Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
Long after the PLO had outlived its role as an even halfway plausible peace partner; Israel was forced to keep the terrorist group on life support as a bulwark against Hamas.
PLO leaders posture about having the UN declare a state, but not only would that state instantly be more bankrupt than ten Greek economies piled on top of each other, but its collection of terrorists who are great at running drugs and shaking down West Bank storekeepers for protection money would last all of 5 seconds in a grudge match with Hamas.
We know that last one is true because that was how it went when the PLO tried to take on Hamas in Gaza. The PLO had American weapons, training and support. Its illegal military slash police force had been nurtured by the United States and the European Union. They still lost fast and they lost hard.
The PLO’s crack troops, who were experts at sniper attacks on Jewish babies or drive-by attacks on Israeli families headed home from weddings, ran away faster than an Iraqi army division.
The billion dollars in security assistance lavished on the Palestinian Authority forces bought nothing except panicking PLO terrorists fleeing Gaza; some of whom had to be evacuated by Israel. That year, the US had promised around $50 million in security assistance to PLO boss Abbas’ 4,700 member elite “presidential guard”. $3 million was to be sent to terror boss Mohammed Dahlan who has been accused of trying to undermine Hamas by funding Al Qaeda groups in Gaza. Those groups are now turning to ISIS.
By trying to find moderate Islamic terrorists to fight extreme Islamic terrorists, the US helped create ISIS in Gaza. The second best way to stop Islamic terrorism is to stop supporting moderate terrorists.
The PLO pretended to run the first Palestinian state in the West Bank while disavowing such legal niceties as elections and Hamas ran its second Palestinian state in Gaza. Despite all the PLO’s rants about Israel, if Israel ever stepped aside, Hamas could take the West Bank with a few hundred gunmen. The PLO has gambled all along that Israel would never actually let Hamas win.
The PLO was the only alternative to Hamas. And Hamas’ terrorists were the real “extremists”.
Now with the rise of ISIS, Hamas is being passed off as the bulwark against the Islamic State and Iran. The old extremists are the new moderates. The Saudis and Egypt want to polish up Hamas, put it on a shelf and offer it a lot of goodies in exchange for cutting its ties with Iran. Israel is supposed to go along.
Hamas is committed to wiping out the Jews and taking over Egypt, but for the moment it’s a cheap way to keep ISIS out of Gaza. Just like the PLO was supposed to keep Hamas out of Gaza.
And even those who know better will mumble, ”What’s the alternative?” No one wants ISIS taking over Gaza do they? Just think, if ISIS controlled Gaza, it might fire rockets into major Israeli cities and drag opponents around main streets face down tethered to motorcycles.
You know, the sorts of things that Hamas does.
If Hamas, a genocidal terrorist group that is part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s world terror network bent on global conquest, is a reasonable moderate alternative to ISIS, then can’t ISIS one day come to seem like a reasonable alternative to some even more horrifying Islamic terror group?
ISIS is a chip of the old block of the Al Qaeda network and Al Qaeda is a splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood.
A splinter group of ISIS that will be even more dementedly vicious than it is an almost certain development. One day we’ll look back on its beheadings, drowning and auto-da-fés as relics of a simpler time before terrorists from SuperDuperJihad or IslamAwayAllInfidels weren’t engaging in ritual cannibalism and child rape on camera. And that ISIS state in the Sinai will be considered moderate.
When it comes to terrorists, “moderate” and “extreme” are mostly meaningless terms. When the moderates are mass murderers, they don’t look any better just because the extremists are worse.
It’s not clear that the Islamic State taking over Gaza would be any worse for Israel. It might even be a good deal better if Gaza were run by an Islamic terrorist group that couldn’t count on weapons from Iran and support from the Democratic Party’s Code Pink donors. Even they might actually draw the line at ISIS, if only because the Free Gaza activists would be beheaded as soon as their boat landed.
Protecting the PLO from Hamas has improved Israel’s security situation in the short term, while worsening its overall situation in the long term as the PLO and Hamas trade off diplomatic and terrorist attacks. Protecting Hamas from ISIS would be an even bigger disaster. If this madness goes on, Israel will have to protect ISIS from SuperDuperJihad while absorbing terrorist attacks from the greater and lesser evils.
The Israeli strategy after the collapse of Oslo was to prove that the PLO does not want peace. That strategy has failed for the same reason that politicians won’t stop calling Islam the religion of peace or insisting that ISIS is un-Islamic. It’s easier to simplify and ‘niceify’ problems than to deal with reality.
Believing that you can prove a point to anyone using reason and logic is a notorious Jewish weakness. In the Talmud any issue can be resolved using a complex set of proofs. In real life most issues are resolved with fait accomplis. In one of the first diplomatic exchanges, the biblical judge Jephthah dispatched a missive to the King of Ammon laying out a claim to the land based on history, religion and logic tying reason and emotion together into an irrefutable argument. The King of Ammon invaded anyway.
If American liberals have a weakness for wishful thinking, Netanyahu has a weakness for reasoned argument. These arguments will fail because they lack the seductiveness of Obama’s promises.
The current efforts at drawing Hamas into some sort of anti-ISIS and anti-Iran coalition may be in the interests of the Saudis and Egypt, but they are not in Israel’s interests. And despite the unbridled enthusiasm among some in the pro-Israel camp over these new ties, both countries continue to consider Israel a useful enemy. This is the same old attitude that they have had before.
Israelis should know by now better than anyone else that Islamic terrorists cannot be defanged.
The Islamic State is a threat to Israel, but less so than Hamas or the PLO. ISIS is an opportunity because it is undisguised Islamic terrorism. ISIS not only refuses to deal with Israel, but with any of the enablers of Hamas and PLO terrorism in Europe and America. Whatever strengths it has, it is incapable of exploiting the greatest strategic weakness of its enemies for appeasement.
If ISIS were to take over Gaza, Israel would have no choice except to fight it. And no one in the world would be able to offer any other options. There would be no last minute diplomatic rescues for ISIS, the way that there were for Hamas and the PLO. Israel would not be forced to tolerate the bombing of its cities due to worthless accords rammed through by Washington D.C. and Cairo.
The destabilization of the Middle East threatens the rest of the region far more than it does Israel. The unweaving of tribal and religious ties among Muslims can’t take down Israel the way that it could Egypt, Syria and Jordan. While having terrorists on every border would be a serious threat, every one of Israel’s neighbors has already been providing sanctuary to terrorists targeting Israel.
If they want Israel’s help keeping ISIS away, then instead of letting them aid Hamas, Israel should make ending their support for terrorism into the price for its aid.
If they want secure borders, Israel should be able to expect secure borders in return.
Israel has spent too long protecting the PLO and Jordan from their neighbors. Expecting it to protect Hamas from ISIS is simply insane. It might be time for Israel to step back and let the natural course of terrorism have its way. The end result will be ugly, but it will end Israel’s obligation to nurture its foes.
The Jewish State has tried its best to find a middle ground that works. It’s time to let the “moderate” terrorists and their foreign appeasers live with the consequences of their terrorism.
When reason can’t win the argument, reality eventually wins the debate.
The new Commando Brigade is designed for quiet, bold, covert and effective action against terrorist groups posing a threat from the Sinai Desert to Egyptian sovereignty and Israel’s southern border. Such action would be coordinated closely between Israeli and Egyptian military and intelligence arms.
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While US president Barack Obama coined his approach to the struggle against the Islamic State with the words: “Ideologies are not defeated by guns. They’re defeated with better ideas.” – Israel and its military leaders are taking no chances against a declared enemy.
Last Friday, July 3, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s Sinai branch fired three Grad missiles across the border into the Israeli Eshkol district, while it was in mid-offensive against the Egyptian army in North Sinai. Large parts of southern Israel next door had already been declared closed military areas in consequence of that offensive.
ISIS and its affiliates, while currently preoccupied with snatching up territory from countries neighboring Israel, make no secret of their intention, confirmed by military intelligence, to reach Israel’s northern, eastern and southern borders before long.
Monday, July 6, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gady Eisenkott unveiled Israel’s answer to the coming challenge. It is a unique, multi-purpose commando ground force, especially tailored to fight ISIS and provide the “boots on the ground” which the US-led coalition has kept back from the Islamists’ constantly expanding warfront.
It will be trained and armed for extraordinary missions outside routine military tasks.
The revelation was something of a wake-up call for the general Israeli population. The new force’s short term tasks are to guard southern and northern Israel against hostile rocket fire and attempts by Islamist groups riding captured armored carriers to storm the border. This happened once before on Aug. 6, 2012, when Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis Islamists (who later joined ISIS) broke through the Egyptian-Israeli Kerem Shalom border crossing from Sinai. Their APCs had driven almost up to a military base before they were wiped out by Israeli warplanes.
The new Commando Brigade is designed for quiet, bold, covert and effective action against terrorist groups posing a threat from the Sinai Desert to Egyptian sovereignty and Israel’s southern border. Such action would be coordinated closely between Israeli and Egyptian military and intelligence arms.
Similar operations would also be staged if necessary from Israel’s northern border – against Hizballah or any threat from Syria.
The new outfit brings together the different skills and the high, focused fire power rendered by the four elite units’ assorted weaponry. In this sense, these units, all highly adept in different aspects of covert and stealth operations deep behind enemy lines, complement one another. This amalgam that may be loosely likened to a unique combination of US Delta, Seals, Rangers, and airborne commandoes all rolled in one.
The elite units merged into the new commando brigade are:
1. Meglan, which specializes in destroying enemy systems with the accent on armored units. Its members are equipped with intelligence technology for gathering data and its transmission in real time.
2. Duvdevan‘s tasks are to liquidate targeted terrorists and round up suspects. Its members operate under cover by blending into a hostile population in disguise. They are trained for single combat in the heart of enemy terrain.
3. Egoz commandos employ guerilla tactics borrowed from the books of terrorist organizations.
4. Rimon commandos also blend into a hostile population disguised as locals for the purpose of spotting and foiling terrorist operations in difficult and complex areas.
The commander of the new combined brigade is Col. David Zinni who defers to the 98th (Esh) Division.
Gen. Eisenkott has brought the four elite units together from the Paratroops, Golani and Givati brigades, among which they were formerly distributed. His action capped the reassessment of the IDF’s war doctrine which he found essential for dealing with the new volatile and constantly moving enemy.
The four elite units in combination offer a synergetic combination. They will train together in air, sea and tactics for missions to meet unorthodox intelligence demands. They will also be set apart from the conventional military by their special weapons, secret high-tech equipment, and separate guidelines and logistics.
The swiftness of ISIS’s climb to highest ranks of Israel’s foes caused Gen. Eisenkott to override the most recent innovation of his predecessor, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz: the Depth Command. The Commando Brigade has made the Depth Command redundant.
Iran’s Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of the Expediency Discernment Council. Photo Credit: IRNA
Once again, a top Iranian leader is speaking out and vowing the Jewish State will be obliterated. However, in the meantime the West makes a lot of money by taking advantage of its existence, he says.
“The presence of the Israeli regime is temporary,” Iranian Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani assured the Hezbollah-linked Al Ahd news website in an interview on Monday.
“Eventually one day this alien forged existence that has been forced into the body of an ancient nation and an historical region will be wiped off the map.”
Rafsanjani is a former ‘centrist’ Iranian president and is the current head of the country’s Expediency Discernment Council, the advisory body to Iran’s Supreme Leader. He is known to be a longtime friend of current President Hassan Rouhani.
Rafsanjani told the interviewer that “even Tel Aviv knows well that Iran is not after acquiring nuclear weapons,” the Iranian state news service IRNA reported.
However, he said, by preventing an accord between Iran and the West, “the Zionists wish to keep Iran engaged in problems permanently, knowing that the Islamic Republic’s political, economic, cultural and propagation status will all improve after such an agreement.”
Rafsanjani said he believes that one day “the forged and temporary Israeli entity, which is an alien existence forged into the body of a nation and region,” will be “wiped off the map.
“Now when, and how that will happen, depends on the conditions which are rapidly changing. Those conditions can be provided very soon if the usefulness period of Israel will expire,” he said. “It might as well take very long, as both Israel and its supporters are trying their best to extend its existence period till a very remote future.”
He also said, however, that because Israel is a “multipurpose stronghold” those who protect Israel can benefit greatly.
“Of course they spend a lot for protecting Israel, but they are still gaining greater benefits from its existence. One way to be benefited from Israel is that the West is selling arms to the Arab world on that pretext very easily, and pretending it is doing them a great favor,” he said.
Like the mainstream media in the West, the UN chooses to look the other way when Palestinians torture or kill fellow Palestinians.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas claim that the three men committed suicide.
When three detainees die in less than a week, this should sound an alarm. But pro-Palestinian groups and human rights activists do not care about the human rights of Palestinians if Israel cannot be held responsible. Their obsession with Israel has made them blind to the plight of Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority.
Three Palestinian men were found dead in their jail cells in the West Bank and Gaza Strip this past week.
But their stories did not attract the attention of the international media or human rights organizations in the U.S. and Europe. Nor was their case brought to the attention of the United Nations or the International Criminal Court (ICC).
By contrast, the case of 17-year-old Mohamed Kasba, who was shot dead north of Jerusalem by an Israeli army officer as he attacked the officer’s car with stones, received widespread coverage in the Western media.
The UN even rushed to condemn the killing of Kasba, and called for an “immediate end” to violence and for everyone to keep calm. “This reaffirms the need for a political process aiming to establish two states living beside each other safely and peacefully,” said UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Maldenov.
The UN official, needless to say, made no reference to the deaths that occurred in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas jails. He did not even see a need to express concern over the deaths or call for an investigation. Like the mainstream media in the West, the UN chooses to look the other way when Palestinians torture or kill fellow Palestinians.
The reason the case of the three detainees will not interest anyone in the international community is because the men did not die in an Israeli jail. Instead, the three men died while being held in Palestinian-controlled jails.
Had the three men died in Israeli detention, their names would have most likely appeared on the front pages of most leading Western newspapers. The families of the three men would have also been busy talking to Western journalists about Israeli “atrocities” and “human rights violations.”
But no respected Western journalist is going to visit any of the families of the three detainees: they did not die in an Israeli jail.
The same week that the three Palestinian men were found dead in jail, the UN Human Rights Council decided to adopt a resolution condemning Israel over the UN report into last year’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. Again, the UN Human Rights Council chose to ignore human rights violations by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, who deny detainees basic rights and proper medical treatment.
Two of them died in PA security installations in Bethlehem, while the third was found dead in a Hamas-controlled jail in the Gaza Strip.
The two detainees who were found dead in their jail cells in Bethlehem are Shadi Mohamed Obeidallah and Hazem Yassin Udwan. The man who died in the Gaza Strip jail was identified as Khaled Hammad al-Balbisi.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas claim that the three men committed suicide.
In the case of Obeidallah, the Palestinian Authority police said he hanged himself with a piece of cloth inside the jail restrooms. He was taken into custody on suspicion of committing a murder three years ago.
The second man, Udwan, died a few days later in another Bethlehem police facility. According to police officials, he too committed suicide.
The detainee in the Gaza Strip, al-Balbisi, was being held by Hamas authorities for allegedly assaulting his wife.
But al-Balbisi, 43, apparently did not commit suicide. He was very ill when he was arrested by the Hamas security forces, and did not receive proper medical care while in detention.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a Gaza-based non-profit group dedicated to protecting human rights, promoting the rule of law and upholding democratic principles in the Palestinian territories, called for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the detainees.
“PCHR stresses that the Palestinian Authority is responsible for the lives of prisoners and detainees under its control and is thus responsible for treating them with dignity, including offering them medical care,” the group said in a statement.
The Palestinian Authority police on parade, January 2015.
When three detainees die in less than a week in Palestinian detention, this should sound an alarm bell, especially among so-called pro-Palestinian groups and human rights activists in different parts of the world.
But these folks, like the UN and mainstream media, do not care about the human rights of the Palestinians if Israel cannot be held responsible. Their obsession with Israel has made them blind to the plight of Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, as well as to the horrific crimes committed every day by Muslim terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The story of the three men who died in Palestinian jails is yet another example of the double standards that the international community and media employ when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
(But, he inadvertently failed to mention, “we don’t want the bomb.” — DM)
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan warned against Israel’s plot to expand the occupied territories from “the Nile to the Euphrates” with the support of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group.
“This year’s rallies to mark the International Quds Day due to be held this Friday are more important than the previous years’ because the Zionist regime (of Israel) with the full support of ISIL terrorists… is seeking to realize the occupation of (areas from) the Nile to the Euphrates,” General Dehqan said in a speech on Monday.
Undoubtedly, massive participation of people in the international event can thwart “the dangerous plot”, the minister stressed.
He further emphasized that the only way to liberate the holy Quds is unity and solidarity among Muslims.
Back in January, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei underlined Iran’s determination to continue support for the Palestinian cause.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will remain resolved (in its support) until the day that the cause of Palestine is materialized,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a meeting with Head of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC) Ahmed Jibril in Tehran.
The Leader also noted that the issue of Palestine is among the top issues of the entire Muslim world.
Each year, the International Quds Day is celebrated on the last Friday of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
The event’s overarching theme is support for the Palestinians and fierce denunciation of Israel.
The day is also seen as the legacy of the late founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Imam Khomeini, who officially declared the last Friday of Ramadan as International Quds Day back in 1979.
An immense stretch of Sinai desert populated by half a million people is under siege, as the Egyptian army fights off a major offensive by the Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate, the Sinai Province, against its positions in northern Sinai. The battle, which Monday, July 6, went into its sixth day, is being fought in an area bounded by the northern town of Sheikh Zuwaid, Rafah on the Gaza border, and up to Kerem Shalom and Nitzana on the Israeli border to the south. DEBKAfile’s military sources report a news blackout on the ongoing warfare except for Egyptian army handouts.
Egyptian security sources reported Monday that the latest round of helicopter strikes and ground operations had killed 63 Islamists in villages between Sheikh Zuwaid and Rafah, where four of their hideouts had been located. Our sources add that these air strikes are directed against civilian dwellings, especially in farming districts, where ISIS fighters are suspected of hiding out. No figures have been released by Cairo on civilian or Egyptian army casualties.
DEBKAfile describes the contest as an asymmetrical one between an army that depends heavily on aerial operations and ISIS terrorists, who have resorted mainly to guerilla warfare. By night, they flit swiftly on foot between the dunes to strike Egyptian army positions. By day, their foot soldiers trap Egyptian soldiers by setting up ambushes around those positions and on the roads of Sinai to keep Egyptian troops pinned down. Terrorist operations are a constant on their agenda.
The Egyptians respond with blanket air strikes which swoop on any moving object in the embattled area – whether by car or on foot
The hide-and-seek tactics employed by ISIS are sustainable in the long term, especially when the Islamists can rely on a constant influx of reinforcements, weapons and ordnance, the sources of which DEBKAfile disclosed in an exclusive report Sunday, July 5.
The Islamic State is rushing reinforcements to Egypt from Libya and Iraq for its battle with Egyptian forces in northern Sinai, which went into its fifth day Sunday, July 5, and other offensives, DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counter-terror sources report. After sustaining hundreds of casualties, both sides claim to have won the upper hand but the tenacious struggle is not over.
An Islamist manpower pool is provided by Egyptian extremists who crossed into Libya in the past and settled in bases around Benghazi. Last week, ISIS summoned them to take up positions in Cairo and the Suez Canal and wait for orders to go into action. They crossed back with the help of smugglers. Those rings, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood underground, with branches controlled by Hamas and Hizballah, bring illicit weapons and ammunition supplies to Sinai from Libya via Egypt.
President Abdel Fatteh El-Sisi is therefore obliged to earmark substantial military and intelligence resources for defending the Suez Canal and Cairo – more even than the Sinai front.
The other source of jihadi reinforcements is Iraq, They use another branch of the smuggling network which carries them through southern Jordan to the Gulf of Aqaba where they are picked up by smugglers’ boats and ferried across to the eastern coast of the Sinai Peninsula.
The IDF had more than one reason for its decision last Wednesday to close to traffic Rte 12, Israel’s main southern highway, which runs parallel to the Egyptian border up to Eilat: It was a necessary precaution lest ISIS turned its terrorists and guns against Israel from next-door northern Sinai. The other reason was to deter the Islamists coming from Iraq from trying to transit Israel and reach Sinai with the help of Bedouin smugglers operating on both sides of the Israeli-Egyptian border.
Our military sources estimate that some 1,000 jihadists are directly engaged in the North Sinai battle with the Egyptian army, but add that they could quickly recruit supplementary fighting manpower from Bedouin tribes near the warfront who already play ball with the terrorists.
Egyptian tacticians have strictly limited the army action on this front to air and helicopter strikes and local ground and armored forces. They are focusing on defending three Sinai enclaves, the northern district around Sheikh Zuweid, El Arish port and Rafah, and Sharm el-Sheikh in the south, to pin ISIS forces down in those places and prevent them from fanning out into areas controlled by the big Bedouin tribes.
When President El-Sisi visited the troops in northern Sinai Saturday, July 5, he disclosed that only one percent of the Egyptian army of 300,000 men was assigned to Sinai. He indicated that his army was perfectly capable of wiping out the Sinai terrorist threat in no time if all its might were to be thrown into the fray.
This strategy leaves ISIS with free rein in central Sinai. However, El-Sisis, like his predecessor Hosni Mubarak, is not prepared to go all out against ISIS in its “dens” any time in the near future, because he needs all his military resources and assets he can muster to defend the capital Cairo and the Suez Canal.
Neither the Islamic Army nor the Muslim Brotherhood or any other radical Islamists make any secrets of their next plans. ISIS has announced that it is setting its sights on Egypt’s pyramids, the Sphinx of Giza, and the country’s unique historic monuments in general, after its savage vandalism and looting of other precious world heritage sites.
In a new message released Friday, July 3, a number of radical Islamist leaders, including the ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, told their followers that the destruction of Egypt’s national monuments, such as the pyramids and the sphinx, was a “religious duty” that must be carried out by those who worship Islam, as “idolatry is strictly banned in the religion.”
This message has sharply ratcheted up the jihadist element of ISIS military confrontation with Egypt to a higher, more inflammatory level.
(Not much chance of that. General al-Sisi supported the large masses of Egyptians who wanted then President Morsi deposed. He was later elected President of Egypt. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood — which uses terrorism to gain and keep power — is an Obama favorite. Besides, al-Sisi’s efforts to reform Islam run counter to Obama’s delusion that Islam, as it is and has long been, is a wonderful religion of peace. — DM)
The silence was truly deafening. Not a sound from Archbishop Desmond Tutu or Alice Walker or the eager boycotters of Israel or the United Nations Human Rights Council about the brutal massacre of more than 70, perhaps 100, Egyptian soldiers and civilians by Islamist terrorists in the northern Sinai peninsula.
Since Israel, after the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, withdrew all its forces and all settlements — including Yamit — by 1982, the Sinai peninsula has been plagued by terrorist attacks, especially against tourists, by kidnappings, and by violence. After the 2011 Egyptian revolution and consequent uprisings, a major terrorist group emerged and became even more belligerent after the coup that deposed President Mohammed Morsi on July 3, 2013. This was Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM) that has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks against both Israeli interests and Egyptian personnel.
These assaults included an attack in July 2012 against a Sinai pipeline, a rocket strike in August 2012 on Eilat in south Israel, suicide bombings in el Tor in southern Sinai in May 2014, downing an Egyptian military helicopter in a missile attack, car bombings and hand grenades in Cairo, assassinations and attempted assassinations of Egyptian officials, beheading of four individuals in October 2014, an attack on a security checkpoint, and the June 29, 2015 murder in Cairo of Hisham Barakat, the Egyptian Prosecutor General, who in only two years in office had detained hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was the most senior Egyptian government official murdered.
In November 2014, ABM declared its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS) and accepted the new self-appointed Caliph. It appears to have several hundred trained operatives and collaborators. There are different opinions about the actions of the Sinai Bedouin population, especially that of the largest of the 10 major tribes, the Tarabin tribe in northern Sinai, a tribe that is notorious for drug dealing, weapons smuggling, and human trafficking in prostitutes and African labor workers. Tarabin is said to have called for unification of all the tribes against the terrorists, but rumors of clashes appear to be untrue, and some even allege collaboration with the terrorists. What is true is that local Bedouin tribesmen, alleging discrimination by the state against them, have launched attacks against government forces in Sinai.
Over the last two years ABM, now regarding itself as a dedicated affiliate of IS, has tried to undermine the rule of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. It has attacked Egyptian army posts, and security centers, and also the UN Multilateral Force in northern Sinai, that oversees the terms of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and tried as well to infiltrate Israeli territory.
There had already been terrorist attacks on October 2014 and January 2015 when more than 30 were killed on each occasion in northeast Sinai. The most dramatic deed of ABM, which now seems to have changed its name to Province of Sinai, (POS) was the series of simultaneous coordinated attacks on July 1, 2015 on fifteen army centers of security forces and checkpoints in northern Sinai. The attacks, including three suicide bombers, killed at least 70 soldiers and civilians.
Evidently POS, imitating its mentor IS that has taken and now rules cities in Iraq and Syria, wanted to take over the city of Sheikh Zuweid, close to Israel, and cut off Rafah from al-Arish.
The danger to all of the democratic countries is immediate for a number of reasons. The first is that the success of the terrorists in their daring ambushes, control of the roads, taking police officers hostage, and planting mines in the streets, indicates not only their disciplined activity but also the influence of IS operatives directly and indirectly through training. IS in Iraq and Syria has operated in just this aggressive and disciplined fashion. All authorities responsible for security in the United States should be conscious of and take account of this highly organized success and of the threat of future similar attacks in the U.S. itself.
The second reason is that Hamas in Gaza is providing support to POS with weapons and logistical support, and even with Hamas terrorists taking part in operations. These have come from Hamas commanders in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades that have been prominent for anti-Israeli attacks, including suicide bombings against civilians inside Israel. One particular active commander is Wael Faraj, who has smuggled wounded fighters from Sinai into Gaza.
A third problem is the obvious attempt to undermine and aim at the overthrow of President Sisi, a voice of sanity in the Muslim world. He has courageously criticized the extremists of his religion. In his remarkable speech at al-Azhar University in Cairo on January 22, 2015, he said that fellow Muslims needed to change the religious discourse and remove from it things that have led to violence and extremism. The Muslim religion, he said to imams, is in need of religious reform.
Since he assumed power on June 8, 2014, Sisi has attempted to stem the tide of terrorism by reinforcing the Sinai, restricting traffic, imposing curfews in the area, and demolishing homes of suspected terrorists in Rafah. He sought to create a buffer zone along the border with Gaza, and to destroy the tunnels built by Hamas. But clearly Sisi needs help to survive. It is imperative for the U.S. together with Israel to provide that help to the overwhelmed Egyptian army and intelligence services.
Israel is acutely aware of the danger. POS captured armored vehicles on July 1, 2015 that it can now use to penetrate the border fence between Sinai and Israel. That fence is unlikely to deter a trained terrorist group that now has combat experience. Israel responded by closing roads and two border crossings as a precautionary measure. But all the democratic countries, especially the United States, and also the United Nations because of its Multilateral Force, are now aware that the Islamist terror is at their doors as well as at the outskirts of Israel, and should act accordingly.
(The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Napoleon sometimes claimed to be a Muslim. Obama often claims to be a Christian. Napoleon sought, and Obama seeks, power and glory through pretense.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon’s life and history are summarized at Wikipedia. He supported the French Revolution and was appointed General of the Army of Italy at the age of twenty-five. Three years later, he commanded an expedition against Egypt. This post compares his and Obama’s religious and political efforts to gain the confidence of Muslims. The lengthy quotations provided in this section of the post are from Worlds at War – the 2,500 year struggle between East and West, 2008, by Anthony Pagden.
While en route to conquer Egypt, Napoleon had his “Orientalists” compose a “Proclamation to the Egyptians.”
It is worth taking a closer look at this document for it summarizes not only the French hopes for the ‘Orient’, but also the ultimate failure of both sides to come to any approximate understanding of each other. It began with a familiar Muslim invocation: ‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. There is no God but God. He has no son nor has he any associate in His Dominion’, which was intended to indicate clearly that the French were not Christians. It then went on to assure the Egyptian people that Napoleon Bonaparte, commander of the French army, and ‘on behalf of the French Republic which is based upon the foundations of Liberty and Equality’, had not come to Egypt, as the Mamluks had put it about, ‘like the Crusaders’ in order to destroy the power of Islam. Nothing, Napoleon assured his readers, could be further from the truth. Tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring to you your rights from the oppressors, that I, more than the Mam-luks, serve God— may He be praised and Exalted— and revere his prophet Muhammad and the glorious Qur’an … And tell them also that all people are equal in the eyes of God and that the circumstances which distinguish one from another are reason, virtue and knowledge. 578 Having thus done his best to conflate the principle of human rights— in a language in which there exists no obvious translation for the word ‘right’ 579— with what the Orientalists had persuaded him were the basic tenets of Islam, the man whom Victor Hugo would later describe as the ‘Muhammad of the West’ continued,
O ye Qadis [judges], Shaykhs and Imams; O ye Sharbajiyya [cavalry officers] and men of circumstance tell the nation that the French are also faithful Muslims and in confirmation of this they invaded Rome and destroyed there the Holy See, which was always exhorting the Christians to make war on Islam. And then they went to the island of Malta from where they expelled the knights who claimed that God the Exalted required them to fight the Muslims. 580 [Emphasis added.]
It is hard to say how much Napoleon believed in all this. One of his generals later told a friend in Toulouse that ‘we tricked the Egyptians with our feigned love of their religion, in which Bonaparte and we no more believe in than we do in that of the late pope’. 582 But Napoleon’s personal beliefs were largely beside the point. The point was policy. Napoleon had always practised religious toleration because he knew that religious faiths could make deadly enemies. Toleration, however, was one thing; credence, even respect, was another. It is indeed highly unlikely that Napoleon had read much of the Qur’an he claimed to venerate. As he told Madame de Rémusant, the only holy book which would have been of any interest to him would have been one he had written himself. [Pagden, pp 326 – 327] [Emphasis added.]
Egyptians did not appreciate Napoleon’s Proclamation.
Just as most Muslims today have failed to be persuaded that Western social values can be made compatible with the Holy Law, the Shari’a, so too were the Egyptians who confronted Napoleon. We know something of how they reacted to Napoleon’s profession of love for Islam from the account of the first seven months of the occupation written by a member of the diwan— or Imperial Council— of Cairo named Abd-al Rahman al-Jabarti. Al-Jabarti was a well-read perceptive man who was not unimpressed by French skills and technology (he was particularly taken by the wheelbarrow) and ungrudgingly admired French courage and discipline on the battlefield, which he compared, glowingly, to that of the mujahedin, the Muslim warriors of the jihad. 585 But for all that he was a firm Muslim who could conceive of no good, no truth which did not emanate from the word of God as conveyed by the Prophet. He excoriated Napoleon’s declaration for its language, for its poor style, for the grammatical errors, and the ‘incoherent words and vulgar constructions’ with which it was strewn, and which often made nonsense out of what Napoleon had intended to convey— all of which was no tribute to the skills of Venture de Paradis or those of the French Arabists in the expedition. But al-Jabarti reserved his most searing criticism for what he repeatedly describes as French hypocrisy. The opening phrase of the declaration suggested to him not, as Napoleon had meant it to, a preference on the part of a tolerant nation for Islam; but rather that the French gave equal credence to all three religions— Islam, Christianity, and Judaism— which in effect meant that they had no belief in any. Toleration for a Muslim such as al-Jabarti was as meaningless as it would have been for any sincere believer. It was merely a way of condoning error. The years when some kind of rapprochement between Judaism and its two major heresies might have been possible were long since past. There could now be only one true faith, and any number of false ones. Napoleon could not claim to ‘revere’ the Prophet without also believing in his message. The same applied to the Qur’ an. You could not merely ‘respect’ the literal word of God. You had to accept it as the only law, not one among many. ‘This is a lie,’ thundered al-Jabarti; ‘To respect the Qur’an means to glorify it, and one glorifies only by believing in what it contains.’
Napoleon was clearly a liar. Worse he was also the agent of a society which was obviously committed to the elimination, not only of Islam, but of all belief, all religion. The invocation of the ‘Republic’, al-Jabarti explained to his Muslim readers, was a reference to the godless state which the French had set up for themselves after they had betrayed and then murdered their ‘Sultan’. By killing Louis XVI, the French had turned against the man they had taken, wrongly because their understanding of God was erroneous, but sincerely nevertheless, to be God’s representative on earth. In his place they had raised an abstraction, this ‘Republic’ in whose name Napoleon, who had come not in peace as he claimed but at the head of a conquering army, now professed to speak. Since for a Muslim there could be no secular state, no law which is not also God’s law, the French insistence that it was only ‘reason, virtue and knowledge’ which separated one man from another was clearly an absurdity. For ‘God’, declared al-Jabarti, ‘has made some superior to others as is testified by the dwellers in the Heavens and on the Earth.’ There are few things a believer, especially a believer in the fundamental sacredness of a script, dislikes more than a non-believer. To al-Jabarti the French seemed to be not would-be Muslims, but atheists. [Emphasis added.] [Id. at 329].
Obama
Napoleon, in his mix of religious and political doctrine, was a power-grubbing scoundrel and liar. How about Obama?
Obama has not claimed to be a Muslim and I don’t know what He is. To claim to be a Muslim would be politically inexpedient. However, He has proclaimed His respect and even reverence for Islam and for the “Holy” Qur’an.
overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. . . . People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind and the heart and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it’s being challenged in many different ways. [Emphasis added.]
“Tolerance? Egyptian President al-Sisi is remarkable among Muslim leaders for his efforts to promote religious tolerance. Obama appears to despise him for supporting massive public protests against President Morsi and eventually becoming president. Morsi was a Muslim Brotherhood supporter and Obama appears to cherish the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization.
Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace.
And, as Obama tells us, the Islamic State and other such groups are not Islamic.
That sort of stuff didn’t work out well for Napoleon. Are Islamists more dedicated to religious tolerance now than in the days of Napoleon? It does not seem that they are. See, e.g., Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Islamic nations.
The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.
He sought power and glory by opposing those who offend “slander” Islam, including the maker of the You Tube video on which He and others in His administration blamed “spontaneous” September 11, 2011 “demonstrations” at the U.S. Benghazi annex.
I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well — for as the city outside these walls makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and every faith. We are home to Muslims who worship across our country. We not only respect the freedom of religion, we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe. We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them.
I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. And the answer is enshrined in our laws: Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.
Obama, who claims to want a peaceful “two state solution” for the Israelis and Palestinians, has said little if anything about the propensity of Israel’s “peace partner,” the Palestinian Authority, to slander Israel and Judaism on a daily basis while honoring those who murder Jews.
Obama’s romance with Islam
Daniel Greenfield recently wrote a Front Page Magazine article titled Barack Obama’s Unholy Alliance: A Romance With Islamism. Please read the whole thing; it’s long but well worth the time. Mr. Greenfield notes, in connection with the Benghazi attack,
When the killing in Benghazi was done, the Jihadists left behind the slogan “Allahu Akbar” or “Allah is Greater” scrawled on the walls of the American compound.[6] These were the same words that Obama had recited “with a first-rate accent” for the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof. Obama had called it [the Islamic call to prayer] “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.”[7] On that too, the murderers of four Americans agreed with him.
Those who disagreed and were to be denied a future included Mark Basseley Youssef, a Coptic Christian, whose YouTube trailer for a movie critical of Islam was blamed by the administration for the attacks.
Two days after Obama’s UN speech, Youssef was arrested and held without bail. The order for his arrest came from the top. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had told Charles Woods, the father of murdered SEAL Tyrone Woods, “We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”
The ACLU, which had developed deep Islamist connections,[9] sent a letter to Hillary Clinton thanking her for her support of freedom of speech.[10]
The Supreme Court’s “Miracle Decision”[11] had thrown out a blasphemy ban for movies, but Obama’s new unofficial blasphemy ban targeted only those movies that offended Islam. The government had joined the terrorists in seeking to deny such movies and their creators a future.
At the United Nations, Obama had compared the filmmaker to the terrorists. He had used a Gandhi quote to assert that, “Intolerance is itself a form of violence.”[12] Americans who criticized Islam’s violent tendencies could be considered as bad as Muslim terrorists and if intolerance of Islam was a form of violence, then it could be criminalized and suppressed. That became the administration’s priority.
. . . .
At the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama attacked Christianity for the Crusades in the presence of the foreign minister of Sudan, a genocidal government whose Muslim Brotherhood leader had massacred so many Christians and others that he had been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.[20][21] And he told Christians that they were obligated to condemn insults to Islam.[22]
Women’s rights? Obama supports those that don’t offend Islam. Continuing with Mr Greenfield’s linked article,
In August 2013, Al-Wafd, a paper linked to one of Egypt’s more liberal parties which supports equal rights for women and Christians, accused Obama of having close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. [60]
A year earlier, Rose El-Youssef magazine, founded by an early Egyptian feminist, had compiled a list of six Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the administration.[61][62]
Beyond Huma Abedin, Hillary’s close confidante and aide, the list included; Arif Alikhan, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Policy Development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, formerly the U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference and currently the Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.
These were the types of accusations that the media tended to dismissively associate with the right, but both Egyptian publications were on the other side of the spectrum.
Egyptian liberals were the ones brandishing placards of a bearded Kerry in Taliban clothes or a photoshopped Obama with a Salafist beard. The protesters Obama had supposedly sought to support by calling for Mubarak to step down were crowding the streets accusing him of backing terrorists.
What made the Egyptian liberals who had seen America as their ally in pursuing reform come to view it as an enemy? The angry Egyptian protesters were accusing Obama of supporting a dictator; the original sin of American foreign policy that his Cairo Speech and the Arab Spring had been built on rejecting.
The progressive critiques of American foreign policy insisted that we were hated for supporting dictators. Now their own man was actually hated for supporting a Muslim Brotherhood dictator.
By 2014, 85% of Egyptians disliked America. Only 10% still rated America favorably.[63] It was a shift from the heady days of the Arab Spring when America had slid into positive numbers for the first time.[64]
Obama had run for office promising to repair our image abroad. As a candidate, he had claimed that other countries believed that “America is part of what has gone wrong in our world.” And yet the true wrongness was present in that same speech when he urged, “a new dawn in the Middle East.”[65]
That dawn came with the light of burning churches at the hands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Under Obama, America really did become part of what had gone wrong by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a crime that Obama will not admit to and that the media will not report on.
The Muslim Brotherhood was born out of Egypt and yet Egyptian views of it are dismissed by the media. Despite the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s final orgy of brutality as President Mohammed Morsi clung to power, despite the burning churches and tortured protesters, it is still described as “moderate.”
Morsi, who had called on Egyptians to nurse their children on hatred of the Jews,[66]was a moderate. Sheikh Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, the Tunisian flavor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who had called for the extermination of the Jews “male, female and children,”[67] was also a “moderate.” Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, went one better with a fatwa approving even the murder of unborn Jews.[68] Qaradawi was another moderate.[69] [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Obama sits at the center of a web of intertwined progressive organizations. This web has infiltrated the government and it in turn has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Consider the case of Faiz Shakir, who went from the Harvard Islamic Society where he helped fundraise for a Muslim Brotherhood front group funneling money to Hamas, the local Muslim Brotherhood franchise, to Editor-in-Chief and Vice President at the Center for American Progress, heading up the nerve center of the left’s messaging apparatus, to a Senior Adviser to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.[73] The next step after that is the White House.
Time magazine described the Center for American Progress as Obama’s idea factory, crediting it with forming his talking points and his government.[74] In an administration powered by leftist activists, the integration between the Muslim Brotherhood and the left resulted in a pro-Brotherhood policy.
Egyptian liberals had expected that the administration’s withdrawal of support for Mubarak would benefit them, but the American left had become far closer to the Muslim Brotherhood than to them. Instead of aiding the left, it aided the Brotherhood. The Egyptian liberals were a world away while the Brotherhood’s activists sat in the left’s offices and spoke in the name of all the Muslims in America.
The [American] left had made common cause with the worst elements in the Muslim world. It formed alliances with Muslim Brotherhood groups, accepting them as the only valid representatives of Muslim communities while denouncing their critics, both Muslim and non-Muslim, as Islamophobes. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
When Obama declared to the UN that the future must not belong to those who criticize Islam’s brutality, bigotry and abuse of women, he was also defining whom it must belong to. If the future must not belong to those who slander Mohammed, it will instead belong to his followers and those who respect his moral authority enough to view him as being above criticism in image, video or word. [Emphasis added.]
With these words, Obama betrayed America’s heritage of freedom and announced the theft of its future. The treason of his unholy alliance with Islam not only betrays the Americans of the present, but deprives their descendants of the freedom to speak, write and believe according to their conscience.
Obama has placed the full weight of the government’s resources behind Islam. He has suppressed domestic dissent against Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood while aiding their international goals.
Is Osama Obama worse than Napoleon?
Napoleon represented a nation which, during the French Revolution, had become largely secular. Obama’s America, under His “leadership,” is becoming largely secular. Napoleon sought, and Obama seeks, each in his own way, to promote himself as deserving the approbation of Islam. Napoleon sought power and glory by lying. Obama does much the same, but He most often lies to the denizens of His America.
In the years immediately following the French Revolution, France was considered a great nation. When Obama took office, America was as well. Although some still celebrate America’s freedoms from tyranny on Independence Day, during the Reign of Obama she has become less free and large numbers of “His people” have become increasingly dependent. It’s time to put America back the way she was.
Postscript: I have read of no reported Independence Day incidents of workplace violencerandom violence Islamic terror attacks on Obama’s America. Might it be possible that Obama has convinced the (non-Islamic) Islamic State, et al, that, so long as He remains in power, terror attacks would interfere with His plans to promote Islam and otherwise to destroy the nation.
Should a full-blown war between Hamas and ISIS break out that makes Gaza look like Syria, the West mustn’t embrace Hamas as the better alternative. The minute differences between them should not be exaggerated out of a desire for a side to pick. They are the two manifestations of the same enemy.
*********************
The attacks on Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula by the Islamic State (ISIS) this week shows why its new vow to topple Hamas in the Gaza Strip should be taken seriously. Polls show that Palestinians have the highest level of sympathy for ISIS in the Arab world with the possible exception of Syria.
ISIS has killed at least 17 Egyptian security personnel (13 soldiers and 4 police officers) and injured 30 in coordinated attacks that reflect increasing sophistication. The Egyptian military said 70 Islamist terrorists participated and five checkpoints were assaulted. ISIS claims it struck 15 sites all at once.
The Egyptian government immediately accused the Muslim Brotherhood of involvement as it has in the past. Egypt also claims Hamas, the Brotherhood’s Palestinian wing, is secretly supporting ISIS operations in the Sinai Peninsula. It has even threatened to attack Hamas in Gaza in response.
The Egyptian claims are questionable because of the open animosity between the two groups and ISIS’ new video pledging to conquer the Gaza Strip, but the Israeli military confirmed the links after Wednesday’s attacks. It identified two senior Hamas officials who advise ISIS and covertly arrange for hospital visits in Gaza for its injured operatives.
The Brotherhood denies involvement and its website has a statement urging Egyptians to reject violence, but the group’s double-talk is well-documented. It is simply false that the Brotherhood is completely non-violent and Brotherhood media outlets explicitly call for violence like that perpetrated by ISIS this week.
However, there does appear to be a division within the Brotherhood. Youth leaders and elements outside the country are advocating violent jihad, while the older generation repeatedly reaffirms the group’s non-violent stance in Egypt. It’s possible this is all a calculated deception. It’s also possible the rift is real and a faction would be willing to support ISIS against a common enemy.
One Brotherhood official, Mohamed Gaber, said it “seeks to use all expertise inside and outside the Brotherhood to achieve its goals at this stage,” referring to toppling the Egyptian government.
The Egyptian government’s crackdown on the Brotherhood makes it tempting for Hamas to support ISIS operations in the Sinai. Hamas may prefer a situation where its southern border is a battlefield between ISIS and Egyptian forces instead of a base for either. Plus, the Brotherhood uses every death as proof that Egypt’s crackdown is counter-productive and should end.
There are three possibilities: Claims of Hamas/Brotherhood links to ISIS in Sinai are simply wrong; the two groups simultaneously collaborate and fight with each other depending on circumstances; or there are elements within Hamas/Brotherhood that work independently with ISIS against the wishes of the leadership.
Whatever the truth is, the attacks in the Sinai show the threat to Hamas should be taken seriously.
A November 2014 poll found that the Palestinians are the most sympathetic population to ISIS in the Arab world. Only 4% view ISIS positively but if you include those who view it somewhat positively, it grows to nearly one-quarter of the population. However, another poll found that only 3% of Palestinians view ISIS’ gains positively and 88% view it negatively.
ISIS could capitalize on widespread dissatisfaction with Hamas and the situation in Gaza. ISIS’ message that Gaza is in bad shape because Hamas is not sufficiently implementing Sharia could resonate with Islamists who are struggling to understand why Hamas’ rule has not been blessed by Allah. The video also slams Hamas for being too soft on Israel.
A poll released last month shows that 50% of the population in Gaza—and an astounding 80% of the youth—want to leave. About 63% favor continuing rocket attacks on Israel. Another poll found that almost 25% would not vote if elections were held today.
Should a full-blown war between Hamas and ISIS break out that makes Gaza look like Syria, the West mustn’t embrace Hamas as the better alternative. The minute differences between them should not be exaggerated out of a desire for a side to pick. They are the two manifestations of the same enemy.
The statements coming from different Israeli spokesmen this week were not just at dangerous variance with the actual events but with one another, when it came to Egypt’s massive confrontation this week with ISIS close to Israel’s border, a fresh round of Palestinian West Bank anti-Israel terror and the ambivalent role played by Hamas extremists in all these events.
Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai said in an Al Jazeera interview Thursday, July 2, that Israel had “clear evidence” of Hamas aiding the offensive the Islamic State’s Sinai affiliate launched against Egyptian positions in northern Sinai Wednesday.
The Israeli commander accused Hamas of giving “weapons and logistical support to the ISIS affiliate.” He added “we have examples of Hamas commanders who actively participated in this assistance,” and named “Wael Faraj, a brigade commander of the military wing of Hamas…who smuggled wounded [ISIS fighters] from Sinai into Gaza,” and “Abdullah Kitshi …who trained operatives belonging to Wilayat Sinai.”
Asked about Israeli-Egyptian cooperation, Mordechai commented: “Egypt is a strong and independent country.”
The Defense Ministry’s strategic adviser Amos Gilead was more specific: He said Egypt was “a strong country of 90 million people with an army of half a million.” Gilead was sure that the Egyptians would do everything necessary for a determined war on ISIS.
Thursday, July 2, the day after the ISIS raid, the Egyptian military said it had killed 123 Islamic State gunmen in two days, 100 of which were killed on Wednesday. Egyptian bombers were then described as wiping out ISIS concentrations around the northern Sinai town of Sheikh Zuwaid. “The situation in northern Sinai is now under complete control,” said the Egyptian spokesman
All three officials were doing their best to put a good face on the Egyptian army’s reverses in its largest battle yet with ISIS, say DEBKAfile’s military sources. No one was ready to admit that the Islamic State’s Sinai branch had won this confrontation on points.
For two years, the Egyptian army has only chipped away at the edges of the threatening Islamist presence growing larger in the Sinai Peninsula, even through Israel suspended the restrictions of the 1979 peace accord and allowed Egypt to bring large military forces, tanks, artillery and helicopters into Sinai for a major campaign to expunge that presence. This has not happened although both the Egyptians and the IDF know the exact whereabouts of the Islamist terrorists’ bases.
Even while playing down the unwelcome outcome of the Wednesday battle, the IDF took the precaution of closing to traffic the main Israeli highway running parallel to the Egyptian border from Nitzana to the southern port of Eilat. The army in the south was also placed on high alert in case ISIS raiders crossed the border from Egyptian Sinai.
Then, on Friday afternoon, parts of southern Israel heard a red alert for rockets which the IDF estimated had come from Sinai, i.e. ISIS, rather than the Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials are at their most mixed up when they discuss Hamas – even after crediting that extremist Palestinian group with conducting a fresh surge of terrorist attacks on the West Bank and Jerusalem. In the past week, they murdered three Israelis – David Capra, Danny Gonen and Malachi Moshe Rosenfeld.
Yet, according to the mantra the IDF has taught accredited military correspondents, all Hamas wants is a long-term ceasefire so as to live in peace. They also trot out the official claims that the deadly attacks were the work of “lone wolves,” just as the persistent trickle of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip comes from “rogue” elements.
Israeli officials appear to have lost their way amid vain attempts to let Hamas off the terrorist hook.
Hamas’ own willingness to jump into bed with Egypt, Hizballah, Iran and ISIS – all at once – undoubtedly creates a confused picture about its shifting motives. However, Israeli policymakers must beware of falling into the dangerous trap of ambivalence and loss of focus.
President El-Sisi must realize by now that his army has missed the boat for a resounding one-strike victory against ISIS, because that enemy is no longer alone. Its association with Hamas is further bolstered by a secret pact with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the deadly foe of the El-Sisi administration.
Hamas, as the Brotherhood’s ideological offspring, in fact hosted Mahmud Izzat Ibrahim, head of the Brotherhood;s clandestine operational networks, which run from Libya through to Sinai.
This tripartite ISIS-Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas axis is currently in full momentum. Egypt is therefore in for a drawn-out bloody war.
Israeli policymakers would be foolish to depend on Cairo pull this red-hot iron out of the terrorist fire any time soon. They must find ways – the sooner the better – to grapple with the reality of a rampant Islamic State next door. ISIS is already in the process of overrunning the Gaza Strip; it is on the way to seizing expanding sections of the Sinai Peninsula. That territory will serve as a convenient base for Islamist raids against Israel.
If ISIS leaps further to hijack the coastal areas of Sinai, it may be necessary to fight a major war to preserve the freedom of navigation in the Suez Canal and Israel’s southern exit through the Gulf of Aqaba.
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