,” an ISIS member featured in one of the videos exhorts.  “Time is running out, so brother, struggle hard.  We have only life, and it is Allah who gave it to us.”

Another masked militant appearing in the videos describes the Palestinian knife attackers as “lone wolves who refuse to be subdued, and spread fear among the sons of Zion.”

ISIS also encourages the Palestinians to escalate from random knife attacks, telling them “not to forget explosive devices.”

Vocativ reports there are five such videos, marking “the first time the Islamic State has officially highlighted the ongoing wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence, which has centered in Jerusalem.”

Warning: Graphic Images

The videos have been accompanied by promotional posters, and circulated on Twitter under the hashtag #The_Slaughter_of_Jews, which has accumulated over 18,000 posts since Sunday.

Writing for the Gatestone Institute, Middle Eastern scholar Bassam Tawil describes the wave of “lone wolf” Palestinian violence as ISIS-inspired, saying that although Israeli security has been able to keep the Islamic State from establishing a strong presence in the West Bank or Jerusalem, “there is no denying that its spirit and ideology are hovering over the heads of many of our young men and women.”

Tawil notes that ISIS is noted for using knives to decapitate its captives, usually to the same cries of “Allahu akbar!” heard from the new waves of Palestinian attackers, and many of the stabbings in Jerusalem appear to have been attempts to cut the throats of victims or decapitate them. He also points out that the burning of Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus last week was “reminiscent of the Islamic State’s destruction of ancient and holy sites in Syria and Iraq.”

Although Tawil does not mention the new ISIS videos urging further Palestinian violence, if he is correct about Palestinian “lone wolves” taking inspiration from the Islamic State’s atrocities, their overt attempts to orchestrate more killings are likely to find a receptive audience.