In the image, Hafiz Sa‘id (or Saeed), leader of Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT) and its front, the charity organization Jama‘at al-Da’wa, is seen on the far right, at a rally held in Lahore on 13 June 2010 to protest the Israeli response to Mavi Marmara flotilla ships bound for Gaza.
The image incorporates a number of motifs familiar in jihadi imagery. For instance, the American flag, or parts thereof (such as the stars and stripes), are widely used in jihadi propaganda to evoke negative sentiments towards U.S. foreign policy and military campaigns. The stars and stripes are also used to color other symbols in an image, thereby linking the symbols to U.S. foreign policy and military intervention in the Muslim world. Here, the U.S. flag appears in combination with the Israeli flag, and both are portrayed as part of a sleeve or armband on a male arm that is swooping down to clutch the Dome of the Rock. Thus, the flags represent a political protest against the close cooperation between the U.S. and Israel against Jama‘at al-Dawa, which has been banned in the U.S. The combination of the flags is also an expression of oft-repeated sentiments and conspiracy theories regarding Jewish world domination. Also significant is the image of the Dome of the Rock (symbol of Palestinian nationhood) bound with barbed wire. The barbed wire serves a dual purpose: it is a political protest against Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount and Jerusalem in general, and may also be perceived as an anti-Semitic comparison of Israeli Jews to German Nazi occupiers during World War II.
Finally, the LeT flag is on the right side of the image, against a blue background. The white banner of the LeT finds its roots in the Islamic tradition, where the Prophet Muhammad is said to have used a white flag to represent both the leader of the Muslim army and the first Muslim state.
