Islamic State spokesman Abu Huthaifa al-Ansari, in a speech published by the terror group’s media arm Al-Furqan on Thursday evening, called on ISIS supporters around the world to attack Jews and avenge the killing by the Israel Defense Forces of Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
In a 30-minute recording titled, “And kill them wherever you find them,” Al-Ansari instructed terrorist cells to strike Israeli and Jewish targets across the United States and Europe, including synagogues, Jewish gatherings and Israeli diplomatic missions.
“The fight with Jews is a religious war, not a social or national battle,” Al-Ansari said, according to a translation of the speech provided by The Messenger, stressing: “It is not a [war] centered around lands or borders.”
“Barge into their homes and kill them using different methods, including gunfire, bombs, grenades and knives,” he stated. “Don’t differentiate between a civilian or a soldier, as they both should be targeted.”
Al-Ansari also claimed that the Gaza conflict revealed the complicity of several Arab nations, including Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, as well as some Gulf nations, in what he called the “Jewish war against Muslims.”
At the same time, he criticized Hamas’s patrons in Tehran, warning the Palestinian terror group against further cooperation with the Iranian regime as it seeks to expand its influence through regional proxies.
In a separate statement issued Thursday by official ISIS channels, the Islamist terror group claimed responsibility for what has been dubbed the deadliest attack in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
At least 84 Iranians were killed and scores of others were wounded on Wednesday in two explosions at a commemoration ceremony for slain Quds Force Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in the southern city of Kerman.
The attacks came as the Islamic Republic marked four years since a Jan. 3, 2020, U.S. drone strike killed Soleimani.
On Thursday, ISIS said two suicide bombers, Omar al-Muwahid and Saifallah al-Mujahid, “set off to a large gathering of polytheist Shiites near the grave of their dead leader Qassem Soleimani in the city of Kerman … where they detonated their explosive belts.”
A report by ISIS’s Amaq News Agency included an image of two masked men in front of the terror group’s flag and noted that Soleimani had been “involved in dozens of massacres of Muslims in Iraq and Syria.”
In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught on southwestern Israel, security forces found an ISIS flag on the body of one of the terrorists they killed in Kibbutz Sufa.
“Hamas is ISIS—this is not a slogan because we found terrorists with ISIS flags. We also found ISIS booklets,” IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari noted on Oct. 12.
Last month, Israeli authorities revealed that a resident of the Arab city Tira was arrested on suspicion of security offenses, including identification with Islamic State.
In mid-November, security forces arrested three residents of southeastern Jerusalem’s Umm Tuba neighborhood on suspicion of being members of ISIS.
On Nov. 5, Israeli security forces killed a Palestinian ISIS operative during an overnight arrest raid in the Arab village of Abu Dis outside Jerusalem.