Posted tagged ‘Hamas’

Islamophobia Forum Features Panelists Linked to Terror and Bigotry

May 20, 2016

Islamophobia Forum Features Panelists Linked to Terror and Bigotry, Front Page MagazineJoe Kaufman, May 20, 2016

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This month, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) will be sponsoring a panel discussion about Islamophobia. Islamophobia is a modern-day term used mainly by Islamists to describe an unwarranted fear or hatred of Islam and/or Muslims and a term also used by the like to, more appropriately, shut down any conversation about the radical element found within the Muslim community. Not surprisingly, the majority of the event’s panel is made up of those linked to terrorism and bigotry, themselves.

The title of the forum, which is scheduled to take place at FAU in Boca Raton, on May 23rd, is ‘ISLAMOPHOBIA, Voices from the Muslim Community.’ The flyer for the event displays the photos of five panelists, at least three of which have known ties to terrorism. They are Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, the imam of the Darul Uloom mosque, located in Pembroke Pines, Florida; Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, the legal counsel for the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); and Bassem Abdo Alhalabi (al-Halabi), an Associate Professor at FAU.

Shafayat Mohamed is the imam at Darul Uloom. He founded it in October 1994. Since then, it has become a haven for al-Qaeda associates. “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla was a student at Darul Uloom. Now-deceased al-Qaeda Global Operations Chief Adnan el-Shukrijumah was a prayer leader there. And Darul Uloom Arabic teacher Imran Mandhai, Hakki Aksoy and Shueyb Mossa Jokhan hatched an operation at the mosque to blow up different structures, including area power stations, Jewish businesses, and a National Guard armory.

Shafayat Mohamed, himself, has been thrown off a number of boards in Broward County due to his outspokenness against homosexuals. In February 2005, an article written by him was published on the Darul Uloom website, entitled ‘Tsunami: Wrath of God.’ In it, he claims that gay sex caused the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. Shafayat Mohamed’s article doesn’t just target homosexuals. It also attacks Jews and Christians. In the piece, he claims that most Jews and Christians, whom he refers to as “People of the Book,” are “perverted transgressors.”

Another of the Islamophobia forum participants is Wilfredo Ruiz. Ruiz is the attorney for CAIR-Florida.

CAIR was established in June 1994 as part of a terrorist umbrella group headed by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. In 2007 and 2008, CAIR was named by the US Justice Department a co-conspirator for two federal trials dealing with the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas. Since its founding, a number of CAIR representatives have served jail time and/or have been deported from the United States for terrorist-related crimes. In November 2014, CAIR, itself, was designated a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government.

CAIR-Florida reflects the extremism of its parent organization. In August 2010, CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly, who has denied that Hezbollah is a terrorist group, wrote, “Israel and its supporters are enemies of God…” In July 2014, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally in Downtown Miami, where rally goers shouted, “We are Hamas”and “Let’s go Hamas.” Following the rally, the event organizer, Sofian Zakkout, wrote, “Thank God, every day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel!”

Ruiz is also the legal advisor for Zakkout’s group, the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA). AMANA regularly promotes white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. In fact, the latest posting on AMANA’s Facebook page is an anti-Jewish David Duke video. In July 2010, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned AMANA for posting onto its website homepage another anti-Semitic Duke video. The ADL described the video as being “venomous.” The video was posted right above an expose about Ruiz.

A third participant at the Islamophobia forum is Bassem Abdo Alhalabi.

Bassem Alhalabi has been an Associate Professor at FAU’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, since August 2002. Prior to arriving at FAU, Alhalabi was located in Tampa at the University of South Florida (USF), working as an assistant to USF Professor Sami al-Arian, while al-Arian was a leader in Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Alhalabi co-authored publications with al-Arian and, when applying to FAU, he used al-Arian as a reference. In May 2006, al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months in prison, after pleading guilty to providing services to PIJ.

Alhalabi has been in trouble with the law, himself. In March 2010, Alhalabi was arrested for physically assaulting two individuals during a Muslim Capitol Day function in Tallahassee, Florida. The assaults took place an hour apart from one another. And in June 2003, the US Department of Commerce charged Alhalabi with illegally shipping a $13,000 military-grade thermal imaging device to Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism.

Alhalabi is a Director and co-founder of the Islamic Center of Boca Raton (ICBR). During his leadership, for three years, the ICBR website had an essay prominently posted on it, stating, “Jews are people of treachery and betrayal… As the Muslims and Jews are enemies residing in opposing religious and doctrinal camps, it is not possible for them to be brought together unless one is made to submit to the other by force… [Muhammad] said, ‘You will fight the Jews and will prevail over them, so that a rock will say, O Muslim! There is Jew behind me, kill him!’”

The contact for the FAU event is Abdur Rahman al-Ghani (aka Samuel Pittman), Events Coordinator for the Islamic Foundation of South Florida (IFSF). Al-Ghani’s Facebook is littered with anti-American, anti-Jewish and Islamic supremacist language and images. In December 2012, he wrote, “Zionist/Israelis are not holy people. They are demonic and the most evil on earth.” In March 2012, he posted a graphic stating, “ISLAM WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD.” And in February 2012, he posted a bloodied CIA logo with the caption, “Wiping out the CIA.”

While the FAU event wishes to portray Muslims as having suffered from the prejudice of others (‘Islamophobia’), it seems that those involved in the event are immersed in bigotry, themselves, where homosexuality is professed to cause natural disasters, where white supremacist David Duke is placed on a pedestal, where Christians are cursed, and where Jews are labeled “demonic” and okay to murder.

‘Islamophobia,’ in the eyes of those behind the FAU forum, in reality, is not a way for people to learn about the suffering within the Muslim community – not at all. Instead, Muslim victimhood is being used as a vehicle to silence those who look to expose their and their terror supporting compatriots’ sinister words and deeds.

Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.

How Terrorists and Dictators Silence Arab Journalists

May 19, 2016

How Terrorists and Dictators Silence Arab Journalists, Gatestone InstituteKhaled Abu Toameh, May 19, 2016

♦ That is the sad state of journalism in the Arab world: “If you’re not with us, then you must be against us and that is why we need to shut your mouth.” A journalist who does not agree to serve as a governmental mouthpiece is denounced as a “traitor.”

♦ Hamas shut the Gaza offices of Al-Arabiya in July 2013, under the pretext that the station broadcasted “incorrect news” about the situation in the Gaza Strip. The closure did not receive much attention from the international community and human rights organizations. Had the office been closed by Israel, there would have been an international outcry, with journalists screaming about Israeli “assaults on freedom of the media.”

♦ Al-Arabiya, like many other Arab TV stations, has a bureau in Israel, and its reporters enjoy more freedom reporting out of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv than they do in the Arab world. Today, the only free and independent Arabic newspapers in the Middle East can be found inside Israel.

Thirty-five Arab journalists have been fired since the beginning of April as a result of a campaign of intimidation and terrorism waged against them by Hamas and Hezbollah.

The journalists were working for the Saudi-owned pan-Arab Al-Arabiya television news channel, based in Dubai Media City in the United Arab Emirates. The network was previously rated by the BBC among the top pan-Arab stations.

But life for Al-Arabiya reporters has never been easy. Like most Arab journalists covering the Arab and Islamic countries, they too have long faced threats from various parties and governments.

That is the sad state of journalism in the Arab world: “If you’re not with us, then you must be against us and that is why we need to shut your mouth.” A journalist who does not agree to serve as a governmental mouthpiece is denounced as a “traitor.”

The absence of democracy and freedom of speech in most Arab and Islamic countries has forced many Arab journalists to relocate to the West. In the past four decades, some of the Arab world’s best journalists and writers moved to France and Britain, where they could work without fearing for their lives.

But in the Arab world, freedom of the media remains a far-fetched dream. There, if you are not threatened by the government, there is always someone else who will find a reason to target you.

The case of the Al-Arabiya journalists is yet another example of the dangers facing media representatives who do not toe the line or who dare to challenge a government or a terrorist group.

Earlier this week, Al-Arabiya announced that it was firing its eight workers in the Gaza Strip — three years after the Hamas government decided to shut the station’s offices there. The workers are Mohamed Jahjouh, Jamal Abu Nahel, Hanan al-Masri, Rula Elayan, Mahmdouh al-Sayed, Sha’ban Mimeh, Ala Zamou and Ahmed al-Razi.

In an email to the workers, the Al-Arabiya management wrote:

“We appreciate your work with us during the previous period. You were all an example of professional performance, but the time has come for the hard decision after we exhausted all attempts to reopen the offices, which were forcibly closed, as you know, by the party that controls the street in the Gaza Strip.”

Hamas shut the Gaza offices of Al-Arabiya in July 2013, under the pretext that the station had been broadcasting “incorrect news” about the situation in the Gaza Strip. In addition to the closure, Hamas also confiscated the equipment and furniture with an estimated value of $500,000, and prevented the employees from entering the offices.

1609Hamas shut the Gaza offices of Al-Arabiya in July 2013, under the pretext that the station had been broadcasting “incorrect news” about the situation in the Gaza Strip. (Image source: JN1 video screenshot)

The closure of the Al-Arabiya offices in the Gaza Strip did not receive much attention from the international community and human rights organizations. Had the office been closed by Israel, of course, there would have been an international outcry, with journalists around the world screaming about Israeli “assaults on freedom of the media.”

Here is an unpleasant fact: Al-Arabiya, like many other Arab TV stations, has a bureau in Israel, and its reporters enjoy more freedom reporting out of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv than they do in the Arab world. Today, the only free and independent Arabic newspapers in the Middle East can be found inside Israel.

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the only newspapers available are those that serve as an organ for the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas. Many Arab journalists feel unsafe working under the PA in the West Bank. For the PA and Hamas alike, criticism is a crime.

Just this week, for example, Palestinian Authority security officers arrested journalist Tareq Abu Zeid in Nablus after confiscating his personal computer and mobile phone. No reason was given for Abu Zeid’s arrest. He joins scores of other journalists and bloggers who have been arrested or interrogated by the PA in recent years.

Even Arab countries that once used to boast of being a base for free media, such as Lebanon, are no longer able to defend journalists from threats and violence.

Last month, Al-Arabiya also closed its offices in Beirut, citing “security concerns.” In a statement, the Saudi-owned station said that the decision to quit Beirut was taken “out of concern for the safety” of its 27 employees.

The decision is believed to be the direct result of threats by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia. Hezbollah is furious with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries for their recent decision to label the Shiite militia as a terrorist group.

Al-Arabiya’s decision to close its bureau in Beirut came shortly after suspected Hezbollah thugs went on the rampage inside the offices of the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, destroying equipment and furniture.

The attack came after the pan-Arab newspaper published a cartoon marking April Fool’s Day, which was deemed “offensive” to Lebanon and its flag. The message behind the cartoon was that Lebanon has become a failed state because of the growing power of Hezbollah and Iranian meddling in the internal affairs of the country — something that has prevented the election of a new Lebanese president.

The crackdown on Arab journalists and media outlets by Hamas, Hezbollah and many Arab governments (including the Palestinian Authority) is not only aimed at silencing critics, but also at hiding from the world what life is like under dictators and terrorists. In light of the fact that Al-Arabiya’s staff has been recently decimated, advocates of freedom of the media might wish to tune in.

Israel, Gaza and “Proportionality”

May 19, 2016

Israel, Gaza and “Proportionality,” Gatestone InstituteLouis René Beres, May 19, 2016

♦ It appears that several major Palestinian terror groups have begun to prepare for mega-terror attacks on Israel.

♦ The authoritative rules of war do not equate “proportionality” with how many people die in each side of a conflict. In war, no side is ever required to respond to aggression with only the equivalent measure of force. Rather, the obligations of proportionality require that no side employ any level of force that is greater than what is needed to achieve a legitimate political and operational objective.

♦ Under pertinent international law, the use of one’s own people as “human shields” — because such firing from populated areas is intended to deter Israeli reprisals, or to elicit injuries to Palestinian civilians — represents a codified war crime. More specifically, this crime is known as “perfidy.” This is plainly an attempt to make the IDF appear murderous when it is compelled to retaliate, but it is simply a Palestinian manipulation of legal responsibility. Under law, those Arab residents who suffer from Israeli retaliations are incurring the consequences of their own government’s war crimes.

♦ International law is not a suicide pact. Instead, it offers a universally binding body of rules and procedures that allows all states to act on behalf of their “inherent right of self-defense.”

Already, calls from various directions have begun to condemn Israel for its recent retaliatory strikes in self-defense at Gaza.[1] The carefully-rehearsed refrain is all-too familiar. Gazan terrorists fire rockets and mortars at Israel; then, the world calls upon the Israel Air Force (IAF) not to respond.

Although Israel is plainly the victim in these ritualistic cycles of Arab terror and required Israeli retaliations, the “civilized world” usually comes to the defense of the victimizers. Inexplicably, in the European Union, and even sometimes with the current U.S. president, the Israeli response is reflexively, without thought, described as “excessive” or “disproportionate.”

Leaving aside the irony of President Obama’s evident sympathies here — nothing that Israel has done in its own defense even comes close to the indiscriminacy of recent U.S. operations in Afghanistan[2] — the condemnations are always unfounded. Plainly, Hamas and allied Arab terror groups deliberately fire their rockets from populated areas in Gaza at Israeli civilians. Under pertinent international law, this use of one’s own people as “human shields” — because such firing from populated areas is intended to deter Israeli reprisals, or to elicit injuries to Palestinian civilians — represents a codified war crime. More specifically, this crime is known as “perfidy.”

“Perfidy” is plainly an attempt to make the IDF appear murderous when it is compelled to retaliate, but it is always simply a Palestinian manipulation of true legal responsibility. Hamas’s intent might be to incriminate the Israelis as murderers of Gaza’s civilians. Legally, however, the net effect of Arab perfidy in Gaza is to free Israel of all responsibility for Arab harm, even if it is Israeli retaliatory fire that actually injures or kills the Gazan victims. Under law, those Arab residents who suffer from Israeli retaliations are incurring the consequences of their own government’s war crimes. Palestinian suffering, which we are surely about to see again in stepped-up, choreographed Arab propaganda videos, remains the direct result of a relentlessly cruel, insensitive, and criminal Hamas leadership.

Significant, too, although never really mentioned, is that this Hamas leadership, similar to the PA and Fatah leadership, often sits safely away from Gaza, tucked away inconspicuously in Qatar. For these markedly unheroic figures, “martyrdom” is allegedly always welcomed and revered, but only as long as this singular honor is actually conferred upon someone else.

Moreover, the authoritative rules of war do not equate “proportionality” with how many people die in each side of a conflict. In war, no side is ever required to respond to aggression with only the equivalent measure of force. Rather, the obligations of proportionality require that no side employ any level of force that is greater than what is needed to achieve a legitimate political and operational objective.

If the rule of proportionality were genuinely about an equivalent number of dead, America’s use of atomic weapons against Japanese civilians in August 1945 would represent the greatest single expression of “disproportionality” in human history.

It appears that several major Palestinian terror groups have begun to prepare for mega-terror attacks on Israel. Such attacks, possibly in cooperation with certain allied jihadist factions, could include chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Over time, especially if Iran, undeterred by the July 2015 Vienna Pact, should agree to transfer portions of its residual nuclear materials to terror groups, Israel could then have to face Palestinian-directed nuclear terrorism.

One message is clear. If Israel, pressured by outside forces, allows Palestinian terror from Gaza to continue unopposed, the state could become increasingly vulnerable to even greater forms of Arab aggression.

Also important to keep in mind is that nuclear terror assaults against Israel could be launched from trucks or ships, not only from rockets and missiles.

What about Israel’s active defenses? In its most recent defensive operations, Protective Edge and Pillar of Defense, Israel accomplished an impressively high rate of “Iron Dome” interceptions against incoming rockets from Gaza. Still, it would be a mistake to extrapolate from any such relatively limited successes to the vastly more complex hazards of strategic danger from Iran. Should Iran “go nuclear” in ten years or sooner, that still recalcitrant Islamic regime could launch at Israel missiles armed with nuclear warheads.

746In its most recent defensive operations, Israel accomplished an impressively high rate of “Iron Dome” interceptions against incoming rockets from Gaza. Still, it would be a mistake to extrapolate from any such relatively limited successes to the vastly more complex hazards of strategic danger from Iran. (Image source: IDF)

Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military thinker, already understood — long before the nuclear age — that too great a reliance on defense is always misconceived. Today, Arrow, Israel’s core ballistic missile defense (BMD) interception system, would require a 100% rate success against offensive nuclear missiles. At the same time, such a rate is impossible to achieve, even if enhanced by Rafael’s new laser-based defenses. Israel must therefore continue to rely primarily on deterrence for existential nuclear threats.

Although unacknowledged, Israel has always been willing to keep its essential counterterrorism operations in Gaza consistent with the established rules of humanitarian international law. Palestinian violence, however, has remained in persistent violation of all accepted rules of engagement — even after Israel painfully “disengaged” from Gaza in 2005.

Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority still speak indignantly of “the Occupation?” But where, precisely, is this “occupation?” After all their agitated umbrage about Israeli “disproportionality,” shouldn’t the Palestinians and their allies finally be able to answer that core question? There are no Israelis in Gaza.

International law is not a suicide pact. Instead, it offers a universally binding body of rules and procedures that allows all states to act on behalf of their “inherent right of self-defense.”[3] When terrorists groups such as Hamas openly celebrate the “martyrdom” of Palestinian children, and when Hamas leaders unhesitatingly seek their own religious redemption through the mass-murder of Jewish children, unfortunately these terrorists retain no legal right to demand sanctuary.

In response to endless terror attacks from Gaza, Israel, with countless leaflets, phone calls, “knocks on the roof,” and other warnings to its attackers, has been acting with an operational restraint unequaled by any other nation and according to binding rules of war. In these obligatory acts of self-defense there has not yet been the slightest evidence of disproportionality.

____________________________________

[1] Speaking in Beirut on Channel 10 News, on May 7, 2016, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accused Israel of “attacking Gaza,” continuing: “Unfortunately, the Arab world is silent about the situation in Gaza. … these actions must be condemned.” Cited in Israel National News, “Nasrallah calls for condemnation of Israeli ‘Attacks’ on Gaza,” May 7, 2016. Interesting, too, is that Nasrallah, a Shiite leader, is speaking here in strong support of Sunni Hamas.

[2] See Alissa J. Rubin, “Airstrike Hits Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan,” The New York Times, October 3, 2015. This is an account of the October 2015, U.S. destruction of a crowded hospital in the embattled city of Kunduz. The Pentagon confirmed the strike, which it called “collateral damage,” and President Obama offered condolences to the victims in what he termed a “tragic incident.” Doctors Without Borders was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

[3] See, especially, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Hamas using Gazan fishermen to smuggle weapons

May 16, 2016

Revealed: Hamas using Gazan fishermen to smuggle weapons Fisherman arrested by Israeli navy reveals Hamas’s efforts to circumvent military blockade, in latest Israeli intelligence coup.

By Ari Soffer

First Publish: 5/16/2016, 3:55 PM

Source: Hamas using Gazan fishermen to smuggle weapons – Defense/Security – News – Arutz Sheva

Fishermen off the coast of Gaza Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash 90

A Gazan fisherman arrested by Israeli security services has revealed how Hamas regularly uses fishermen to smuggle weapons and other military equipment into Gaza.

The Shin Bet security service (Israel Security Agency), Israeli navy and Israel Police released for publication Monday afternoon the arrest of 39-year-old fisherman Salim Jamal Hasan Na’aman back in April.

Na’aman, a resident of the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, was initially detained by Israeli naval forces after straying beyond the zone permitted for fishing, as part of the Israeli military’s blockade aimed at containing the Hamas terrorist group.

Under Shin Bet interrogation, the fisherman revealed how over a prolonged period he had personally helped smuggle weapons, ammunition, rocket-making equipment and other military equipment via sea into Gaza, on behalf of Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

The items he was tasked with smuggling ranged from live weapons and ammunition, to elements such as liquid fiberglass, which is a key ingredient in rocket production.

Na’aman also revealed to his interrogators a trove of valuable information about Hamas’s own naval activities, including how Hamas operatives aided in smuggling efforts, and worked hard to disguise such activities from Israeli intelligence.

He also provided detailed information on Hamas smuggling routes between Gaza and Egypt, such as the use of fishermen and other smugglers.

In a statement, the Shin Bet hailed the breakthrough in efforts to restrict the flow of weapons and ammunition to Hamas and other terrorist groups inside Gaza.

“The intelligence gained from this interrogation, as in the interrogation of other Hamas terror operatives arrested recently, exposes yet another way among many others in which Hamas is investing in preparations for further violent terrorist acts. In this case: taking advantage of concessions by Israel towards fisherman in Gaza,” the statement read, referring to Israel’s recent extension of the fishing zone.

As noted in the statement, this is only the latest in a series of arrests of Hamas terror operatives from Gaza.

The Shin Bet and IDF recently revealed the arrest of a senior Hamas tunnel builder, who yielded a wealth of intelligence on the jihadist group’s efforts to build attack tunnels into Israeli territory.

Another teenage terrorist was also recently captured, revealing yet more information on Hamas’s preparations for another war with Israel.

Obama’s Animus toward Israel May Lead to War

May 15, 2016

Obama’s Animus toward Israel May Lead to War, American ThinkerVictor Sharpe and Robert Vincent, May 15, 2016

Will the looming conclusion of the Obama presidency lead him to engineer an all-out war by Iran’s terror surrogates, Hamas and Hezbollah, against the embattled Jewish state?  Will that war conveniently occur in December 2016, as Obama serves out the final days of his presidency?

Is it conceivable that the pro-Muslim president of the United States will use such a conflict to predictably and mendaciously blame Israel as a means to permanently fracture the U.S.-Israeli alliance in a manner that would be difficult for any successor to repair?  As extreme as this may sound, it is entirely possible in view of Obama’s past acts of blatant hatred toward America’s one and only true democracy and ally in the Middle East.

As should be obvious by now, Obama believes that Islam has suffered from British and European Christian colonization and oppression.  After being thoroughly prepared to be receptive to this message by his stridently anti-Western mother and maternal grandparents, such was the indoctrination Obama received from Khaled al-Mansour – a Muslim high-level adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and anti-Jewish hate-monger – during his formative years.

It was al-Mansour who helped Obama gain admittance to the Harvard Law School.  Edward Said, an outspoken anti-Israel professor of Obama’s at Columbia University, and Rashid Khalidi, a former press agent for Yasser Arafat’s PLO, served as Obama’s mentor in the former case and friend in the latter.

These figures, whose entire professional adult lives had been essentially dedicated to eliminating Israel, focused on influencing Obama to support the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians – along with their thugocracy known as the Palestinian Authority.  These overwhelmingly Muslim terrorists amount to little more than cannon fodder in the ongoing Islamist quest to effectively perpetrate yet another Holocaust.

Thus, while Obama weakens America and disparages Western values and the tenets of Judeo-Christian civilization, he always chooses to suppress the reality of Islamic triumphalism and its appalling and inhumane history of slavery, hatred of non-Muslims, brutal Muslim conquests, and slaughter dating back to its 7th-century origins in Arabia.

This is why no one should be surprised that he would bow to a Saudi king and venerate the Islamic call of the muezzin.

Given his background, it is no wonder that Obama fell for the monumental lie that the Jewish state is also a modern colonizer, just as the European powers were.  After all, Obama’s other confidants included, as the principled and worthy Victor David Hanson recently pointed out, “the obscene Reverend Wright and reprobates like Bill Ayers and Father Michael Pfleger.”

But unlike the European colonizers who had no ancestral roots in the Middle Eastern territories they occupied, Israel is the biblical and post-biblical homeland of the Jewish people, and as the native people of its ancestral homeland, the Jews predate the Muslim invasion of Israel by millennia, as is clearly evident in the Bible, which could not have been written when and where it was otherwise.

Even though sovereignty was lost to them after the Roman destruction of the Jewish state, Jews have always lived in their native land in whatever numbers they could sustain under a succession of alien occupiers.

Despite these clearly established historical facts, modern reborn Israel and her democratically elected leader, Prime Minister Netanyahu, have been treated with unprecedented contempt by Obama and his sycophants.

This was evident early on with Obama’s support of and friendship to the Islamist Erdoğan in Turkey, who has reduced once secular Turkey to a growing totalitarian Islamic state that has openly supported terrorism against Israel, as demonstrated by the Gaza flotilla incident of 2010.

Erdoğan’s perfidy – which has included all but open support for ISIS – has in no way dampened Obama’s preferential treatment of this dictator, in contrast to his appalling treatment of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Routinely, the State Department promotes the hypocrisy of the Obama administration by ignoring the aggression and terror of the Palestinian Authority, led by the Holocaust-denying Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas and Islamic Jihad thugs who rule over the Gaza Strip.

In deplorable contrast, the State Department routinely attacks Israel for building homes in Jerusalem for young couples, or chiding Israel to exercise “restraint” when Israel is forced to defend itself from relentless Palestinian brutality and murder of Israeli civilians.  Was France or Belgium similarly asked to exercise “restraint” in the face of recent Muslim terrorist attacks in those countries?

This spitefulness was exhibited when the U.S., at the behest of a high-level individual in the Obama administration (wonder who!), denied visas to Israelis during Israel’s defensive Gaza war in 2014 against Hamas aggression.

Even as the barrage of thousands of rockets aimed at Israeli villages and towns from Gaza continued, this outrage was compounded when President Obama banned the much needed resupply of armaments to Israel at the height of the Hamas terror blitz and temporarily banned U.S. airlines from flying to Israel on the flimsiest of pretexts (23 international carriers – including British Airways – continued flights to Israel in spite of this ban).

Obama has also treated America’s other traditional allies with insolent disdain and cozied up to the worst enemy of freedom and liberty – namely, the Islamo-Nazi regime of Iran.

Iran’s ongoing implicit threats of nuclear warfare – against the U.S. as well as Israel – including its aggressive development of potentially nuclear-armed ICBMs, which can eventually reach the U.S., does not faze this incumbent in the White House.

The fact that this supposed nuclear “agreement” with Iran was reached, even as his very own State Department admits that Iran has yet to actually sign the agreement and even as Iranian mobs continue to chant “Death to America” to the approving nods of the Iranian mullahs, also fits into Barack Hussein Obama’s distorted world view – a deliberate policy of lies, deception, and dissimilitude.

This was admitted to by one of his closest advisers, Ben Rhodes, who recently disclosed that the Obama administration had deliberately deceived Congress and the American public about the Iran deal – as if this was something to be proud of.

Perhaps one of the most blatant examples of Obama’s anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Israeli ideology was his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and his reluctance to sell arms to President El-Sisi, who overthrew the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi and his vicious anti-Christian regime after it had been in power for only two years and had wrought havoc on that country.

Obama’s support for Morsi should have come as no surprise, given the endless flow of Muslim Brotherhood activists visiting Obama’s White House and the filling of senior positions within the administration, as documented by former CIA analyst Clare Lopez.

Even today, El-Sisi fights al-Qaeda terrorism in the Sinai and the Hamas terrorists in Gaza without any apparent support or approval from Obama.

These examples of the president’s bias, his pro-Islamic sympathies, and his agenda point to a seminal hatred of not only America itself, but most pointedly of the Jewish state – this hatred may override all other practical considerations in the remaining few months of his term in office.

His parting shot at Israel may well be to force her expulsion from the United Nations and turn the Jewish state into another Taiwan.

As suggested at the beginning of this article, he might well encourage both Iranian terror proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezb’allah in Lebanon, to attack Israel with a massive missile bombardment sometime this coming December.

Hamas, for its own part, has thousands of lethal rockets and mortars and is feverishly building tunnels into Israeli territory in the hope of sending its terrorist hordes into Israeli villages and towns and slaughtering as many civilians as possible.  Hezb’allah, on the other hand, is estimated to have more than 150 thousand missiles and rockets aimed at all of Israel, hidden in Lebanese schools, hospitals, and apartments.

Even as the deliberate use of civilians as human shields is explicitly spelled out by the Geneva Conventions as a crime against humanity, and though Israel would have no choice but to inflict substantial civilian casualties in her own defense, this circumstance would naturally be used as a pretext by the U.N. to punish Israel in an unprecedented manner.

They would do so knowing that for the first time, an American president would likely stand by and approve whatever the U.N. anti-Israel “lynch mob” might concoct in order to further isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state.  This might include severe economic sanctions or embargoes or might even involve expulsion of Israel from the U.N. entirely.

It should be emphasized here that once the American national election is over, there will be nothing to stop Obama from doing this.  Obama’s entire foreign policy has revolved around undermining Israel.  Such an action on his part in the closing weeks of his administration can be seen as not only possible, but likely, given the pattern of his behavior toward Israel for the whole of his presidency.

This latter punishment would suit Israel’s enemies very well, even though it would change nothing on the ground.  An Israel reduced to a Taiwan-like status – i.e., a de facto sovereign state not officially recognized as such by the U.N. – would obviate the need for Gulf Arabs (who are covertly making common cause with Israel against Iran) to establish any formal diplomatic relations with her.

The “Zionist entity,” as their official propaganda impudently puts it, would remain just that.  This might even, in rhetorical terms, satisfy the requirement of Iran’s mullahs to “wipe Israel from the map.”  What is more, once Israel is expelled from the U.N., it would be very difficult for any future U.S. president, no matter how pro-Israel, to successfully support Israel’s re-admittance into the U.N.

As is the case with Taiwan, the U.S. may maintain a commitment to supplying Israel with arms and supporting her efforts at self-defense, but in practical terms, that may be the extent of the relationship, even in the best-case scenario surrounding Israel’s expulsion from the U.N. under Obama during his final days in office.

While such a turn of events may sound far-fetched to even some of those most critical of Obama, it is entirely possible in view of Obama’s past acts of blatant hatred toward America’s one and only true ally and democracy in the Middle East.

 

IDF General: Hamas works closely with ISIS

May 13, 2016

IDF General: Hamas officials in Gaza work closely with ISIS IDF Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, said Hamas is assisting ISIS in more ways than one.

May 13, 2016, 8:11PM Omri Ariel

Source: IDF General: Hamas works closely with ISIS | JerusalemOnline

Photo credit: Channel 2 News

Islamic State activists recently entered Egypt thorough tunnels dug by Hamas in order to conduct a military drill, IDF Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, said on Friday in an interview to a Saudi news site.

This drill, according to Mordechai, indicates that Hamas sources in the Gaza Strip have been in touch with ISIS. “Hamas is trying to fool everyone,” he said. “While getting closer to Egypt, it also joins forces with ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Mordechai also reported that Hamas has been assisting ISIS by providing medical treatment to its activists hospitalized in Gaza in exchange for weapons and money.

These claims, if true, could seriously harm Hamas’ declared intention to keep its distance from Iran.

Palestinian Leaders and Child Sacrifice

May 13, 2016

Palestinian Leaders and Child Sacrifice, Gatestone InstituteKhaled Abu Toameh, May 13, 2016

♦ The Palestinian Authority (PA) is now hoping that the tragedy of the Abu Hindi family will push Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to revolt against Hamas.

♦ Hamas is hoping that the tragedy will further undermine the credibility of the Palestinian Authority among Palestinians, shown as being complicit in the blockade on the Gaza Strip to prevent it from receiving weapons.

♦ These charges and counter-charges constitute yet more proof that the PA and Hamas are determined to pursue their fight to the last Palestinian child.

♦ What happened in the Abu Hindi home is an unspeakable family tragedy. What is happening to the Palestinian people, who have forever been led by leaders who care nothing for their well-being, is a tragedy of national proportions.

The tragic death of three Palestinian siblings, killed in a fire that destroyed their house in the Gaza Strip on May 6, demonstrates yet again the depth to which Palestinian leaders will go to exploit their children for political purposes and narrow interests.

The three children from the Abu Hindi family — Mohamed, 3 years old, his brother Nasser, 2 years old and their two-month infant sister Rahaf, died in a fire caused by candles that were being used due to the recurring power outages in the Gaza Strip.

The electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip is the direct result of the continued power struggle between the two Palestinian rival forces, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

In recent months, the crisis has deepened, leaving large parts of the Gaza Strip without electricity for most of the day. Hamas blames the Palestinian Authority for the crisis because of its failure to cover the costs of the fuel needed to operate the power plants in the Gaza Strip. The PA has retorted by blaming Hamas’s “corruption” and “incompetence.”

The Abu Hindi family resides in the Shati refugee camp, where Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and other leaders of the Islamist movement live. But unlike the senior Hamas leaders, the Abu Hindi family could not afford to purchase their own power generator to supply them with electricity during the power outages. Instead, the tragedy-stricken family, like most families in the Gaza Strip, resorted to the cheapest alternative lighting method — candles.

On that horrific evening, the Abu Hindi’s three children went to sleep while the candles were burning. Hours later, the charred bodies of the three siblings were taken from the house while it was still on fire and engulfed with smoke.

In any other country, this incident would have been reported as a routine tragedy — one of the kind that could happen in any city such as New York, London or Paris.

Here, however, the death of the three children is not just another personal tragedy. This was a case, rather, of child sacrifice: the Abu-Hindi children were sacrificed on the altar of the decade-long war being waged between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. And these children are far from the first or last such victims.

In equal measure, the PA and Hamas are exploiting the tragedy of the Abu Hindi family to wage a smear campaign against each other. It is not as though these rivals have lived in harmony until now. But the political mud-slinging at the expense of the three dead children has reached repulsive levels.

The children were not even buried before Hamas leaders pointed their fingers at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, who it claimed were held personally responsible for the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri claimed that the electricity crisis was part of the PA leadership’s effort to keep the entire Gaza Strip under blockade. The PA’s ultimate goal, he explained, is to see Hamas undermined and removed from power in the Gaza Strip.

Other Hamas officials said the crisis was the direct result of the Palestinian Authority’s instance on imposing a tax on the fuel it supplies to the power plants in the Gaza Strip — a financial burden that Hamas could not afford to pay because of the already high cost of the fuel. They said that the tax was unjustified because the PA, through an arrangement with Israel (from which it purchases the fuel), gets the tax refunded. In addition, they pointed out, the PA has refused to file a request with Israel to increase its supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip.

Translation: Hamas takes no responsibility for the fact that two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip spend nearly 12 hours a day without electricity. Instead, in their view, it is the sole responsibility of Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, whose only interest is to strip Hamas of its power.

But where did the millions of internationally donated dollars go? How much do the tunnels cost, the ones Hamas uses to launch terrorist attacks against Israel? Funding terrorists and their families? Might not that money have been better invested in keeping children from burning to death from candle fire?

Hamas leaders staged the smear well. In an unprecedented move, masked members of Hamas’s military wing, Ezaddin Al-Qassam, were dispatched to attend the funeral of the three children. Hamas leaders such as Ismail Haniyeh were also present, offering condolences to the family. The cameras caught all this, demonstrating the family’s affiliation with Hamas and implying that Abbas and his Palestinian Authority were responsible for the tragedy.

1595Masked Hamas gunmen pose for the media at the funeral of the Abu Hindi children in Gaza, May 7, 2016.

The Palestinian Authority is also seeking to cash in on the tragedy by waging a war of defamation against Hamas. Yusuf Al-Mahmoud, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority government, dismissed the Hamas charges. “Those who continue to hijack the people of the Gaza Strip are responsible for this tragedy,” he said, referring to Gaza’s Hamas rulers. “The tragedy of the children in the Gaza Strip is the tragedy of all Palestinians. Hamas is responsible for the ongoing split (between the West Bank and Gaza Strip).” Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction has even gone as far as presenting the dead children’s grieving father as one of its own.

The Palestinian Authority is now hoping that the tragedy of the Abu Hindi family will push Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to revolt against Hamas.

Hamas is hoping that the tragedy will further undermine the credibility of the Palestinian Authority among Palestinians, shown as being complicit in the blockade on the Gaza Strip to prevent it from receiving weapons.

These charges and counter-charges constitute yet more proof that the PA and Hamas are determined to pursue their fight to the last Palestinian child.

Yet Abbas is trying to persuade the world to back his plan for establishing a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is hard to imagine how he will even be able to step foot in Gaza after this funeral.

What happened in the Abu Hindi home is an unspeakable family tragedy. What is happening to the Palestinian people, who have forever been led by leaders who care nothing for their well-being, is a tragedy of national proportions.

Netanyahu says he’s ready to meet Abbas for talks ‘right now’

May 13, 2016

Netanyahu says he’s ready to meet Abbas for talks ‘right now’ PM claims he’s taken unprecedented steps for peace, tells Palestinian leader to heed calls for direct negotiations

By Times of Israel staff

May 13, 2016, 2:46 am

Source: Netanyahu says he’s ready to meet Abbas for talks ‘right now’ | The Times of Israel

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the diplomatic corps at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on May 12, 2016. (Haim Zach/GPO)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that he was ready to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “today” for direct peace talks if the Palestinian leader was so willing, charging that he’d done more to advance peace than any other Israeli leader in history.

In a speech before the diplomatic corps at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem to mark Israel’s 68th Independence Day, Netanyahu said he was willing “to meet President Abbas today in Jerusalem. If he’d like, in Ramallah. Right now. Today.”

Acknowledging the “skepticism” about his position, Netanyahu claimed he has “taken steps that no other prime minister in Israel’s history has taken to advance peace,” adding that “so far, they’ve not been answered.”

Netanyahu told the roomful of foreign ambassadors, honorary consuls and military attachés that he continued to “support two states for two peoples: a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state.”

Denouncing the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, a key Israeli demand for a peace agreement, Netanyahu said it “remains the core of this conflict,” and “why this conflict preceded the [1967] Six Day War by nearly 50 years.”

 

The Israeli leader called on members of the diplomatic corps to urge Abbas to accept the call for direct talks, maintaining these were the only way to reach an enduring peace deal.

“Every minute that President Abbas refuses to accept my call for peace robs Palestinians and Israelis of the opportunity to live without fear. It robs our children and our grandchildren the opportunity they so richly deserve,” Netanyahu said.

Expressing optimism for a wider peace arrangement with regional countries and a “deep and abiding faith…that our century-long conflict will end,” the prime minister said he was heartened to see “formerly hostile states in the region and beyond form new and deep partnerships with us.”

“We might solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem by enjoying the support of Arab states who now see Israel more and more not as an enemy, but as an ally against the forces that threaten their own countries as well,” he said, an apparent reference to Iran who last year signed a nuclear deal with world powers which sought the rein in its atomic program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Israel and many Sunni Arab states were deeply opposed to the accord.

US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed in April 2014 and the prospects of fresh dialogue have appeared increasingly remote.

BDS Spreads Anti-Semitism Across U.S. Campuses

May 12, 2016

BDS Spreads Anti-Semitism Across U.S. Campuses, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Noah Beck, May 12, 2016

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Anti-Semitic incidents seem to spring up each week on college campuses throughout the United States. According to a study, “The strongest predictor of anti-Jewish hostility on campus” is the presence of a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

The greater the BDS activity, especially involving faculty members, the more likely anti-Semitic episodes become, said the study issued last month by the AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating, documenting, and combating anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses.

One recent example occurred on April 15, when the City University of New York Doctoral Students’ Council passed a resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel, 42-19. Weeks earlier, a CUNY professor and BDS advocate claimed that the killing of Palestinians in Gaza “reflects Jewish values.” On CUNY campuses, the New York Observer reports, Jewish students were harassed, with “Jews out of CUNY” uttered in at least one instance, and a professor who wears a yarmulke was called a “Zionist pig.”

On April 21, two-thirds of a union representing about 2,000 graduate students at New York University voted to approve a motion to support a BDS resolution against Israel. The motion also urges the union and its affiliate, the United Auto Workers, to divest from Israeli companies. The resolution asks NYU to close its program at Tel Aviv University, claiming the program violates NYU’s non-discrimination policy.

About a month earlier, NYU’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), one of the main organizing forces behind the nationwide BDS campaign, hosted Israeli academic Ilan Pappé, described by Benny Morris as “one of the world’s sloppiest historians.”

As reported by AMCHA:

“Pappé blamed Jews, perceived historically as evil, for antisemitism stating, ‘The [Jewish] Israelis…are responsible for bringing antisemitism back.’ He denied Jews self-determination and demonized Israel stating, ‘evil Zionism will come to an end – all immoral regimes do’ as well as suggested rich Jews should leave Israel as a process of ‘decolonization.’ He further demonized Israel throughout accusing Israel of carrying out ‘ethnic cleansing’ multiple times. Pappé delegitimized Israel consistently referring to Israel as a ‘settler colonialist project,’ …[and] promoted BDS.”

The Jewish Law Students Association at Harvard University and Harvard Hillel co-sponsored an event April 14 on “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict & the U.S.” During the question and answer session, Husam el-Qoulaq, an HLS student and head of SJP at the school, insulted  Israeli Knesset Member Tzipi Livni by asking, “How is it that you are so smelly?… A question about the odor of Ms. Tzipi Livni, she’s very smelly, and I was just wondering.” The student’s question resurrected the anti-Semitic stereotype of a “smelly/dirty Jew.” Incredibly, some “progressive” HLS Jewish students later defended el-Qoulaq.

As BDS campaigns spread on campuses, anti-Semitic expression increasingly follows – from swastika-filled vandalism at UC Davis and Purdue University to student “debates” at Stanford University that implicitly dignify classical anti-Semitic tropes about Jews controlling the media and economy. Among other recent incidents:

  • April 20: At Michigan’s Grand Valley State University, there have beensix anti-Semitic incidents reported on campus since last December. These involved swastikas on walls or doors of residence halls, messages including “I am a Nazi” and “Hitler did nothing wrong,” a faculty member making anti-Semitic gestures in a classroom, and a Star of David with an “X” scratched into it on the window of a bus.
  • April 19: At the University of Maryland, about two dozen protesters arrived at a Hillel and Jewish Student Union event called, “Israel Fest” and, for about an hour, chanted, “Fight the power; turn the tide; end Israeli apartheid” and held signs saying “Zionism kills.”
  • April 15: At the University of Notre Dame, a letter published by three students in the school newspaper accused Israel of apartheid and directed readers to the Anti-Semitic site “IfAmericansKnew” and the site for a major BDS group, Jewish Voice for Peace.
  • April 10: At Atlanta’s historically black Morehouse College, participants at the U.S. Universities Debating Championship (USUDC) were forced to justify the motion, “This House Believes That Violence By Palestinians Against Israeli Civilian Targets Is Justified.”

According to AMCHA, 2016 already has seen 171 anti-Semitic/BDS incidents as of April 21. At this rate, 2016 will see a 36 percent increase in incidents over last year.

Faculty members have become increasingly active in BDS efforts and smears. During a talk at Vassar College in February, Rutgers professor Jasbir Puar accused Israel of harvesting Palestinian organs and conducting scientific experiments in “stunting” the growth of Palestinian bodies. Last month, 40 Columbia University professors signed a BDS petition. More recently, one pro-BDS professor even tried to link campus rape to Israel. As Rochester Institute of Technology lecturer A.J. Caschetta notes, “at a time when much of academe is jumping on the BDS bandwagon, there is little risk to academics who join the movement, whereas opposition to majority leftist positions often leads to a perilous path.”

Indeed, academics who buck this trend may be endangering their careers. At Connecticut College, one of the few professors who defended Andrew Pessin, who hasn’t been in his classroom for the past year after a hate-filled campaign miscast his comments about Hamas as a smear on all Palestinians, says his stance cost him a promotion. Manuel Lizarralde, associate professor in Ethnobotany, wrote in a faculty-wide email Jan. 26 that the college “acted like vigilantes and found the perfect scapegoat,” in Pessin.

Within days, Lizarralde said, he was called in by the administration for a scolding. Noting that he was recently denied promotion, Lizarralde suggested in a recent email that this was payback for his support of Pessin. Connecticut College has “a sense of racism since we are Latinos, Jews and advocate for social injustice…[and we] are being punished [for such activism].”

Responding to the negative media coverage generated by the Pessin case, Connecticut College President Katherine Bergeron published an email to the faculty March 28, in which she championed “the right of all its members to express their views freely and openly.” She failed to explain how that principle applied to Pessin, who was hounded off campus for expressing his views, only to see them twisted and turned against him. She said that the school should promote “reasoned and informed debate about the most complex issues of our time,” but Pessin’s absence leaves the school with no pro-Israel voice. When asked about the contradictions between her email and the Pessin affair, she declined to comment.

Meanwhile, outrage against Connecticut College continues to build, with a petition to investigate the Pessin affair and revoke the school’s accreditation now exceeding 1,500 signatures.

Just as the character assassination targeting the only pro-Israel voice at Connecticut College appeared as a total surprise, BDS campaigns to influence student government votes across the country pop up with minimal notice, just weeks before the vote, giving the opposition little time to organize. That strategy helped secure SJP a BDS victoryat the University of Chicago undergraduate student government in March.

It failed to persuade the university’s administration, though.

Who is funding BDS? Analyst Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies recently told members of Congress that former employees of Hamas-linked charities now work for the Illinois-based organization American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which is “arguably the leading BDS organization in the US, a key sponsor of the anti-Israel campus network known as Students for Justice in Palestine.” Schanzer noted that AMP provides money, speakers, training and even “apartheid walls” to SJP campus activists. More surprising, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has given anti-Israel BDS organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center.

On campus after campus, the BDS movement has proven itself to be well organized and determined to poison the minds of impressionable students against Israel. It will take an equally concerted and sustained effort to oppose BDS in academia.

Gaza Salafists look to ISIS for inspiration

May 12, 2016

Gaza Salafists look to ISIS for inspiration, Israel National News, Adel Zaanoun, May 12, 2016

Isl State in GazaISIS supporters in Gaza Reuters

(AFP) Terrrorists inspired by the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group’s ideology are seeking to benefit from the desperation of young Palestinians to strengthen their foothold in the Gaza Strip.

But the Salafists in the enclave tread a fine line to avoid conflict with Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group which has ruled the strip for a decade but does not share all of ISIS’s world view.

Leaders of the Salafists, who are adherents of a strict Sunni interpretation of Islam, claim to have 3,000 fighters in Gaza.

While the figure is impossible to verify, experts see an increasing use of ISIS-style rhetoric to attract support.

“Some groups use the Islamic State label and claim to have adopted jihadist ideology to attract teenagers who have lost all hope,” said Assaad Abu Charakh, a professor at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.

Last week saw the heaviest cross-border clashes between Israeli forces and Hamas and other terrorist groups since 2014, raising fears of a return to hostilities, though calm has since returned.

Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza since 2006 aimed at containing Hamas, which is sworn to the destruction of Jewish state and whose charter calls for the annihilation of the Jewish people.

At almost 45 percent, the unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip is among the world’s highest.

Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, and then one year later staged a violent purge of its Fatah rivals, killing scores and ousting the Palestinian Authority from Gaza entirely.

Qassam Brigades defectors

But some members of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, argued elections were un-Islamic and defected to form Salafist groups.

Abu al-Ansari al-Ina, a leader of the “Young Salafist Fighters,” one of the major jihadist groups in Gaza, is one such defector.

The priority, he argues, is the “fight against the Jews in Palestine, even if the strategic goal is the introduction of Islamic law in the world.”

He says he is under surveillance and took precautions before meeting anAFP journalist.

Two hundred Gazans, including some of his movement, have crossed into Egypt to join the ranks of the Islamic State “despite Hamas’ attempts to stop them,” he says.

Most used the tunnels that once linked Gaza to Egypt, while others took advantage of the occasional openings of the Rafah border crossing, the only of Gaza’s borders crossings not controlled by Israel, and which is the subject of a total blockade by Egypt.

The vast Sinai desert is gripped by an insurgency that Egypt regularly accuses Hamas of supporting.

Egypt’s air force has destroyed a large number of the tunnels and established a buffer zone along the Gazan border.

Abu Sayyaf, military commander of another Salafi movement, insists Israel is the primary enemy.

“Our priority now is to strengthen the military capabilities of our fighters to kill the Jews, the enemies of God,” he said.

“We do not want confrontation with Hamas,” but “we will not hesitate to fight the infidels or anyone who stands in the way of our fighters.”

Escalation fears

Hamas security services reached an agreement last year with the jihadists after arresting about 100 of them: in exchange for their release, the groups committed to respect the truce with Israel and not to attack Palestinian or foreign institutions in Gaza.

Though limited, Salafi attacks endanger the ceasefire which Hamas is tactically keen to uphold.

Gazan groups have been firing rockets into Israel for years, with Israel retaliating by striking Hamas positions – holding the terrorist group responsible for all attacks emanating from territory it governs.

Many fear the tensions could escalate into clashes between Hamas and jihadi groups if rocket attacks occur.

Salafi jihadists have occasionally threatened Hamas in online videos, with some claiming the shelling of Qassam bases. “We met our commitments but Hamas did not, they again arrested some of our fighters,” says Abu al-Ina.

Mahmoud Zahar, a top Hamas official, says the authorities “discuss and are trying to reason” with the imprisoned Salafists, but have no choice but to use force against aggressors.

A Salafist was killed last year by Hamas forces who had come to arrest him.

Some jihadists “were planning to kill their neighbors and relatives,” Zahar said, provoking Hamas to step in to prevent “a huge explosion.”

Asked about the ISIS links, Abu al-Ina al-Ansari says they merely consist of “an exchange of ideas but are not organizational.”

“We agree with the clear message sent by the Islamic State to the miscreant West: ‘Stop your attacks, we will stop our attacks’.”