Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while accusing Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza, has asked the Palestinians to continue with their resistance against the "rabid dog" Israel.
In his Eid al-Fitr address, Khamenei also criticized the Western world for its failure to save the lives of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.
"This rabid dog, this rapacious wolf, has attacked innocent people and humanity must show a reaction. This is genocide, a catastrophe of historical scale," Reuters quoted Khamenei.
Khamenei also emphasized that there should be no talk of a ceasefire in Gaza, as is a ploy by the United States and European countries to save Israel and said Hamas should be re-armed, rather than disarmed as otherwise they will be "unable to defend themselves."
"The US president issued a fatwa that the resistance is disarmed so that they cannot respond to all those crimes (committed by Israel)," the Iranian religious leader said, referring to the call by Barack Obama for the "disarmament of terrorist groups and the demilitarisation of Gaza".
The Iranian spiritual leader, who wields considerable influence among Muslims world over, instead asked the Islamic followers to unite against Israel.
"Everyone, whoever has the means, especially in the Islamic world, they should do what they can to arm the Palestinian nation... the Zionist regime deeply regrets starting this (war), but has no way out," he said.
"They [Israeli forces] have been pounding innocent people day and night and these men, women and children are defending themselves with minimum means, and now Americans and Europeans want to take even that away... so that those merciless beasts could pound without qualm."
In the last 22 days since the start of the Israel-Palestine conflict 1,087 people, mostly civilians have been killed.
Despite its strong condemnation of Israel, Iran allegedly has provided Hamas and other Islamic Jihadists with long-range missiles such as the Fajr-5 and M302.
Khamenei, earlier last year too, had called Israel "the rabid dog of the region."
