August 08, 2014
A senior cleric says the mass killing of Arab children is now official American policy, as seen in Gaza.
The focus throughout the media in Iran has been on what is portrayed as a huge death toll in Palestine, although the death toll from fighting last month in Iraq was 6 percent greater than in Gaza and in Syria was 44 percent greater.
Ayatollah Zeinol-abedin Qorbani discussed the ongoing combat in Gaza during his sermon at Friday’s prayers in Gilan last week.
“The Zionist regime is a tumor and the source of instability in the Middle East and in the world,” he said.
“The Europeans and Americans shout human rights slogans, but the truth of their policies is showing itself in Gaza in the killing of innocent people.”
Qorbani said, “Endorsing Israel’s killing of innocent Palestinians is irredeemable. It points to the bestiality of the West. The mass killing of innocent children, pedocide, is the new American foreign policy.”
The fighting in Gaza was the principle topic of sermons at Friday prayers all over Iran last week as the government sought to shift the focus from the politically more sensitive fighting between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq and Syria to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is easier to discuss in a black hat/white manner.
And the main theme of the Gaza sermons has been the purported mass killing of children.
The authorities in Gaza said a total of 1,766 people—adults and children, fighters and civilians—were killed in Gaza last month. It put the number of children at 400.
In Iraq, figures showed that at least 1,869 people were killed in bombings and other attacks last month. The UN count of 1,737 covered the country except for Anbar province. The General Hospital of Fallujah in Anbar reported 132 dead in that city and had no figures for the rest of the province.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights provided a count of 2,549 civilians and rebels killed last month. The SNHR says it has no way of counting the deaths of troops from the government and Islamic State (IS).
