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‘The Lion King’ Meets Hamas

Earlier this summer, a Mickey Mouse look-alike was martyred in a children’s cartoon on Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV, and now it appears that the station’s animators have been inspired by Disney once again. A new video, titled “A Message to the Criminal Gangs in the Occupied West Bank,” features a character that bears a striking resemblance to Simba from the 1994 film “The Lion King.”

The calm yet powerful lion represents Hamas in a five-minute cartoon portraying the Islamic group crushing their opponents in Fatah. Members of Fatah are portrayed as rats with machine guns and bags of American dollars. In one frame, the lion licks his lips as a bone marked with the Star of David sits at his feet. The video was released last week but then taken off the air for revisions, the Associated Press reported. A new, slightly less inflammatory version is said to be in the works.

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