WarSclerotic

Islamic State fighters assault last Syrian stronghold in Raqqah, Long War Journal, Bill Roggio, August 24, 2014

(Since I was unable to post the map, here’s a link: Iraqi and Syrian towns and cities seized by the Islamic State and its allies. Map created by Patrick Megahan and Bill Roggio for The Long War Journal. Click to view larger map. — DM)

The Islamic State is close to cementing its control in the eastern Syrian province of Raqqah today after it overran the Tabqa military airport. The airbase is the last Syrian military stronghold in Raqqah.

Islamic State fighters “took control over wide areas of the airbase” after launching a massed assault earlier today, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A number of Syrian soldiers and allied “militiamen” withdrew “towards Athraya Area” after heavy fighting. Syrian warplanes attacked Islamic State fighters inside and outside of the airbase, indicating the military has lost control of the facility.

This Islamic State removed a nearby checkpoint to allow Syrian forces “an attempt to give the regime forces a path in order to retreat from the airbase and to avoid the violent clashes with them inside the airbase,” the Observatory later reported. “The warplanes that were in the airbase of [Tabqa] have been towed to another airbase in the Syrian Badeya and to the Military Airport of Deir Ezzor.”

The jihadists “took control” of the base “almost completely,” the Observatory said in a later update.

The Islamic State took heavy casualties during the fighting. According to the Observatory, over 100 Islamic State fighters were killed and 300 more were wounded. Twenty-five Syrian soldiers were killed and dozens more were wounded.

The city of Tabqa, which is just north of the city, and the nearby Thawra Dam have been under the control of Islamist forces since February 2013. The Al Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, seized the city and dam, and control was transferred to the Islamic State sometime after the two Islamist groups split over the dispute over who controlled the jihad in Syria.

The Islamic State currently controls the city of Raqqah, the provincial capital and its de facto capital in Syria, and other towns and cities along the Euphrates River.

Earlier this month, the Islamic State defeated the 93rd Brigade of the Syrian Army. The unit was deployed from Idlib province to Raqqah in 2012 to reinforce the military’s weakening position in the province. On Aug. 23, the Islamic State published a video of “its brutal execution of Syrian soldiers” captured during the fighting, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. One soldier was beheaded.

The Islamic State “had also reported the killing of an IS [Islamic State] media member, Abu Usama al Ansari, during the operation,” SITE reported. “Footage shows one of the suicide bombers, Abu Hajer al Jazrawi, reading his will, and shows fighters storming the area and killing the soldiers it encounters.” Based on his name, the suicide bomber appears to be a Saudi.

The Islamic State controls most of eastern Syria and has recently advanced further into Aleppo province, where it is threatening the Al Nusrah Front as well as the allied Islamic Front. In Iraq, the jihadist group controls much of Anbar, Ninewa, Salahaddin, and Diyala provinces, as well as areas in northern Babil.

The US began launching airstrikes against the Islamic State in the northern areas of Ninewa after ignoring pleas by the Iraqi government to help halt the advance of the jihadist group for the past year. The Islamic State first took over areas in Anbar in January, then launched its blitzkrieg in the north in June. The US intervened only after the Islamic State seized the Mosul Dam and advanced into areas controlled by the Kurds. The airstrikes have helped the Kurds and the Iraqi military retake the dam and surrounding areas.

James Foley beheading: UK close to identifying jihadist

The UK is close to identifying a suspected British jihadist from the footage of the killing of a journalist, the ambassador to the US has said.

The Islamic State (IS) militant with an English accent appears in the extremist group’s video of the killing of American journalist James Foley.

“I do know from my colleagues at home that we are close,” Peter Westmacott told CNN’s State of the Union show.

The Foreign Office and Home Office refused to comment on the remarks.

“We do not comment on security matters,” an FCO spokesman said.

‘Sophisticated technologies’

Mr Westmacott said: “We’re not far away from that [finding Foley’s killer]. We’re putting a lot into it.”

He added that some “very sophisticated” voice recognition technology was being used in the hunt, which is being led by the FBI.

“I can’t say more than this at the moment, but I do know from my colleagues at home that we are close,” he added.

Earlier this month, extremist group IS published a video of the moments before and after the apparent beheading of Mr Foley, 40, who was seized in Syria in 2012.

The man shown in the video spoke with an English accent

Referring to the 500-plus British citizens who are thought to have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight in the past few years, Mr Westmacott said: “It goes beyond one horrendous criminal… It’s a betrayal of all our values.”

His comments come after Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond wrote in theSunday Times that the government was investing “significant resources” to tackle “a barbaric ideology”.

Mr Hammond also warned the threat from conflicts in Syria and Iraq could last a generation.

Philip Hammond said the conflicts in Iraq and Syria could last a generation

Downing Street earlier announced the appointment of a new security convoy to Iraq.

Lt Gen Sir Simon Mayall, the government’s senior defence advisor for the Middle East, will travel to the country next week to meet political leaders.

Work is also under way to supply “non-lethal equipment” to Kurdish forces who are battling IS, including night vision equipment and body armour, a No 10 spokesman added.

Domestic threat

Home Secretary Theresa May has said the government is looking at new powers to tackle the threat of extremism in Britain.

But shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper called for a stronger domestic response.

“More must be done to stop British citizens joining the barbarism and to keep the country safe if they return,” she wrote in the Sunday Times.

Islamic State was formed out of al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2013

She called for more action “to disrupt the travel plans of those planning go out to fight through better monitoring of the borders’ watch list as well as access to passports”.

The Home Office insisted it would take the “strongest possible action” against people travelling to fight in Iraq and Syria.

A spokesman said: “The police, security services and Border Force are actively working to identify, detect and disrupt terrorist threats, including from British fighters attempting to return to the UK.

“They use a wide range of powers including those which allow them to detain and interview individuals at the UK border suspected of being involved in terrorism.”

Senior Conservative MP David Davis, meanwhile, said TPims – used to restrict movement, the use of computers and mobile phones and meetings with others – were “completely useless”.

“What happens with them is that all the dangerous villains get away – they leave the country, go off back to Pakistan or now to Iraq,” he told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend.

Who are Islamic State (IS)?

• Formed out of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in 2013, IS first captured Raqqa in eastern Syria
• By early 2014, it controlled Falluja in western Iraq
• Has since captured broad swathes of Iraq, seizing the northern city of Mosul in June
• Fighting has displaced at least 1.2 million Iraqis
• Pursuing an extreme form of Sunni Islam, IS has persecuted non-Muslims such as Yazidis and Christians, as well as Shia Muslims, whom it regards as heretics
• In July alone, IS expanded dramatically, recruiting some 6,300 new fighters largely in Raqqa, an activist monitoring group said

Government forces in Iraq said on Sunday that they had defeated an attack – suspected to be by IS – on the country’s largest oil refinery, killing several insurgents.

The Baiji refinery in northern Iraq has been the site of several battles between government forces and militants over the past few months.

Meanwhile, a car bomb killed at least seven people in the capital Baghdad.

The face of jihad now known to America, meanwhile Foley was ISIS ‘whipping boy’ 

August 24, 2014
“Reportedly a devout Catholic with a special devotion to the Rosary, Foley was crucified at least once to a wall at the hands of his ISIS captors…”

To the horror of almost every civilized human on the planet, the al-Qaeda allied terrorists known by the acronym ISIS left little to the imagination when it comes to dealing with their captives. As reported by Fox News on Aug.24, 2014, the jihadi terrorist who savagely carved American journalist James “Jim” Foley’s head off before the camera has been identified.

Fitting the textbook definition of terrorist, both American and British intelligence agencies have identified the executioner of Jim Foley who was executed while kneeling and had his hands tied behind his back. As reported by London’s The Sunday Times on Aug. 24, 2014, Great Britain’s MI5 and MI6 (Military Intelligence) ID’d as the knife-wielding killer of the unarmed Foley as British subject Abdel Majed Abdel Bary.

The 23-year-old failed wannabe Rap singer recently left his family’s £1 million ($1,667,000) home in west London’s affluent Maida Vale district to join the ISIS terrorists in their quest for world domination. Unable to find fame in the world of Hip-Hop, Bary has gained notoriety in the British press, now branded as “Public Enemy Number One” as well as “Jihadi John.”

London’s The Daily Mail reports on Aug. 24, 2014 that prior to his execution, Foley was the favorite “whipping boy” of the terrorists due to them discovering a photo of the slain reporter’s brother on his lap-top computer. The photo in question is of Foley’s older brother, a US Air Force Captain.

Reportedly a devout Catholic with a special devotion to the Rosary, Foley was crucified at least once to a wall at the hands of his ISIS captors. Not the first time taken by Islamists, Foley was also captured by Libyan jihaddists in 2011 during the Obama-supported attack on strongman Mohamar Kadaffi. As The Catholic World Report noted during his captivity:

I began to pray the rosary. It was what my mother and grandmother would have prayed. 
I said 10 Hail Marys between each Our Father. It took a long time, almost an hour to count 100 Hail Marys off on my knuckles. And it helped to keep my mind focused.

Clare and I prayed together out loud. It felt energizing to speak our weaknesses and hopes together, as if in a conversation with God, rather than silently and alone.

.

President Obama, not the Islamic State, is a junior varsity player or worse, Dan Miller’s Blog, August 24, 2014

Has President Obama finally awakened to reality, or does He remain lost in a dense fog? 

According to Secretary Hagel, we must be concerned not only about what we know is out there, but also about “what could be out there and what could be coming. . . . We must prepare for everything.”

Shouldn’t we be more attentive to the likelihood of Islamic invasions across our southern border? It may happen and could already be happening. However, the Obama Administration seems unwilling even to consider the possibility, perhaps because President Obama views them as merely adherents to the religion of peace death and because He wants to keep our southern borders open to scam as many Hispanic votes for His party as He can.

For President Obama, everything depends on His perceptions of Islam and on the direction His unicorn weather vane tells Him the political winds are blowing.

Here’s a video of Judge Jeanine “ranting” about the murder of U.S. citizen James Foley by a British jihadist affiliated with the Islamic State (IS, ISIS or ISIL). Does President Obama understand the threat presented by Islam, not only to America but also to other already diminished free and democratic nations in the western world?

Multiculturalism

The focus of President Obama and the rest of leftist society on having even more multiculturalism than at present gives excessive latitude to jihadists, not only to change western civilization for the worse but also to engage in jihad at home and abroad — for example with IS in Iraq and elsewhere. According to British Professor Anthony Glees in an article about the threat of multiculturalism,

It is now obvious to everyone that almost ten years after the London bombings, Britain has a serious and growing problem when it comes to young British Muslims becoming radicalised and turning to terror. What now needs to be reflected upon is why this should be the case – and what our policy makers must do about it.

Part of the problem is that many Muslims in Britain come from parts of the world like Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Horn of Africa, where political violence is endemic. Yet the biggest single trigger of jihadism here has been our adherence to ‘multiculturalism’ which has meant that we have for far too long allowed vile Islamist ideologies to be propagated under the cover of ‘free speech’ or ‘religious freedom’. [Emphasis added.]

See also, Just a Bit More Beheading than We are Used To:

[A]s I recall saying after the last decapitation performed by a British man, the unspoken British deal on multiculturalism appears to come to light at such moments. The deal — the acceptance and accommodation — appears to be that mass, uncontrolled immigration has brought us all sorts of benefits, including a greater variety of food and cheap labour. The downside is that we have to put up with, among other things, a bit more beheading than we have been used to. But much of the political class appears to be content with this bargain. I beg to differ. As horrors like those of this week mount, a great many more people might feel that way too. [Emphasis added.]

In the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution affirms our rights to freedom of speech, the press, religion and assembly. It does not guarantee any “right” to murder, to engage in other forms of violence or to incite to murder or to other forms of violence. Taking proper measures to stop domestic devotees of the religion of peace death from murdering and inciting to violence would in no way deprive them of their First Amendment or other constitutional rights.

Our domestic criminal justice system is not suitable for jihadists who acted abroad

How about the Obama Administration’s focus on bringing jihadists acting abroad “to justice” via our domestic criminal justice system? Andrew C. McCarthy, in a National Review article titled Obama’s America Is September 10th America, wrote:

Our barbaric jihadist enemies – the ones President Obama repeatedly assured us he had “decimated” and put on “the path to defeat” – are now stronger than ever. Not stronger than they have been in years, or decades – stronger than ever. They have seized a country-size swath of territory (and growing). They have just beheaded an American journalist – which is the sort of thing they do as a matter of routine but has obviously, and finally, gotten our attention. [Emphasis added.]

Not to worry, though: The Obama Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation. I’m sure ISIS is quaking.

The Obama administration has spent six years miniaturizing the global jihad as a series of non-ideological, unconnected groups of “violent extremists,” pursuing parochial political objectives through acts of “workplace violence.” The enemy kills our ambassador to Libya, a palpable act of war, and the administration pretends it’s about a video. The enemy decapitates an American because he’s an American, and the administration announces the opening of a criminal investigation. The enemy bombs and beheads, we subpoena and indict. [Emphasis added.]

Mr. McCarthy had also opined in 2008 that then candidate Obama’s penchant for using our criminal justice system against jihadists had been “an abysmal failure.” He then observed,

When an elitist lawyer like Obama claims the criminal-justice system “works” against terrorists, he means it satisfies his top concern: due process [for the terrorists.]. And on that score, he’s quite right: We’ve shown we can conduct trials that are fair to the terrorists. After all, we give them lawyers paid for by the taxpayers whom they are trying to kill, mounds of our intelligence in discovery, and years upon years of pretrial proceedings, trials, appeals, and habeas corpus.

As a national-security strategy, however, and as a means of carrying out our government’s first responsibility to protect the American people, heavy reliance on criminal justice is an abysmal failure. [Emphasis added.]

In his current article, Mr. McCarthy notes:

Admittedly, that was before Obama empowered the virulently anti-American Muslim Brotherhood; made Islamic supremacists key administration advisors; blinded our national security agents by purging Islamic-supremacist ideology from training materials; colluded with Islamic-supremacist countries to restrict American free speech rights; tried to give civilian trials to enemy-combatant terrorists responsible for mass-murdering Americans; imported enemy-combatant jihadists for civilian trials despite congressional proscriptions; waged an unauthorized war in Libya that enabled our enemies to kill American officials and besiege North Africa and the Middle  East; negotiated with Iran-backed terrorists in trading jihadist leaders for the remains of British casualties; negotiated with Taliban terrorists in trading jihadist commanders for a deserter; assured Iran’s acquisition of nuclear arms; issued visas to terrorist operatives for consultations on American foreign policy; sided with Hamas during its latest war of aggression against Israel; and declined to acknowledge that the jihadist mass-murder of 13 American soldiers at Fort Hood was a terrorist attack. [Emphasis added.]

Yet Obama is currently serving His second term as “our” President.

President Obama — Defender of the faith

Like Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad and all the rest, the Islamic State promotes the imposition of Sharia law in the name of Islam. They all understand themselves to be Muslims acting on behalf of the faith. Yet Obama makes a special point of standing up for the good name of Islam, such as it is. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Let’s be clear about ISIL. They have rampaged across cities and villages — killing innocent, unarmed civilians in cowardly acts of violence. They abduct women and children, and subject them to torture and rape and slavery. They have murdered Muslims — both Sunni and Shia — by the thousands. They target Christians and religious minorities, driving them from their homes, murdering them when they can for no other reason than they practice a different religion. They declared their ambition to commit genocide against an ancient people.

So ISIL speaks for no religion. [Emphasis added.]

Although Hitler spoke for Nazism, the IS does not speak for Islam?

Why does President Obama say such things?

The President sought to reinforce the notion that, because ISIL’s “victims are overwhelmingly Muslim,” the group’s terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. In fact, practically from Islam’s inception, innumerable Muslims have been massacred by their co-religionists over such matters as Sunni-Shia differences concerning fine points of theology or insufficient conformity with shariah. [Emphasis added.]

Mr. Obama also asserted that the Islamic State’s “ideology is bankrupt.” Calling that ideology bankrupt at a moment when it is palpably on the march from North and sub-Saharan Africa to the Far East and Latin America bespeaks a contempt for the intelligence of the American people. It is approximately as delusional and misleading as Obama’s previous, electioneering claim that one of shariah’s other jihadist franchises, al Qaeda, is “on the path to defeat.” [Emphasis added.]

In short, President Obama’s comments marking the decapitation of James Foley are but the latest in a series of instances of national security fraud on his part. Intentional or not, they have the effect of engendering a false sense of security at home, even as they embolden our jihadist and other enemies – who are ever-alert to weakness, lack of seriousness, or irresolution on America’s part. [Emphasis added.]

A particularly unsettling example of those qualities was evident in the President’s closing assurance that “we will be vigilant… and relentless” in protecting the American people. Actually, at the moment he is being clueless, disingenuous, and ineffectual in doing so. And that puts us all at risk.

According to The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the IS has expanded by “at least 6,300 jihadists in the past month, the fastest expansion of the organization to date.” [Emphasis added.] See also ‘Twice as Many’ British Muslims Fighting for ISIS Than in UK Armed Forces. These factors suggest the opposite of ideological “bankruptcy,” except to the delusional.

Are President Obama’s concerns that the IS “victims are overwhelmingly Muslim” at or at least close to the center of His problem with IS?

Are the victims of the IS in some undefined (and probably undefinable) way different from those of all other Islamic jihadist organizations? Or is President Obama “confused” about Islam? To conclude that He is merely confused would give Him an undeserved benefit of the doubt.

The Islamists in the following video do not seem to be confused.

Here are a link to and excerpt from an article by Andrew Bostom in which that video appears:

The Luton Muslims “Khaybar chant” in the embedded video derives, as examples, from two of the canonical hadith collections (words and deeds of Muhammad as recorded by his devout, early followers), and the first and most authoritative Muslim biography of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq. These contemporary Luton Muslims are threatening Jews, now, and in general, with the same violence Muhammad and his prototype Muslim jihadist army inflicted upon the Jews of Khaybar. [Emphasis added.]

Hamas, et al, are IS wannabes.

According to Alan M. Dershowitz, ISIS is to America as Hamas is to Israel. Yet President Obama stated,

“There has to be a common effort to extract this cancer so it does not spread. There has to be a clear rejection of the kind of a nihilistic ideologies. One thing we can all agree on is group like (ISIS) has no place in the 21st century. Friends and allies around the world, we share a common security a set of values opposite of what we saw yesterday. We will continue to confront this hateful terrorism and replace it with a sense of hope and stability.” [Emphasis added.]

At the same time that President Obama has called for an all-out war against the “cancer” of ISIS, he has regarded Hamas as having an easily curable disease, urging Israel to accept that terrorist group, whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction, as part of a Palestinian unity government. I cannot imagine him urging Iraq, or any other Arab country, to accept ISIS as part of a unity government. [Emphasis added.]

Since the Islamic State has no “place in the 21st century,” why should other Islamist jihad organizations professing the same or comparable ideologies of death and destruction be deemed to have a legitimate place?

Why the double standard? [continuing from the post linked immediately above]

Is it the manner by which ISIS kills? Beheading is of course a visibly grotesque means of killing, but dead is dead and murder is murder. And it matters little to the victim’s family whether the death was caused by beheading, by hanging or by a bullet in the back of a head. Indeed most of ISIS’s victims have been shot rather than beheaded, while Hamas terrorists have slaughtered innocent babies in their beds, teenagers on the way home from school, women shopping, Jews praying and students eating pizza.

. . . .

Is it because ISIS has specifically threatened to bring its terrorism to American shores, while Hamas focuses its terrorism in Israel? The Hamas Charter does not limit its murderous intentions to one country. Like ISIS it calls for a worldwide “caliphate,” brought about by violent Jihad. [Emphasis added.]

Everything we rightly fear and despise from ISIS we should fear and despise from Hamas. Just as we would never grant legitimacy to ISIS, we should not grant legitimacy to Hamas—at the very least until it rescinds its charter and renounces violence. Unfortunately that is about as likely as America rescinding its constitution. Violence, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism are the sine qua non of Hamas’ mission. [Emphasis added.]

Just as ISIS must be defeated militarily and destroyed as a terrorist army, so too must Hamas be responded to militarily and its rockets and tunnels destroyed.[Emphasis added.]

The twisted perceptions of United Nations Human Rights Wrongs commission differ little from those of the Obama Administration.

Of ceasefires and negotiations

President Obama has not yet suggested ceasefires and negotiations between the IS and Iraq leading to the formation of an IS – Iraq – Syria – al Qaeda unity government. Why has He not urged the “international community” to “give peace a chance” by doing so? It would be absurd even to suggest it, but that hasn’t stopped Him before.

Now that Israel appears finally to be on the path to winning the war in Gaza, President Obama’s Secretary of State may again be at least hinting that there should be more ceasefires in Gaza and more negotiations with Hamas, et al. Calling for that has become a reflex action against Israel.

CAIRO –  The U.S. and Egypt sought Tuesday to find an end to two weeks of bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, and officials raised the possibility of restarting stalled peace talks between Israel and Palestinian authorities as a necessary step to avoid sustained violence. [Emphasis added.]

It’s unlikely that Washington is ready to wade back into the morass of peace negotiations that broke off last April after nearly nine months of shuttle diplomacy by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. But the new round of fighting between Israel and Hamas militants who control Gaza has reached the level of violence that U.S. officials warned last spring would happen without an enduring truce.

Kerry, meeting with Egypt’s president and other high-level officials, stopped short of advocating a new round of peace talks. Still, he said his discussions in Cairo were designed to “hopefully find not only a way to a cease-fire, but a way to deal with the underlying issues, which are very complicated.” [Emphasis added.]

Secretary Kerry may consider the “underlying issues . . . very complicated,” but they are not. Israel’s fight is for survival against very real dangers she faces now, as the sole free, democratic and existentially threatened nation in the Middle East. The dangers Israel currently faces at the hands of Hamas and its Islamist allies are far greater than the dangers which, Secretary Hagel quite reasonably argued, the United States may in the future face from the IS. Since even Obama’s America claims to feel duty-bound to act against the IS, why should Israel be required to consider herself bound to a lesser extent to defend against Hamas, et al? Merely in a doomed effort to gain the approval of “the international community?” She has already done too much of that, with no reward in sight.

Peace is good. In the proper circumstances, it can be reasonable and helpful to give it a chance. Israel has done that, repeatedly, and peace has not yet even approached, much less arrived. Peace cannot be achieved through ceasefires and negotiations when one side (Israel) gives to and then beyond the point at which it impairs her security. Having done so, she faces even more demands which, if granted, would lead to her destruction. In response, Hamas, et al, persistently refuse to budge at all in their quest for her destruction.

In such circumstances, full scale armed conflict is the only viable way to achieve anything better than the deadly Islamist version of “peace.” The Obama Administration does not accept that premise. Until it does, the problems now faced by Israel — and those likely soon to be faced by Obama’s America — will continue to worsen, perhaps irreparably.

Iran Says it Downed Israeli Drone over Nuke Site – Middle East – News – Arutz Sheva.

Though militarily inferior, Hamas has hit Israel strategically with attrition and population flight.

Debka

When Israeli troops entered Gaza in July, 2014, they were armed with superb tactical intelligence as well as superior weaponry and training. The soldiers on the ground were supplied at every level with astonishing detail which saved lives.

But thanks to the a radical shift in Israel’s intelligence focus, initiated 10 years ago and followed through since,  those calling the shots in the IDF’s war on Hamas were short of a deeper picture and insights into the enemy’s mindset and guiding motives, data that transcends tactical knowledge

This revision of Israel’s operational intelligence orientation began in 2003 under Meir Dagan, with the approval of the late prime minister Ariel Sharon. It refocused the work of Israel’s clandestine agencies on collecting tactical intelligence and giving up on digging for strategic data on the dynamics of the region and world and their key players. This revolution affected the short and long term operations of of Israel’s external and internal security and counterterrorism arms, the Mossad and Shin Bet, as well as military intelligence AMAN.

The Mossad shut down stations world wide, sacking or sidelining agents who disputed the Dagan overhaul.. The desks specializing in the strategic research of international events were streamlined out of the organization. The new entity began to resemble the US Central Intelligence Agency’s Special Operations Division (SAD), a covert paramilitary unit that focuses on gathering tactical intelligence for the use of operatives serving on foreign soil, especially in the Mid East.

Those agencies eventually became small armies geared more to cooperating with the IDF in times of tension and war, as they strikingly demonstrated in the current Operation Defensive Edge.

During this evolution, spread over years, the Mossad scored some major coups. One was the targeted assassination in 2008 of the lethal Imad Mughniyeh, who for two decades, in the service of Hizballah and Iran, secretly masterminded large-scale terrorist and kidnapping atrocities against Israel and the US.

Another was the Stuxnet malworm invasion of the computer systems of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities which slowed Iran’s nuclear program. A series of assassinations inside Iran targeted key figures of this program; and, in 2007, an Israeli special force raided and destroyed a plutonium reactor, which Iran and North Korea were building in Syria, shortly before it went on line.

But the overhaul, though beneficial in some respects, left Israeli intelligence short of important tools for fighting terrorism and fundamentalist Islam when it went on the march. Generations of new personnel were hired on the strength of their ability to think tactically. Strategic evaluation and research departments went by the board.. When it came to th crunchs, the Mossad, Shin Bet and AMAN lacked the tools for supplying Israel’s political and security leaders with professional analyses of the bigger picture.

This deficiency was conspicuous in Israel’s failure to evaluate the US-Iranian détente and its import for the Jewish state; in mistakenly forecasting Bashar Assad’s early downfall in the Syrian war – and, more immediately, in failing to second guess Hamas in Operation Protective Edge.

debkafile’s military and intelligence sources award top marks for the quality of tactical intelligence provided Israeli troops during the month of hostilities in Gaza. It was outstanding by any standards of modern warfare. The troops were constantly updated, even when engaged in the smallest, most localized field operations, on such details as the layout of buildings before going in, the placement of windows and likely enemy hidey holes.

As they moved forward, tank commanders were warned what lay beyond the next corner. Much valuable information was extracted from Hamas prisoners by advance intelligence units and provided the troops with instantaneous data feeds in a steady stream that saved lives.

But tactical intelligence could only take the IDF so far in Gaza – as in other hostile arenas. Israel’s leaders found that, for charting their own moves, they missed essential strategic data on Hamas’s top-level planners’ intentions.

This deficiency was the cause of the glaring error in judgment made by Israel’s war leaders – an error that persisted right up until Sunday, Aug. 24, the 48th day of Operation Defensive Edge. This was the fallacious assumption that, if only its Gaza strongholds were hammered hard enough by the Israeli military, Hamas would fold and sign a long-term truce on terms dictated by Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.
This misreading of the motives governing Hamas’ actions was the source of the statement Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon made Sunday, that the operation would end “only when quiet returns to southern Israel. Till then, we shall continue to hammer Hamas, for the moment by air.”He went on to say: “We stand by our policy of avoiding direct confrontation with Hamas or a decisive end to the war; rather preferring diplomatic closure.”

This approach leaves the initiative in Hamas hands and Israel ignorantly navigating its military moves towards a ceasefire instead of winning the war. Despite its inferiority in fighting strength and weaponry, Israel’s enemy uses this ambivalence to retain the element of surprise and keep the IDF moving without direction.
This week, by focusing on its strategic objectives, Hamas scored two major goals:

1. It dragged Israel willy-nilly into a war of attrition – with no end in sight, according to its leaders. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s repeated assertion that attrition would be countered by hammer blows ddid not alter the fact that the rockets and the mortars keep coming from the Gaza Strip in a steady flow which is attritioning the civilian population.
2.  And indeed, around 70 percent of the population of the villages around the Gaza Strip have packed their bags and left their homes. Despite the aid offered by the government, these people and their families have become refugees or displaced persons in their own country, in order to escape the relentless Hamas pounding of rockets and mortars. This is a strategic achievement on a par with Hamas’ success in closing Ben Gurion international air port for a couple of days last month.
The Islamists are coming close to a third strategic achievement: Israel’s inability to start the school year on September 1 – and not just in the near neighborhood of the Gaza Strip. Voices are being raised in Ashkelon, Ashdod and further north in Greater Tel Aviv and its densely populated satellite towns, by parents who say they will not send children back to school in the current state of security.

So while Israel’s military and intelligence chiefs use tactical yardsticks to weigh their steps and assess Hamas’ intentions, Hamas operates on the strategic level to keep Israel guessing.