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ScreenshotMEMRI

A Hamas cleric recently criticized Palestinian Authority (PA) officials who said that they thwarted anti-Israeli terror attacks and declared that “Israeli blood is not on a par with Palestinian blood”.

The cleric, Iyad Abu Funun, made the comments during his television show on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV. The comments were translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Abu Funun also attacked Israelis who came from Ethiopia, Germany, Russia, or France and described them as “highway robbers, a criminal gang.”

“Some people boast that they thwarted hundreds of operations against the Zionists and that they stopped the shedding of Zionist blood - as if Israeli blood is on a par with Palestinian blood,” he said.

“Such statements should not be uttered by members of our people and our nation,” continued Abu Funun. “Is the blood of these foreigners on a par with the blood of our own people?”

“These people don’t even know their own origins,” he claimed, in a reference to Israelis. “Where did these foreigners come from? From Ethiopia? From Russia? From Germany? From France? They are highway robbers. They are criminal gangs. They came to our land and took it. So to say that their blood is like our blood?”

Abu Funun further claimed that saying that Israeli blood is on par with Palestinian blood “runs counter to the Quran”, before citing a verse saying “the strongest in enmity to the believers are the Jews and the polytheists.”

He also declared that “Zionist blood is 100% filthy” because “it is murderous, criminal, aggressive blood, the blood of occupiers”.

Abu Funun is the same Hamas cleric who several months ago vowed that Hamas would "not leave a single Jew, dead or alive... on the land of Islam and the Muslims."

"We will not leave a single one of you, alive or dead, on this land. By Allah, we will dig up your bones from your graves and get them out of this country. We will not leave any trace of you in this land," he said in a previous clip exposed by MEMRI.

These are just a few examples of an endless stream of propaganda inciting Palestinian Arabs to continue their violent attacks on Jews.

Much of the propaganda effort is centered in Hamas-run Gaza, but a significant portion is also being promulgated by other factions, including Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction.