Israel is normalizing the assassination of religious leaders by targeting Sistani

Channel close to Netanyahu included Sistani on Israeli assassination list. Channel 14 Israel published a photo of the highest Shiite authority in Iraq, Ali al-Sistani, as one of the targets of Israeli assassination plans.

The photo of al-Sistani appeared alongside photos of the leader of the Houthi Ansar Allah group, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, Naim Qassem, deputy secretary-general of the Lebanese Hezbollah, Yahya Sinwar, head of the political bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Esmail Qaani, commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

The Israeli channel, which is close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, broadcast the photos yesterday, Tuesday, with the word “target” over the head of each of the aforementioned figures, without explaining the reasons for placing al-Sistani on the assassination list.

The photos appeared while one of the right-wing channel’s correspondents was talking about the possible Israeli response to the missile attack launched by Iran on Israel last Tuesday.

The correspondent said during his interview accompanying the photos that Israel "has made a decision to strike Iran, but the targets that will be attacked have not yet been determined," and he also indicated that the date of the possible Israeli response has not yet been determined either.

He said that unless a decision is made regarding the determination of targets and the date of the response, all possibilities are possible.

Israel has not previously spoken about the assassination of Sistani, although a number of its officials have mentioned the names of all the other figures whose pictures were shown on the channel as potential targets on the Israeli assassination list.

Sistani, who was born in 1930, is a religious authority for the fundamentalist Twelver Shiites and resides in the city of Najaf in central Iraq, which is the center of the main religious science schools known as the "Najaf Seminary," and he is one of the most influential figures in the country due to his broad religious authority. His name might have been added to Israel's assassination list due to his statements about the assassination of the Lebanese leader of Hezbollah. Sistani issued a statement, then, saying that "Martyr Nasrallah is a leadership model that is unparalleled in recent decades"

In his official statement he added: "We received with great sorrow and regret the news of the martyrdom of the great scholar, the hujjat al-Islam and Muslims, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and a group of his brothers in the honorable Lebanese resistance, and dozens of innocent civilians in the horrific massacre committed by the Zionist enemy army in the beloved suburb of Beirut."

He added, "The great martyr was a leadership model that was rarely seen in recent decades. He played a distinguished role in the victory over the Zionist occupation by liberating Lebanese lands and supported the Iraqis with everything he could in liberating their country from the ISIS terrorists. He also took great positions in support of the oppressed Palestinian people until he paid his precious life as a price for that." He added, "As we offer our sincere condolences and deepest sympathy to the noble Lebanese people and all oppressed peoples in this great loss and affliction, we implore God Almighty to bestow His vast mercy and satisfaction upon the deceased and to unite him with His saints, Muhammad and his pure family, in the highest heavens, and to inspire his family and all those who are grieving his loss with patience and solace. To God we belong and to Him we shall return."

Iraqi government responds

In the first reactions, the Iraqi government said that it rejects in the strongest terms any infringement on the status of the supreme religious authority.

The spokesman for the Iraqi government, Bassem Al-Awadi, stressed in an official government statement that "after the Zionist entity has gone too far in its genocidal war, committed blatant crimes against humanity, and openly practiced murder and aggression in Gaza and Lebanon, it is the turn of its inciting and racist media, in a cheap attempt to harm the image of the supreme religious authority."

He added, "the Iraqi government rejects in the strongest terms any infringement on the status of our authority, which is appreciated and respected by all the Iraqi people, the Arab and Islamic worlds, and the international community, and warns of the danger of these attempts based on a racist intellectual background, and foundations that have gone too far in disregarding the sanctities of peoples, which encourages the expansion of the circle of aggression and exposes international security and peace to a real threat."

He continued, "the Zionist entity proves, once again, that it is nothing but a criminal group that thrives on fabricating crises, feeding aggression and wars, and its isolation increases day after day, and the popular and international positions in the world rejecting its behavior are nothing but confirmation of this aggressive trend."

Based on these facts, the Iraqi government- according to the statement - "call on the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and all international and UN forums, to reject and denounce everything that affects the feelings of Muslims in the world, and attempts to undermine figures with global influence and respect."

The statement explained that Iraq, government and people, have made every effort to stop the war, but Israel and its extremist government, in addition to the failure of the international community, have caused the situation to worsen, and today it is trying to spread insults to cover up the clear crimes, which we reject in general, and consider it a dangerous aggression that will not change Iraq's firm and principled position on all fateful issues.