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Iran Launches Global “We Love Fighting Israel” Campaign

Iran has launched a “We Love Fighting Israel” social media campaign, the Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday:

Thousands of Iranians are reported to have already joined the electronic movement following comments by [Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei’s outlining Iran’s goal of destroying the Jewish state.

“Our people love fighting against the Zionists and the Islamic Republic has proved this as well,” Khamenei was quoted as saying in a recent speech by the country’s state-run media. “By Allah’s Favor and Grace, we have passed through the barrier of denominational discord.”

These remarks inspired Iranian social media users to take to the Internet and launch the “We Love Fighting Israel” movement. The campaign even has spawned its own hashtag on Twitter, “#FightingtheZionists.”

According to Iran’s Mehr News Agency:

It was taken by a group of social network users including Instagram, Google+, etc. who embarked on a movement with the name ‘We Love Fighting Israel,’ which has gone viral on the web, getting more and more boost from individuals who post photos reading similar sentences, sharing the #Fightingthezionists hash tag; for example, ‘We Love Fighting Against Israel,’ ‘I Love to Fight Israel,’ ‘We are Lovers of Fighting Israel,’ and other rewording of the same concept.

Mehr attributes the initiative of the campaign to a speech that Khamenei gave to the International Congress on Takfirism in November. In that speech, Khamenei boasted, “We strengthened our brothers’ fists in Gaza; the West Bank will be armed.”

The boast does not appear to be have been an idle one, as Iran was identified by the United Nations earlier this year as a major supplier of arms to Hamas. It was reported yesterday that a delegation from Hamas was in Tehran seeking continued generous levels of support.

Khamenei frequently calls for Israel’s destruction. Khamenei is not alone in doing so, as numerous Iranian leaders—even those sometimes called moderates—have called for Israel’s destruction over the years. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has documented these threats, most recently in 2012 (.pdf).

[Photo: Screenshot from Instagram ]