ISIS Iraq Syria
Militant Islamist fighters take part in a military parade along the streets of northern Raqqa province Reuters

Pro-Palestinian activists have launched an online campaign to liken Israel to the terror group Isis (now known as Islamic State), which has caused controversy among Israeli circles.

The campaign seeks to compare Israel to IS using the hashtag #JSIL, which stands for the Jewish State of Israel in the Levant.

Prominent journalists Max Blumenthal and Rania Khalek, both strong critics of Israeli policy, started the campaign that has now seen the hashtag tweeted more than 16,000 times in the last week.

The comparison between Israel and IS is made by the activists following the Gaza conflict, which saw over 2,000 Palestinians die during the Israel Defence Forces' (IDF) Operation Protective Edge.

The tongue-in-cheek campaign has seen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed the "caliph of JSIL" and claims of 2,000 American "foreign fighters" flocking to fighter for JSIL.

The reaction in the Israeli media has been one of condemnation with JNS.org calling JSIL "another obscene Israel analogy" and compared JSIL to other "ludicrous and insulting parallels" such as South Africa and Nazi Germany.

Other media, such as New York Magazine, called the campaign "awful" and said the people who created the campaign had "leaps of logic" while Financial Times Jerusalem correspondent Matthew Kalman tweeted: "Loving the #JSIL own-goal. Like a digital dunce's cap. Low-life purveyors of vicious hate speak have outed themselves."

See a selection of #JSIL tweets below:

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Israel Isis ISIL