Mudar Adnan Zahran
Israel National News, Oct. 16, 2022
“Neither the PA nor Hamas are claiming ownership of the Lion’s Den in order not be held responsible for the killings. In so doing, they appear moderate.”
There has been a streak of terror attacks in Judea and Samaria that have claimed the lives of several Israelis including soldiers. On 11 October, the Lions’ Den called for “days of rage” to sweep the ‘West Bank’, which is a codename for launching terror attacks. Strange enough, the governments-controlled media in the Palestinian Authority, Gaza and Jordan have been promoting this “anger for rage.”
To the outsider, it appears as if the group had surfaced out of the blue. Some journalists jumped on this story trying to analyse and claim expertise with respect to this newly emergent group. See JPOST and Haaretz.
Nevertheless, a closer look at the group suggests otherwise, that it is anything but new. The Lion’s Den is simply a rebranded terrorist group. The rebranding has been done to distance the killings from traditional terror leaders who want to appear to have clean hands..
Let us start with the so-called founder of the Lions Den, Palestinian militant Mohammed Azizi. Azizi was killed during an operation by the IDF in his hometown of Nablus on the 24th of July this year. Only 23 years old, Azizi had already spent five years as a fugitive wanted by the Israeli army for engaging in several terror attacks against Israeli civilians. He was young, did not come from a wealthy family and did not belonging to a large Palestinian Arab tribe. Thus he could not have established any group worth mentioning because such a group requires connections, money and tribal support, none of which he had.
Furthermore, Azizi’s death was celebrated, particularly by the Gaza Hamas-controlled media and websites which paraded his death as a call to relaunch attacks against Israel and to unify all factions including PLO’s militants and those of Hamas. For example, Hamas media called him “a beacon of unity” among all factions. [1] … SOURCE
