ISIS "lone wolf" violence on global stage baffles Western authorities fighting terror - www.debka.com
The US State Department said Friday, June 26, that there was no indication so far "on the tactical level" that "the attacks in Tunisia, Kuwait and France were coordinated."
debkafile: That conventional prototype of Islamist terrorist operations is no longer applicable. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIS has its own methods of inflicting widespread death which are hard to detect or predict. A decree sent from the top galvanized followers worldwide into initiating largely solo operations. The result was: 211 people dead on Tunisian beaches, a decapitated victim - the first in Europe - at an US-owned French factory, and 27 Shiites killed at a Kuwaiti mosque.
The three outrages were perpetrated on three continents just two hours apart.
The second Friday of the Muslim festival month of Ramadan marked the first anniversary of the founding of the Muslim caliphate in Iraq and Syria under the rule of Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi and was therefore judged a fitting date for killing infidels and Shiites.
These atrocities, along with the mass-executions of Syrian Kurds in Kobani and attacks on Saudi Shiite mosques, were also designed to further inflame sectarian hostilities between Sunnis and Shiites and remind non-Sunni minorities, including Kurds and Druze, of the cruel punishment in store for them.
The latest operational mode of terror employed by the Islamic State is a special adaptation of the "lone wolf" method - which is nothing like the lone terrorist acting on impulse, such as Israel officials depict after a Palestinian crashes a vehicle into a crowd, or stabs a passerby. It rests on meticulous forward planning, according to all the evidence.
Most of the terrorists activated by ISIS are radical Muslims living or working outside Syria or Iraq, often in western Europe and the United States, who have pledged an oath of loyalty to the Islamic State and its caliph, or else Western converts who returned home from Middle East battlefields:
These extremists set up their own operations for acting alone, or in twos or threes at most. They choose their targets according to three yardsticks:
1. The highest number of victims they can kill.
2. The most gruesome atrocity, climaxing in beheading, for inspiring terror in a large community.
ISIS strategists have turned their backs on Osama bin Laden's tactics. He employed 20 Saudi terrorists to hijack two commercial planes for murdering thousands of people in the horrific 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington.
Fourteen years later, ISIS uses a single terrorist who is ready to die - or two at most - to execute a massacre. It took no more than one gunman, later identified as Abu Yahya al Qayrawani, firing his Kalashnikov non-stop, to mow down 39 mostly foreign holidaymakers on the beaches of the Tunisian resort of Sousse.
Disguised as a European holidaymaker, he sauntered out to the first hotel beach, his automatic rifle hidden in a large sun shade and opened deadly fire on the unsuspecting people lying there, swimming or heading for the hotel lobby. He then raced to the next hotel beach, firing as he went and killing people as they sought cover.
He was only stopped by police gunfire. A bomb belt was found tied to his body, meaning that the shooting was just stage one of the attack. A big explosion was to have followed.
This was no ordinary "lone wolf" terrorist. It was a highly competent terror machine on two feet.
The beheading of victims is another novel Islamic States method, compared with the classical Al Qaeda of yore. Its perpetrators are usually selected from a group of Muslim extremists with a history in the movement. The more gruesome the deed, the more valiant and honored is the perpetrator.
Many of the jihadis are known to Western security and intelligence agencies. In same places, especially Britain, France and Tunisia, they may even serve local Western security agencies as informants, a role they use as cover for secretly setting up their attacks. This makes their attacks virtually unpredictable.
The unfortunate truth is that many Western counter-terror bodies have been penetrated by these extremists who pretend to cooperate in the war on terror and instead keep their handlers confused.
President Barack Obama has avoided linking terrorism with the Muslim religion. Friday, British premier David Cameron responded to the latest round of ISIS attacks with horror, but he also said, "...this terrorism is not in the name of Islam. Islam is a religion of peace." The killers, rather, "do it in the name of a twisted, perverted ideology."
debkafile: Too many Muslims, even those who do not preach violence, don't see it in those terms.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant moved ominously close to Israel's borders Wednesday, July 1 - not as predicted in the north, but in the south, from the Sinai Peninsula. There, ISIS followed up on its Ramadan terror outrages in France, Tunisia, Kuwait and Kobani, with a massive assault on Egyptian forces in the northern Sinai region of Sheikh Zuwaid close to the Israeli and Gaza Strip borders.
Not just a terrorist attack, ISIS launched a full-scale military assault, starting with mortar fire and suicide bombings against five Egyptian military checkpoints.
Using a tactic similar to that employed in the capture of the Iraqi town of Ramadi last month, ISIS gunmen followed this initial assault by riding in on minivans, backed by heavy mortar fire, to storm the positions held by stunned Egyptian troops. Altogether some 20 Egyptian army positions were attacked in and around Sheikh Zuwaid.
Egyptian troop reinforcements setting out from El Arish to the northeast to aid the beleaguered force, went up on mine and bomb traps secretly planted around their camps and police stations. Egyptian Apache assault helicopters striking the ISIS force themselves faced ground fire from shoulder-borne anti-air missiles.
Egyptian forces are reported to have sustained heavy casualties, at least 64 dead and many more wounded. The Islamists are additionally said to have taken Egyptian prisoners as hostages.
As the fighting grew fierce during Wednesday, Israel to shut its border crossings with Egypt and the Gaza Strip, and sent reinforcements south in case the jihadis launched an attack on Israel from northern Sinai.
Our military sources also report that US Middle East forces located in Jordan and at Sharm el-Sheikh are on the ready in case the Islamic State decides to attack the US officers and men at the Multinational Force facility in Sinai, which is located near the Sheikh Zuwaid battlefield.
The ISIS Sinai offensive is part and parcel of the reign of terror launched last Friday by Yassin Sahli when he beheaded his French boss, and Seifeddine Rezgui, who murdered 39 holidaymakers on a Tunisian beach. Standing ready for the Islamist offensive in Sinai were the jihadis of the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which recently declared Sinai a province of the Islamic State and took an oath of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
ISIS draws on two additional major sources for its fighting manpower: the infrastructure it established in turbulent Libya for training and arming jihadis to cross the Egyptian border into Sinai; and the fatal attraction its radicalizing ideology holds for young Muslims who are taught that the brutal murder of Islam's foes is a cleansing and purifying act.
Islamic State threatens to 'uproot' Israel, topple Hamas - http://www.timesofisrael.com/islamic-state-threatens-to-uproot-israel-topple-hamas/
Extremist group blasts Islamist rulers of Gaza for being too lenient in enforcing Sharia law
The Islamic State terror group has threatened to "uproot the state of the Jews" and pursue "Hamas dictators" in Gaza.
In a video published Tuesday, IS accused the Islamist Hamas of being soft in enforcing religious law in the Palestinian enclave it controls.
"We will uproot the state of the Jews [Israel] and you [Hamas] and Fatah [in the West Bank], and all of the secularists are nothing and you will be overrun by our creeping multitudes," a masked Islamic State member said in the recorded message addressed to the "tyrants of Hamas."
The rule of Sharia [Islamic law] will be implemented in Gaza, in spite of you. We swear that what is happening in the Levant today, and in particular the Yarmouk camp [in Syria], will happen in Gaza," he said, in reference to the besieged Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus.
Hamas has been battling Gaza-based Salafist groups identified with the Islamic State. Some groups has claimed recent rocket fire on Israel, in defiance of Hamas rule.
Israeli Intelligence minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) told a security conference Tuesday that despite the tensions between the two, Hamas and IS were cooperating in the Sinai Peninsula, which has seen an uptick in violence since the overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013.
"There is cooperation between them in the realm of weapons smuggling and terrorist attacks. The Egyptians know this, and the Saudis," Katz said.
"At the same time, within Gaza, ISIS (Islamic State) has been flouting Hamas. But they have common cause against the Jews, in Israel or abroad,' he was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The Islamic State was also planning attacks across the world to mark the month of Ramadan and the anniversary of the so-called "caliphate," according to a report by the Institute of the Study of War, cited in the UK's Daily Mail.
The report claimed that IS would move to consolidate its power in territories it already control in Iraq and Syria and move on taking additional regions. In Egypt and Yemen, IS was likely to take advantage of unrest to recruit "amongst the local population while launching large explosive attacks on security forces."
"ISIS's affiliates may attempt to administer governance or claim territorial control within the Sinai and Afghanistan, both as a means of proclaiming caliphate expansion and as a way to prepare for future military operations." the report said.
The report, released earlier this month, before the deadly attack Friday in Tunisia in which 38 people were killed, correctly predicted that a massive attack would take place in the north African country.
"ISIS's affiliates and networks in West Africa will likely continue efforts to plan explosive or mass casualty attacks, either within Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria or southern Europe. ISIS-linked actors may take advantage of refugee flows from Libya into Italy as a means for launching such an attack," it said.
The group was likely to "send emissaries" to active jihadist groups in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, launch a propaganda campaign aimed at China, Turkey and Southeast Asian countries and encourage "lone wolf" attacks the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Australia.
The report also noted the group's strategy in sparking a sectarian war by hitting Shiite targets and mosques, as it did in Friday's attack on a Shiite mosque in Kuwait which killed at least 25.
ISIS in Jerusalem: Christians Threatened and a Temple Mount Takeover - By Ahuva Balofsky -
http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/44270/isis-in-jerusalem-christians-threatened-temple-mount-takeover/#u8jreeUQZRPwvzTu.97 "The kings of the earth believed not, neither all the inhabitants of the world, that the adversary and the enemy would enter into the gates of Jerusalem." (Lamentations 4:12)
The Islamic State (ISIS) has appeared in Jerusalem, with fliers attributed to the terror group being posted in the Holy City, reported Israeli media over the weekend. According to Israel's Channel 10, the fliers were posted as early as Thursday.
ISIS does not have an operational presence in Israel, but many Islamists support the terror group, with dozens of Arab citizens joining the fighting in Iraq and Syria. Earlier this month, rocket fire from Gaza into Israel was blamed on these supporters, allegedly attempting to stir up unrest between Israel and Hamas.
The leaflets threaten "revenge" against Jerusalem's Christians and were signed "ISIS Palestine". According to a report in Haaretz, fliers welcoming Ramadan were posted Saturday, reading: "We tell the heretic Christians, you must clear out immediately or we'll massacre you on Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan, and one month is time enough to evacuate."
These were signed "Islamic State, Jerusalem Emirate," according to the paper. Haaretz noted they may have been a prank.
Meanwhile, reports have appeared on social media of the ISIS flag being flown atop the Temple Mount, the holiest site for Jews and a holy place for Muslims as well. Once home to the First and Second Temples, the Mount now hosts the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine.
Temple Mount activist Rabbi Yehuda Glick told Breaking Israel News, "The situation on the Temple Mount is very worrying. The situation in general among Muslim leadership where, for some reason, celebrations like Ramadan are immediately interpreted as a celebrations of violence and terror is something that is very sad, mostly on the Muslim side.
"Of course, in terms of the State of Israel, we think the government of Israel should implement order on the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount should not be a place for demonstrating, and definitely not ISIS. I do hope that the authorities and police make sure it doesn't happen again."
As early as November, ISIS spokesperson Mohammed al-Adnani expressed the group's interest in Jerusalem. A videotaped statement from al-Adnani was quoted in the Jerusalem Post at the time, saying, "We want Kabul, Karachi, Riyadh, Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Cairo, Sana'a, Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Amman. The Muslims will return to power, to be the vanguard and lead in every place."
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