Khamenei condemns Paris attacks, but claims Palestinians suffer worse terrorism from Israel

Khamenei used his condemnation of the terror attacks in Paris to blast the West for their “crimes” and to condemn Israel for its “worst” criminal persecution of the Palestinians.

and AP

French soldiers patrol the streets of Paris in wake of the ISIS attacks. (AP/Peter Dejong, File)

Iran’s Supreme leader called the recent Islamic terror attacks in Paris “blind terrorism,” while saying the Palestinians suffered the worst violence in history, perpetrated by Israel.

The comments, reported by Iran’s official IRNA news agency Sunday, were Khamenei’s first reaction to the attacks, in which jihadists murdered 132 people and injured scores of others and were meant for “the youth in the Western countries.”

Iran’s government had previously condemned such attacks immediately after they occurred, but did not do so in this instance.

Khamenei said “the bitter events brought about by blind terrorism in France” moved him to issue the statement. He said he has also been “disturbed” by bloodshed in the Middle East as well as violence by the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The pain of any human being is disturbing whether it occurs “in France or in Palestine or Iraq or Lebanon or Syria,” he said. One can assume he was not relating to Israeli pain.

Although the Paris attacks were horrific, the Muslim world had suffered more, he asserted. “The Islamic world has been the victim of terror and brutality to a larger extent territorially, to greater amount quantitatively and for a longer period in terms of time. “

He points a finger towards the West and its “double-standards dominate western policies” as the cause for this Muslim suffering. “Unfortunately this violence has been supported by certain great powers through various methods and effective means. There are very few people who are uninformed about the role of the United States of America in creating, nurturing and arming al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their inauspicious successors,” meaning ISIS, which he calls “vile” and the “spawn of such ill-fated pairings with imported cultures“ such as the Western culture with Islam.

However, the West’s worst crime is its support for Israel, Khamenei clarified. “The oppressed people of Palestine have experienced the worst kind of terrorism for the last sixty years.  If the people of Europe have now taken refuge in their homes for a few days and refrain from being present in busy places- it is decades that a Palestinian family is not secure even in its own home from the Zionist regime’s death and destruction machinery. What kind of atrocious violence today is comparable to that of the settlement constructions of the Zionists regime?”

He concluded by calling on the youth to “lay the foundations for a correct and honorable interaction with the Islamic world based on correct understanding, deep insight and lessons learned from horrible experiences.”

Iran does not recognize Israel, has vowed to destroy it and supports anti-Israeli terror groups like Palestinian Hamas in Gaza and Lebanese Hezbollah.

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