Following are excerpt from two interviews with Lebanese Salafi imam Ahamd Al-Assir, which aired on LBC TV on March 15, 2012 and on Al-Arabiya TV on March 23, 2012 :

LBC TV

Ahmad Al-Assir : There are many who peddle in the Palestinian cause.

Interviewer : Like who?

Ahmad Al-Assir : Like the Iranians and their enterprise.

Interviewer : You mean Hizbullah?

Ahmad Al-Assir : Yes, Hizbullah peddles in the Iranian cause, and it has deceived us greatly. What is happening in Syria has made all masks fall.

Interviewer : What do you mean?

Ahmad Al-Assir : The issue of the resistance, and Palestine, and so on. Their hatred toward our people in Syria far exceeds their hatred toward the Israelis. Hassan Nasrallah stated clearly that if Syria is bombed, the fighting would engulf the entire region.

Interviewer : What did he mean?

Ahmad Al-Assir : When Gaza is bombed and Jenin is slaughtered, the fighting does not engulf the entire region, but it does when Syria is bombed?! How come? It is clear. They make use of the title "Palestine," because it is sensitive and provokes the region, in order to get a very dangerous enterprise passed – the enterprise of the Rule of the Jurisprudent, which we reject out of hand. They are free to believe in whatever they like and to follow any ideology, but they cannot deceive us by talking about Islamic unity, and, once they get the upper hand, use their weapons, like on May 7, and accuse me of sectarianism, and buy people off, in order to disintegrate the Sunnis.

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Al-Arabiya TV

Interviewer : You said that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was better than Bashar Al-Assad. Did you really say this?

Ahmad Al-Assir : No, I said that what is done by the Israelis – the criminal Israeli Zionists – is a thousand times better than what Bashar the butcher is doing.

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The massacres in Syria are horrific. We have never seen Israel do what the criminal Bashar does.

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