Israel should not be offered condolences for the Meron stampede tragedy, which killed at least 45 people and left 150 injured last Friday, a Hamas official said.
“Only despicable people and gamblers would offer them their condolences,” Talal Nassar said on Turkey’s Channel 9 in a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“These people who came here and settled on this land are thieves, murderers, and criminals. Those who offer them their condolences are their accomplices in the occupation of our land. I believe all those who drove out our fathers and grandfathers from these lands (deserve) all the possible curses,” he said.
The stampede in Israel occurred during the religious celebration of ‘Lag B’Omer’ at the Mount Meron tomb where an estimated 100,000 people were gathered. to make pilgrimage.
At least five children were included in the death toll, The Jerusalem Post reported.
“(The Quran says:) ‘And you did not kill them, but it was Allah who killed them,’” said Nassar.
Anyone who offers condolences to those mourning the deceased in the Meron stampede have “abandoned their religion, their conscience, and their humanity,” Nassar said.
“These kinds of comments, cheering the deaths of people at a religious ceremony, represent the extremist hatred that Hamas embodies and that some of its supporters hold with regards towards Israel and Jewish people,” Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis Executive Director Seth Frantzman told The Foreign Desk.
Frantzman explains that “there has been little reaction” in Israel to these types of hateful comments because “people are familiar with Hamas and its extremist views.”
Hamas has been a U.S.- designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO) since 1997 and poses a continual risk to Israeli national security.
Hamas currently controls the Gaza Strip’s government and regularly tortures and imprisons political opponents.
