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Controversy in Gaza over Billboards Commemorating Iranian General Soleimani
(MEMRI) Ahead of the second anniversary of his assassination, posters commemorating Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, were put up on billboards around Gaza. Majdi Al-Mughrabi, a Salafi sheikh from Rafah, called on the people of Gaza to tear down the posters, as he did last year. On Dec. 30, 2021, he wrote on Facebook: "Those who love and loyally follow the Prophet...must object to having this garbage hanging over their heads, and they should tear it down and trample it underfoot." The following day he posted: "Although there are [Iranian] mercenaries in Gaza [Hamas and Islamic Jihad] who insist on putting up pictures of the dead Soleimani and of others like him from among the leaders of the Rafida [a derogatory term for Shi'ites], there are also devout and righteous believers here, of all streams, who will not agree to having these filthy pictures hanging in the skies of Gaza." After some pictures were torn down, Al-Mughrabi wrote: "Praise Allah, some Muslim youths, clean of hands and pure of heart, tore down several pictures of the dead warmonger and criminal Soleimani." On Jan. 3, 2022, Al-Mughrabi wrote: "What resistance are these mercenaries speaking about?! Resistance by smuggling and by expelling, murdering and imprisoning the Syrian people?...Or perhaps they are talking about similar actions carried out in Iraq, which has been butchered, in Yemen, which has been plundered and destroyed, or in Lebanon?!"