Ashab al-Yamin: The obscure new group claiming Jewish ambulance attack
An obscure group has claimed responsibility for an arson attack on Jewish charity-owned ambulances in London.
The Metropolitan Police said on Monday evening it was investigating the claim posted online by a group which called itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (Hayi) - The Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand.
Met Police chief Mark Rowley said there had been a “rapid growth” of Iranian state threats in recent years, but added that it was “too early” to attribute the attack to Iran.
But the Israeli government has said Hayi is linked to Iran.
What do we know about the group, which only surfaced publicly earlier this month?
In the early hours of Monday, four ambulances owned by the Jewish charity Hatzola were set ablaze in the car park of Machzike Hadath Synagogue in London’s Golders Green area, triggering explosions of several gas canisters onboard the vehicles. There were no casualties.
The Met said the attack was being investigated by counter-terrorism detectives and treated as an antisemitic hate crime.
Hayi appears to have first surfaced online on 9 March and has claimed responsibility for multiple attacks across Europe this month.
It took responsibility for the London arson attack via a Telegram account within hours of the incident.
Middle East Eye could not independently verify the group’s claims.
The Telegram account appears to have been created two days before the London incident, on 21 March.
It posted a statement in Hebrew, Arabic and English.
An MEE analysis found that two separate AI detection software gave the statement a high likelihood of having been AI-generated.
The statement in English included the name “Israel” four times, including one reference to the “Land of Israel” - considered highly unusual for an anti-Zionist Shia group.
It also referred to Israel’s genocide in Gaza as “the Gaza war”, also considered unusual for such a group.
“I think there was an initial AI prompt to give an answer in one of the three languages and then it was machine translated into the other two,” Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on militant groups in Iraq and Syria, told MEE.
Israeli government says group ‘Iran-aligned’
Hayi’s statement said the group targeted the synagogue because its “deepest connection to Israel is through Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel and one of the most influential thinkers of Religious Zionism, who served at this synagogue before immigrating to the Land of Israel.
“This historical bond continues to this day, and the synagogue has become one of the main bastions of support for Israel in Britain; so much so that in June 2024, Rishi Sunak, the former British Prime Minister, visited this site amidst the Gaza war to affirm, alongside his expression of solidarity with the Jewish community, his country's unwavering support for Israel”.
Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs published a report a few hours after the attack saying that an “Iran-aligned militant group” claimed responsibility via Telegram.
It said the attack “aligns with” similar “antisemitic arson incidents across Europe” linked to “the same Iran-aligned network”.
The report said it was based on “information received through network monitoring with the assistance of a technological system”.
Most mentions of Hayi in the media cited an earlier report by the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs from 15 March.
That report’s main sources included a Jerusalem Post story, which said the group is believed to be linked to Iran-backed Shia factions in Iraq, as well as an article on an Egyptian news website, and an open-source analyst’s LinkedIn post.
Previous activity
There were no known references to Hayi either online or offline until an explosion in front of a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege on 9 March. There were no casualties.
The group claimed responsibility for the attack on Telegram channels “affiliated with groups of the axis of resistance”, according to the Israeli government.
A conglomerate Telegram channel for Shia factions in Iraq called Sabereen, which has over a million followers, posted on 11 March: “Groups calling themselves [Hayi] claim responsibility for targeting a Jewish synagogue in Belgium.”
Hayi then reportedly claimed responsibility for an attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam on 13 March, an attack on a Jewish school in Amsterdam on 14 March, and another on a commercial centre in the same city two days later.
None of these attacks resulted in casualties and all of them targeted Jewish sites.
The group has changed its logo over the past few weeks. Its first one was black and white, while the logo posted in the statement on Monday is in colour and bears resemblance to other Shia militia group flags, depicting a hand clasping a sniper rifle.
“The group’s logo is typical of ‘resistance axis’ groups with the arm holding a rifle,” Tamimi told MEE.
Belgium attack
Hayi claimed in the early hours of Tuesday that it had carried out another arson attack on Monday evening in Antwerp, Belgium.
Belgian authorities said a car was torched and two minors were arrested over the incident.
Hayi’s statement was also classed as being likely AI-generated by two AI detection softwares, MEE found.
It said Antwerp “has a large Zionist community, which has given it a special religious and cultural significance for some Jews, and it is sometimes called the “Jerusalem of the North”.
This time the statement did not use the name Israel, saying: “Operations will continue to escalate and intensify until the liberation of our occupied lands in beloved Palestine and revenge for the blood of the Palestinians, Lebanese, and all Muslims.”
Tamimi said: “There have been previous attacks on Israeli targets in Europe, such as attacks in Cyprus and Bulgaria in 2012.
“I cannot say whether Iran is specifically directing attacks in Europe now but there are, no doubt, Iran and resistance axis supporters in Europe who think these kinds of attacks are legitimate.”
In a blog post investigating Hayi’s activities, Tamimi found that its attacks were posted on multiple Iraqi Telegram channels that support the axis of resistance - an umbrella term for groups aligned with Iran.
That included a channel which supports Kata’ib Hezbollah, a prominent Iran-backed Iraqi faction.
Another channel supportive of the faction Quwat Dhu al-Fiqar posted Hiya’s propaganda video, with the caption: “The Islamic Resistance Ashab al-Yamin strikes a Zionist target in Greece with an IED.”
Previous arson attacks in the UK have also been linked to hostile state actors communicating through Telegram, including a warehouse fire in Leyton that counter-terror police said was committed by arsonists backed by Russia.
The Met Police said authenticating Hayi's claim of responsibility was a priority.
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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