RUTHFULLY YOURS

Using both carrots and sticks, Israel has so far managed to prevent attacks against the Golan, but the danger is growing as jihadist movements increase their presence in southwestern Syria amid setbacks on other fronts.

Israeli military forces in the Golan Heights have been in a state of permanent alert for some time, with one officer recently telling the author that the situation on the other side of the ceasefire line has become “incomprehensible and threatening.” Ever since large contingents of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) withdrew from the demilitarized zone separating the Israeli and Syrian portions of the Golan, various radical groups have taken over much of the area, including the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra (JN). And while Druze villages in the area remain under the Assad regime’s control, Hezbollah has repeatedly tried to establish its own foothold there. These developments have exacerbated concerns about a potential jihadist or Hezbollah attack on the western side of the Golan, since destroying Israel remains the mobilizing utopia of all of these movements.
ASSAD HAS LOST MOST OF THE GOLAN

On the Syrian side of the Golan ceasefire line, all of the regime’s armored divisions have gradually been withdrawn in order to fight rebels in the Damascus, Aleppo, and Homs areas. Bashar al-Assad has not been troubled about making such redeployments because he knows that Israel will not invade. Yet his army has also lost a large swath of territory along the Jordanian border between the Golan and Jabal al-Druze, leaving only one regime contingent that holds half of Deraa city and the road to Damascus.

Click on map to view high-resolution version.
According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), about 150 independent rebel groups are now present in southern Syria. Some of these groups have united under the “Southern Front” umbrella, reportedly with substantial support from a U.S.-backed military operations center in Jordan (MOC Amman). Yet this alliance is only temporary and intended for specific, limited purposes. Thus while JN has no more than 1,500 fighters in the area, and IS less than a thousand, they are enough to play a substantial role inside a very fragmented southern rebellion.

Moreover, MOC Amman seems to have frozen its offensive plans against Deraa and Damascus in recent months, partly because of the Russian intervention in Syria that began last fall, and also because Jordan is straining under the weight of refugees and does not want to encourage heavy fighting that spurs more Syrians to flee across the border. For its part, Russia has not conducted airstrikes in the Golan apart from a brief spate of bombing, respecting President Vladimir Putin’s understanding with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Jihadist groups have been quick to exploit this stalemate, whether by extracting allegiance through force or playing on the sense of betrayal that some local factions feel toward their Western and Arab allies. JN has strengthened its presence in the south and become the dominant player there, just like it did in Idlib province. Its only real competition comes from IS, which exerts local influence through its affiliate, the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade (Liwa Shuhada Yarmouk, or LSY). This is the group that most concerns IDF officials, some of whom believe that LSY could attack Israel with unconventional means such as chemical weapons or suicide attacks.
ISLAMIC STATE AND AL-QAEDA ON ISRAEL’S BORDER

LSY was founded in summer 2012 by a local chief of the Yarmouk Valley, Mohammed al-Baridi. Since his death in November 2015, the group has been led by Abu Obeida Qahtan, a Palestinian Syrian from Damascus and a veteran of conflicts in Chechnya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, where he was close to Osama bin Laden. The group became famous in March 2013 when it kidnapped a group of UNDOF soldiers, later releasing them after extracting ransom from Qatar. Despite this incident, LSY continued to receive military support from MOC Amman until summer 2014, when it became clear that the group had pledged allegiance to IS, according to the Emirati daily the National.

This May, LSY joined together with the Muthanna Islamic Movement and Jaish al-Jihad to create the Army of Khaled ibn al-Walid. From a defined territory protected by the Yarmouk Valley and the Golan ceasefire line, this umbrella group has launched attacks against other rebel factions in the direction of Deraa and Quneitra, including suicide bombings. On July 2, for example, a suicide attack in Inkhil killed 7 Southern Front commanders.

Meanwhile, JN controls the southern areas between IS and the Syrian army, including the ruins of Quneitra city. JN forces in the south first made their presence known in early 2012, launching attacks against Jabal al-Druze. Since then, the group has increased its grip on the rebellion as a whole, cooperating with Ahrar al-Sham to unite various factions on the model of the Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest) coalition in the northwest. But JN was unable to replicate its Idlib successes in the south because MOC Amman actively tried to keep the group away from the Southern Front coalition.

Since last fall, MOC Amman’s priority has been the campaign against IS. Yet fighters supported by the MOC have not been very efficient in that regard, partly because they would prefer to battle the Assad regime, but also, ironically, because their MOC-supplied livelihood depends on a perpetual anti-IS campaign. Thus JN is the only southern player with a genuine interest in eliminating IS, its direct ideological and military competitor.

More puzzling than the elusive pages from the Congressional 9/11 inquiry is why Obama released them, and specifically, why now.

The president apparently believes it will burnish his legacy, embarrass his enemies and make permanent his diplomatic “accomplishments” with Iran. Reminding Americans of Saudi Arabia’s Al-Qaeda connections, shortly after the one-year mark of the Iran nuclear deal and before the 15-year mark of 9/11, might also continue to desensitize us to the dangers posed by Iran.

Americans suddenly flush with a renewed indignation against the Saudis might not run into the arms of the Iranian mullahs, but some might get distracted from their equally-deserved indignation about Iran’s ongoing missile tests, the steady progress Iranian scientists are making at the nuclear plant in Parchin, and their anger at having been lied to again and again.

After keeping them secret for 14 years, the White House has finally released the 28 pages that were removed from the 2002 Congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks and withheld from the final 9/11 Commission Report. More puzzling than the elusive pages is why Obama released them, and specifically, why now.

The administration claims that the 28 pages clear the Saudis because they provide no conclusive evidence of their involvement in 9/11. The media echo chamber followed the administration’s lead: Time, Al Arabiya, NBC, the Associated Press and many others reported that the pages contained “no smoking guns.” But there are smoking guns. Those smoking guns expose the Saudi government as a sponsor of terrorism, and, by proxy, improve Iran’s standing in the Middle East.

Author Paul Sperry writes that the 28 pages “show the hijackers got help from Saudi diplomats and spies.” And while the evidence might not meet the threshold that the current Department of Justice requires for an indictment, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) described it as

“a chilling description of Saudi ties to terrorists, Saudi payments to terrorists, and Saudi obstruction of U.S. antiterrorism investigations” and found “more than enough evidence to raise serious concerns.”

Obama had to know, despite his administration’s tepid affirmation of Saudi innocence, that the information in the 28 pages would inspire a wave of negativity towards Saudi Arabia from the American public. He also knows that anything that hurts Saudi Arabia’s reputation helps Iran. What weakens Saudi Arabia tips the scales in Iran’s favor, as the two nations compete for dominance in the region.

Every calendar quarter the United Nations Security Council holds an extensive debate on the Israeli-Palestinian “situation.” The Israeli and Palestinian UN representatives make speeches following the Secretary General’s report on the current status, which are normally predictable restatements of their respective positions. This time, however, Israel’s ambassador Danny Danon, addressing the Security Council at its July 12th meeting, presented new graphic evidence of Hezbollah’s alarming arsenal of rockets and missiles located in civilian areas of southern Lebanon.

Ten years ago, when Security Council Resolution 1701 was adopted, ending the war that had broken out between Israel and Hezbollah, the terrorist group was estimated to have had about 7000 rockets. The resolution called for Hezbollah and other armed groups not officially a part of the Lebanese government’s armed forces to relinquish their weapons. Instead, precisely the opposite has happened. Hezbollah never stopped its arms build-up, which has been funded and supplied principally from the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, Iran.

Hezbollah now has approximately 120,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israeli civilian population centers. By way of comparison, Ambassador Danon said that “more missiles are hidden underground in 10,000 square kilometers [of Lebanon] than the above-ground 4 million square kilometers” of the European North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries.

Referring to aerial satellite imagery, based on the latest Israeli intelligence, Ambassador Danon demonstrated to the members of the Security Council the location of rocket launchers and arms depots that Hezbollah had placed in civilian areas. “The village of Shaqra has been turned into a Hezbollah stronghold with one out of three buildings used for terror activities, including rocket launchers and arms depots,” Ambassador Danon said. “Hezbollah has placed these positions next to schools and other public institutions putting innocent civilians in great danger.”

Hezbollah, aided and abetted by Iran, was “committing double war crimes,” the Israeli ambassador charged. “They are attacking civilians, and using Lebanese civilians as human shields,” he said. “We demand the removal of Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon.”

Not surprisingly, Ambassador Danon’s presentation of irrefutable evidence of Hezbollah’s clear and present danger to Israeli and Lebanese civilians, and his demand for Security Council action, fell on deaf ears. In her own statement that followed Ambassador Danon’s remarks, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power said not a word about what was just presented regarding Hezbollah. Instead, she stuck to her canned talking points that continue to draw a moral equivalence between acts of Palestinian terrorism and Israeli self-defense. “In recent months, there’s been a steady stream of violence on both sides of the conflict,” she said. Then Ambassador Power proceeded to criticize the building of Israeli settlements, as if again to draw a moral equivalence between housing construction and terrorism. She assailed what she called Israel’s “systematic process of land seizures, settlement expansions, and legalizations of outposts that is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.” All that Ambassador Power said about Lebanon was to decry the political stalemate in electing a new president and to state that “the United States is helping the Lebanese armed forces build the capabilities necessary to counter violent extremism and protect the Lebanese people.” If the Obama administration were truly interested in countering “violent extremism” in Lebanon and protecting the Lebanese people, it would start by doing everything possible to eliminate the violent extremist threat posed by Hezbollah’s massive rearmament. That, in turn, would require the Obama administration to reverse its appeasement course towards Iran and tighten, not loosen, the financial screws on the regime.

This text, commissioned by the online revue Midah, was published in Hebrew translation on July 16, 2016]

The 14 juillet National Holiday fireworks were over, the horror began in Nice. A 19-ton semi-trailer truck went around the barrier and barreled down the famous beachfront Promenade des Anglais. The monster truck drove 2 kilometers, zigzagging to make direct hits, deliberately picking off babies in their strollers, before the driver was stopped in a shootout with police. At this writing the toll stands at 84 dead; 50, including 10 children, with life threatening injuries; and 150, including 54 children, less seriously injured. The mass murderer has been identified as a 31 year-old Tunisian, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, living in Nice on a residence permit, recently licensed to drive big trucks, father of three, separated from his wife since 2014. Bouhlel’s criminal record, including assault and battery, theft, and domestic violence, dates back to 2010, one year after he was granted a 10-year residence permit. He is under a restraining order obtained by his wife who has sued for divorce. He is described by several of his neighbors as a mean loner, with the exception of one who found him to be a nice guy, not at all religious, didn’t say his prayers, liked to dance the salsa and go out with the chicks.

On March 24th, Bouhlel was given a six-month suspended sentence for assaulting a motorist who had asked him to move his truck that was blocking traffic. The victim, Jean-Baptiste Ximenes, posted on Facebook his indignation that the man who had violently beaten him with a baseball bat, was left free…to commit mass murder.

An irascible young Tunisian armed with a 19-ton truck killed more than 80 civilians and the toll is expected to rise. In the truck he rented on July 11th –and was supposed to return on the 13th– Bouhlel was carrying two fake machine guns, a pierced grenade, a fake handgun and a real one that he used in the final shootout with the police. The death toll of the November 13th jihad attacks at the Bataclan, sidewalk cafés, and stadium in Paris is 130. That operation, masterminded from Syria, involved dozens of fighters trained in the caliphate or handling logistics in Europe. They traveled by complicated routes, some joined the “refugees” in Greece and snaked up to Belgium with them, probably recruiting a few shahids in the lot. They had safe houses, false passports, money, weapons, ammunition, explosive vests … Vastly disproportionate weapons and planning, give ghastly similar results Eighty-four dead, fifty maimed for life, the blue waters of the Côte d’Azur trembling with horror and outrage; 130 dead, countless maimed and marked for life, Parisian joie de vivre stunned….

But all of that may be nothing compared to what is coming next. Only the other day Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve warned that the “terrorists” might switch from “suicide” attacks to other methods like truck bombs and IEDS. The root motivation that inspires these mass killings passes through myriad disparate channels and achieves significant results. The focus on anecdotal details obscures that single source and delays our understanding of the war waged on the free world. It must be granted that the Hollande government, ineffectual as it may be, did not call for stricter control of semi-trailer truck rentals in the wake of the Nice attack. The investigation was handed over to Paris Prosecutor François Molins, and classified as a terrorist attack committed in collusion with a terrorist organization. In his first public declaration Molins explained: whether or not Bouhlel was in direct contact with Daesh, his heinous act responds to instructions given by the organization. Subsequently PM Manuel Valls maintained that Bouhlel was in fact connected to a radical Islamic movement.

ISIS supporters on a Portuguese-language message board have been discussing attacks in the region as Brazilian officials prepare for a massive influx of Olympic athletes and fans.

The Summer Olympics begin Aug. 5 and run through Aug. 21.

A new Telegram channel, Ansar al-Khilafah Brazil, appeared today, declaring itself an ISIS cell in Brazil that had pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “If French police couldn’t stop France attacks, then their training Brazil’s police will serve no use,” said a message on the new channel. But the administrator later posted that it was just a messaging channel with one person reposting ISIS news in several languages.

ISIS has been offering its regular propaganda channel in Portuguese along with English, French, German, Russian and other languages in target areas.

Portuguese and Brazilian media revealed last month that Ismail Abdul Jabbar al-Brazili, also simply known as “The Brazilian,” was attempting to recruit his countrymen for the Islamic State. He was said to be employing several different social media accounts to reel in would-be jihadists, and has said he was recruited by late American jihadist Abu Khalid al-Amriki.

In an online forum uncovered by anti-ISIS hackers Binary Sec, a July 11 post to fellow “brothers” notes that someone was “wanting to find al-Brazili within 3 weeks… wants to find the recruiter” — a timetable that coincides with the Olympics’ opening week. The poster mused whether this person was a spy and posted his Telegram information.

Binary Sec hackers also flagged a June 18 post with a photo of an AK-47 resting against a carpeted backdrop. “We are expecting a larger audience, will be soon, the blood of sinners will fall and we will show the real power of God,” read the accompanying text.

And the poster, going by the name “Wolf,” also showed an unidentifiable objecting burning on a concrete surface, talking about “improvisation” with explosive material. “There are many dealers selling fireworks, if you have knowledge, prepare some explosions for the big day.”

Binary Sec identified the user as originally being from the U.S. and now acting as a weapons man for ISIS in Brazil.

“In just two months got a gun here, you do not need much,” he writes. “…Some of these suppliers are on our side, we have plenty of resources for our actions.”

In a June 17 post, he says “we will be in the region of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, we need to gather more, all have their opportunity to serve our Lord, even if you want to be a wolf.”

Another post from the same day by a different username shows a photo of an automatic weapon against what looks like a dark bed comforter. “We have a reliable supplier and that is on our side. The weapons transport will be in Rio de Janeiro to Curitiba” — an 11-hour drive down the coast. A pale-complexioned man’s hand holds a barrel in another close-up photo: “The acquired material, all still without scraping and good quality. The number of shots, according to the source, is 72, great news for us.” An AK drum magazine can hold 72 rounds.

The poster named “Wolf” replies: “I believe that one of our prepared group could launch an attack so get the party times.”

Binary Sec told PJM that they have reported these findings to the proper authorities. CONTINUE AT SITE

The article in the Atlantic last year, which argued that ISIS is not just Islamic but very Islamic, predictably created an uproar of indignation and accusations of fomenting Islamophobia from the usual suspects from the NYT to the Huffington Post. By contrast very little has been heard from the same quarters about the treatment of Yazidis, Christians, and other religious minorities in Iraq — mustn’t criticize Muslims for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities or — that ultimate crime against humanity — fomenting Islamophobia.

But let me leave aside these obvious bases for criticizing Islamic practice and even leave aside terrorist acts — from 9/11 to the Boston Bomber to Charlie Hebdo and now Nice. Instead, the case here will be argued just on the basis of the prevailing behavior and mindset of the young males of Europe’s new “immigrants.”

In one day alone there were 1,200+ sexual assaults on German women by approximately 2k Muslim “immigrants.” Angela Merkel’s reaction? To cut a deal with Facebook and Twitter so that next time Muslims commit thousands of sexual assaults, it will be much harder for the populace to get the news out through the digital curtain of dot com censorship and propaganda. And those fewer than 1% who do get “prosecuted”? The poor dears have just been miseducated and need courses in deportment and a gentle nudging into accepting the astounding concept that infidel women have feelings, sensibilities, and rights.

Miseducated?

There is no shortage of apologists for Islam that will insist that the mass rape and sexual abuse of European women by Muslim men in Cologne and elsewhere does not fit Koranic doctrine which basically only permits rape of captive women taken in battle (Ar-Rahim) but, as Raymond Ibrahim points out, other interrelated Islamic doctrines command Muslim men to hate all non-Muslims and to see women — especially infidel women — as little more than sex objects (or, in the words of a Muslim who recently murdered a Christian girl in Pakistan for refusing him sex, “Christian girls are only meant for one thing: the [sexual] pleasure of Muslim men.”

PARIS—The man who killed 84 people in Nice was a violent drinker and drug taker with an “unbridled sex life” who developed a fascination with Islamist State and other terrorist propaganda, prosecutors said as they deepened their probe into whether a broader network fostered his radicalization.

François Molins, the chief Paris prosecutor overseeing the investigation into the Bastille Day attack, said Monday that police haven’t found any evidence that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel explicitly pledged allegiance to Islamic State or had links to any people associated with the Sunni Muslim militant group.

However, the prosecutor painted a picture of a man who underwent a rapid transformation in the weeks leading up the massacre and became suddenly enthralled with extremist messages and ultra-violent images.

Data recovered from Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s computer included pictures of militants draped in Islamic State flags and corpses as well as photos of Osama bin Laden and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the head of an al Qaeda-aligned group called Murabitun. His computer also turned up searches for “horrible car accidents” and “shock videos,” Mr. Molins said.
“What we pulled from his computer shows a certain recent interest for the radical jihadist movement,” he said.

The speed of Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s radicalization, French authorities say, raises the specter that France is up against a new breed of terrorist that intelligence agencies can do little to detect. Recent attacks in Paris and Brussels were carried out by Islamic State militants who spent time in the terror group’s stronghold in northern Syria.

Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a Tunisian who moved to France after marrying his cousin, a French national, wasn’t on any watch lists and wasn’t known to have made any trips to Islamic State territory.

The attacker’s family, however, had recently grown concerned after Lahouaiej Bouhlel befriended an Algerian man who was known for subscribing to an ultra-orthodox strain of Islam known as salafism, said Sadek Bouhlel, an uncle of the attacker who lives in his Tunisian hometown of Msaken. CONTINUE T SITE

German investigators found a “self-drawn IS flag” in the belongings of an Afghan man who attacked passengers on a German train on Monday, Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said Tuesday.

Police found the Islamic State flag while searching the room of the 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who wounded four people on a train in southern Germany with a hatchet and knife and another after he fled the scene, shortly before being shot dead by police late Monday.

Police said two of the wounded—members of a Chinese family from Hong Kong visiting Germany—were in a critical condition.

Police are still investigating whether the attacker was part of an Islamist network or radicalized himself individually, Mr. Herrmann said on German television, citing witness reports that the attacker shouted a religious statement.

“At least on the train he acted alone,” Mr. Herrmann said. “It still needs to be verified whether he had contact to others with an Islamist background.”

Speaking just after the attack, Mr. Herrmann had said one witness reported hearing the attacker shout “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.” However, other passengers on the train, he said, didn’t recognize “any particular Islamist motive” to the attack.

If the motive is confirmed, the incident would represent the most significant such attack in Germany since a Kosovar gunman killed two U.S. servicemen in 2011.

There’s much to be said for love, but watch out when it’s a moralizing rock star doing the talking — and the subject is not romance, but matters of life and death in a time of accelerating jihadi slaughter.

In the aftermath of the terrorist atrocity in Nice — which ISIS has claimed for its own — the headlines now include reports that Bono, lead singer of the U2 rock band, was dining on the terrace of La Petite Maison restaurant, about half a mile from the Nice seafront Promenade des Anglais, when Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a truck for more than a mile through the festive Bastille Day crowd, wounding more than 200 people and killing 84, including 10 children.

Armed counter-terrorism police “rescued” Bono, along with a number of other celebrities, including Elton John and a former mayor of Nice, who were also dining at the restaurant.

The next day, U2 put out a tweet, signed by all four members of the band, including Bono:

Love is bigger than anything in its way.

No doubt they meant well. But it ought to be clear by now that “love,” for all its virtues, is not enough to stop a terrorist driving a 21-ton truck. That was done by the heroic French police, who risked their lives to approach the truck and used their guns to fire a volley of bullets into the the cab, killing Bouhlel.

Nor, as far as Bono and his celebrity companions needed rescuing, were they rescued by love. They were rescued and escorted from the area near the killing zone by counter-terrorism police armed with guns.

One might cavil that the police who stopped Bouhlel acted out of love — love of country, love of decency, love of honor, love of their fellow man. Surely that figured in their actions. It took a lot more than love, however, to end Bouhlel’s killing spree. CONTINUE AT SITE

It may be expected that in the coming months, the Syrian efforts to implement “ethnic cleansing” of Sunnis in the north will continue and even escalate, resulting in a growing stream of refugees into Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. This will continue to destabilize these countries and to pose a challenge to a weakened Europe.

The overt American support for the Iranian involvement in Iraq will also serve to rally Sunnis to an anti-American position, while actually exacerbating the main problem — the sectarian divide. Therefore, the American involvement in the Fallujah campaign will not buy it Sunni gratitude.

Iran is entering a new stage of war in Syria which evokes the situation that the Soviet Union found itself in in Afghanistan in 1985. Like the Soviet Union in that stage of the Afghan war, Iran has achieved no decisive victory, but has incurred significant domestic opposition to the war and has no additional resources that could tip the scales.

The explanation put forward by the American administration that the attacks reflect the Islamic State’s “despair” in the face of its defeats in Syria and Iraq over the last months is specious. International terrorism “to strike fear in the hearts of Allah’s enemies” has been a hallmark of the Islamic State since its beginning and it does not need the excuse of military defeat in Syria and Iraq to continue to carry out such attacks.

Saudi Arabia

Approval of the National Transformation Plan

The Saudi Cabinet approved (June 6) the National Transformation Program (NTP), part of Saudi Vision 2030, led by Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. The NTP is supposed to be the basis for laying out targets to be met by government ministries and departments. The NTP was well received not only be the Saudi mainstream media (to be expected) but by the Saudi social media that represents to a great degree the public opinion of the younger Saudi generation. It may be expected that Prince Mohammad bin Salman will continue to take steps in the framework of his initiative that will, at least, preserve the sense of momentum and the public support he is enjoying.