Angry Mobs Target American, Israeli Outposts Throughout Middle East

10/18/2023, Istanbul, Turkey. Hundreds gathered spontaneously outside the Israeli Consulat
MERT CAN BUKULMEZ/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
Frances Martel

Angry mobs throughout the Middle East and North Africa targeted Israeli, American, French, and other Western embassies on Tuesday night.

Footage of the protests shows mobs setting fires and prompting widespread use of tear gas by riot police in protests responding to the mass killing of hundreds in a Gaza hospital reportedly caused by a misfired Palestinian jihadist rocket.

Hundreds — estimates range from 200 to 500 — of people were killed after a bomb fell over the Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday. Local authorities, controlled by the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas, immediately blamed the Israeli government for the killings, describing the bombing as alleged retaliation for the mass murder of civilians by Hamas terrorists on Israeli territory on October 7. The Israeli government denied the accusations and claimed to have evidence that the rocket that landed on the hospital belonged to an Iranian-backed terrorist organization with ties to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Israeli Foreign Ministry also unearthed video of a broadcast by the Qatari-backed news outlet Al Jazeera appearing to show a rocket misfiring at the same time that the strike on the Ahli Baptist Hospital occurred.

Evidence aside, radical Islamist groups and governments such as Iran, the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism, continued to blame Israel for a bombing believed to have been caused by Islamic Jihad. The accusations against Israel prompted thousands of Muslims to take the streets in the major cities of Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Tunisia, Jordan, and, reportedly, Iran and Yemen, among other Muslim-majority countries.

In Jordan, a mob flooded the streets of the capital, Amman, and attempted to force their way into the Israeli embassy compound. Police responded with tear gas and reportedly managed to subdue the crowd.

In Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, protesters surrounded the embassies of the United States and France, attempting but failing to storm them. Protesters also targeted the headquarters of a United Nations Mideast program in the capital; video published by local outlets showed the area outside the United Nations building on fire.

The Saudi outlet al-Arabiya published images outside the French embassy in Beirut of throngs of angry men being confronted by a cloud of tear gas.

Sawt Beirut, a local broadcaster, caught similar scenes in front of the American embassy in the capital.

In Turkey, mobs of angry Muslim men convened in both the capital, Ankara, and the largest city, Istanbul, as well as several other mid-sized communities in the country. The secularist newspaper Cumhuriyet reported that a mob formed outside of the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, blocking traffic and threatening the building. Major squares in the city were flooded with mostly male protesters waving Palestinian flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans.

In Ankara, the Turkish broadcaster Habertürk reported that members of the large crowd assembling to denounce Israel began shouting demands for a “caliphate.” A reporter on the ground described the situation as tense; images showed little room for members of the crowd or police officers on the scene to navigate.

In Malatya, Turkey, local reports claimed that hundreds of protesters got in their cars and attempted to drive towards the Kurecik Radar Station, a U.S. military outpost, to protest America’s solidarity with Israel in the face of the atrocious terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7. Reports do not indicate at press time that the crowd was successful in breaking into the radar base or attacking any Americans at the site.

The French embassy in Tunisia, as in Lebanon, also attracted a threatening mob. The Tunisian TAP News Agency reported that protesters in front of the embassy numbered into the hundreds and that they demanded the expulsion of both the American and French ambassadors from the country in response to the falsely alleged Israeli attack on the Gaza hospital

“Among the prominent figures in the protest was former Education Minister Mohamed Hamdi, who implored President Saied to remove the French and American ambassadors from Tunis, deeming them ‘parties to a grave offense,'” TAP reported.

Reports of widespread protests also erupted in Iraq and Iran. In Iraq, the local al-Sumaria television claimed that protesters chose Baghdad’s Tahrir Square for their manifestation. Iraq’s al-Rasheed TV published footage of a large crowd of men carrying a Palestinian flag and chanting Allahu akbar, or “Allah is supreme,” a common rallying cry for jihadists around the world.

Other reports indicated that protests also erupted in Morocco, Yemen, and Iran — where the Islamic regime organized large street celebrations on October 7 in response to the mass killing of civilians by Hamas.

The current state of escalated tensions between the Israeli government and the Hamas terrorist organization are a direct result of the October 7 terrorist attacks — which Hamas has branded the “al-Aqsa flood” — in which Hamas jihadists flooded Israel by foot and conducted door-to-door executions of families in residential communities, opened fire on attendees at a music festival, and tortured and abducted hundreds. The Israeli government has confirmed the deaths of over 1,200 people in the massacre and thousands more wounded and declared itself formally in a state of war on October 8.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect a revised number on the death toll from the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. The Israeli government estimate of 1,400 was revised to around 1,200, according to Reuters.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.