An Israeli gay club's attempt to promote one of its parties by using an ISIS execution-themed poster has landed it in hot water, with online critics slamming the group for featuring two men in the desert wearing similar colors to the execution videos featuring the British terrorist "Jihad John."
Organized by the gay club promoters known as Drek, the ISIS-themed party, called "Drekistan at the Haoman," took place at Tel Aviv's Haoman 17 Club on Sept. 19, according to YFH.
"As the new Islamic State gains traction in the Middle East, we at Drek have decided to give in to Sharia law and cheer the stubborn Daesh," the organizers of the night wrote on Drek's Facebook page.
"Whilst the idea of ridiculing ISIS might be welcome in the Western world, the poster itself is seen as making light of the deaths of the Foley, Sotloff and Haines," according to Breitbart.
"We are trying to react to current events. We have been doing it for a number of years. But we reject violence in any form and that includes the (execution) videos intended to scare the world," Amiri Kalman, one of the Drek's founders, said in response to the chorus of criticism.
"Therefore we also refuse to participate with this fear and refuse to become hysterical. This is satire, and our way of showing our contempt of them and their videos."
Meanwhile, Kalman also said that the event itself did not include any terrorist iconography.
After two weeks of America's airstrikes on ISIS in Iraq, an ISIS-released video showed James Wright Foley being beheaded by the terrorist group on Aug. 20.
In the 5 minute-long video, "A Message to America," Foley was told to read a letter criticizing the involvement of the United States in helping the Iraqi Army and Kurdish fighters to oppose the militant group's efforts to capture whole of Iraq and set up a caliphate.
"I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the U.S. government. For what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality," Foley says in the video. He also addressed a message his brother John who works with the U.S. Air Force. Foley told John to think about who bombed Iraq recently. "Think, John. Who did they really kill? And did they think about me, you and our family when they made that decision?" he asked. "I died that day, John, when your colleagues dropped that bomb on those people; they signed my death certificate... I guess all in all, I wish I wasn't American."
The IS militant is then seen executing Foley, who was abducted at gunpoint near the town of Taftanaz in northern Syria on Thanksgiving Day in 2012. At the time, he was in Syria reporting about the civil war there.
Since then, Steven Sotloff and David Haines have also been beheaded in a similar manner.
