| #3 According to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the Rantburg archives, Gaza’s Army of Islam (Jaish al-Islam) — as opposed to the one in Syria — is Al Qaeda in the Gaza Strip. They’re known for kidnapping BBC reporter Alan Johnston in 2007 and participated in the Gilad Shalit kidnapping in 2006. The Army of Islam is headed by Mumtaz Dughmush, also known as Abu Muhammad al-Ansari, whom the U.S. declared a terrorist in 2011. Mr. Dughmush previously was a PA Preventive Security Service officer in the Gaza Strip, and when he left Fatah for Al Qaeda, he took scores of his fellow policemen with him. No doubt many of them are also members of the vast Dughmush/Dagmoush/Durmush/Dogmosh/Dogmush clan, nicknamed “the Sopranos of Gaza City”. To that core of relatives was added a cadre of so-called Afghan Arabs, who’d fought with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan before Tora Bora fell. |