Article

2013-11-03 Israel-Palestine-Jordan

[Ynet] Analysis: Global jihad spreading like cancer throughout Middle East; Israel preparing for the worst

More than 30,000 global jihadists have settled in and are fighting in countries that border with Israel. They belong to various groups, but they all have one dream: To liberate the Arab world from heretic regimes, with the climax being the liberation of Jerusalem. Afghanistan is already here; on our border.

Global jihad is the main concrete threat the army will be preparing for in 2014, and it is the focus of discussions the defense minister is holding with the General Staff ahead of the next working year. While not all of the IDF's top officers accept the term "Afghanistan is already here," there is broad agreement regarding the scope of the threat this development poses to Israel.

The argument is about the timetable: Is global jihad approaching the time when it will turn its attention to "take care" of the State of Israel, or does it need more time to establish itself on the ground and complete the mission of "taking care" of the heretic regimes of Assad, King Abdullah, General al-Sisi and others? IDF operational officers identify the jihadi threat as immediate. Army officials specializing in assessment are more cautious.

All the incidents that occurred along the borders between Israel and its neighbors since August 2011 involved global jihadists. The expected threat consists not only of the firing of rockets and missiles. Global jihad will try to breach the border and paint in the heart of Israel a picture of terror attacks similar to the one that is seen in Iraq and Afghanistan on a daily basis.

Never better?
The global jihad threat is a direct result of the Arab Spring. Just as the turmoil the region experienced between 1979 and 1982 (from Khomeini's rise to power to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the first Leb war) led to the rise of Death Eater forces such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, and the Taliban, global jihad was drawn into the vacuum left by the collapsing regimes around us.

The army is also discussing the supposed discrepancy between the sense that the Middle East has shifted from a reality of crises to a reality of agreements and the intelligence assessments indicating that the potential for an kaboom remains high. There are talks with Iran, dialogue with Syria and negotiations between Israel and the Paleostinians. The security establishment sees another positive development in the dramatic weakening of the Moslem Brüderbund in Egypt. Seemingly, our situation has never been better.

But all of these processes are expected to exhaust themselves towards May-June. The Iranians are talking about a solution within six months; the Syrians are supposed to get rid of their chemical weapons and head for elections in the summer of 2014; and Israel and the Paleostinians need to reach an agreement by April. What if these processes fail to yield results? Where will that put the State of Israel?

The only element in the Middle East that these processes have no effect on is global jihad. The dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons and the plan to reach a political agreement with the opposition in Syria does not interest global jihad. Lately there have been more and more festivities not only between global jihad and the Syrian army, but also between jihadists and moderate rebels. Global jihad settles in every area that is vacated in Syria, including the Deraa region, which is not far from the Israeli-Syrian-Jordanian border triangle. If they get a foothold in the Golan Heights, Israel will not be able to remain indifferent.

Meanwhile,
...back at the mall, Clarissa suddenly spied Mr. Bartlett at the checkout counter. He was buying Grecian Formula!...
this cancer is spreading, and no one can stop it. Who'll be able to expel from Syria those tens of thousands of global jihadists? The Egyptians estimate there are some 3,000 jihadists in Sinai. Some of them are connected to the Syrian Jabhat al-Nusra group, while others are affiliated with al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen. In Leb several hundred Sunni-Lebanese are operating under the auspices of Syrian global jihad groups. Hezbollah is having a hard time dealing with groups such as the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which launched rockets at Israel and detonated boom-mobiles in Beirut's Dahiyeh district. In Gazoo there are also a few hundred global jihadists, who pose a threat to the Hamas regime.

Has the Middle East missed the train?

Posted by trailing wife 2013-11-03 01:42|| || Front Page|| [11133 views ] Top
File under: Arab Spring

#1 Who'll be able to expel from Syria those tens of thousands of global jihadists?

Israelis will have to decide what they consider the lesser of two evils - Assad or the jihadists trying to topple him. Based on their attacks on Assad, it appears that they prefer the jihadists. We'll see if that pans out as well for them as it did for us, when we sponsored anti-Soviet Afghan rebels via Zia ul-Haq. We did it for a sound reason, namely that determining the lesser of two evils - the Afghan rebels vs the Soviets, who had 20K nukes in their armory - took all of a few seconds. The blowback from the Afghan adventure was bad, but the Afghans helped accelerate the fall of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, and that was worth something. Not sure what the Israelis are getting out of a jihadist victory in Syria.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2013-11-03 08:25|| 2013-11-03 08:25|| Front Page Top

#2 It appears right now they're getting a lot of chemical weapons depleted through use or destruction.

Posted by Procopius2k 2013-11-03 08:29|| 2013-11-03 08:29|| Front Page Top

#3 Are the Israelis just trying to keep the conflict alive in a plague on both your houses strategy?

Seems I've heard similar thoughts in the 'burg, no? ;^)

Posted by AlanC 2013-11-03 08:37|| 2013-11-03 08:37|| Front Page Top

#4 Who is funding the global jihadist?

These people need targeting.Is it state policy within the Gulf or do they still use the same excuse thats it private businessmen from Kuwait,UAE,Saudi and Qatar.

I would say the religious authority in Saudi/gulf are pulling the strings.

Posted by Ulusoth Shereter7931 2013-11-03 09:06|| 2013-11-03 09:06|| Front Page Top

#5 do they still use the same excuse thats it private businessmen from Kuwait,UAE,Saudi and Qatar.

I don't think it's an excuse. And it's not just wealthy businessmen. Islamist fervor for jihads pervades their societies, partly because oil wealth has given them the means to contribute without making a dent in their wallets. The hoi polloi hate our guts, probably more intensely than ordinary Iranians hated our guts in the run-up to the Iranian revolution. The royals are wise to make anti-American noises every so often - it helps defuse the anger of ordinary folk who view them as puppets of the West.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2013-11-03 12:59|| 2013-11-03 12:59|| Front Page Top

#6 What they preach in the gulf states explains why they hate every eligion bar wahabbi sunni Islam.

The Govts of the Gulf have influence over this surely?

Why do they not teach feedom of religion?

I spent a week in Dubai and local arabs in full arabic dress code were drinking alcohol in western Hotels.

Fucking hypocrites!

Posted by Ulusoth Shereter7931 2013-11-03 20:24|| 2013-11-03 20:24|| Front Page Top

#7 What they preach in the gulf states explains why they hate every eligion bar wahabbi sunni Islam.

The Govts of the Gulf have influence over this surely?

Why do they not teach feedom of religion?

I spent a week in Dubai and local arabs in full arabic dress code were drinking alcohol in western Hotels.

Fucking hypocrites!

This stuff is transmitted from father to son, from some hereditary local imam to his flock. Anyone who gets in the way of these traditions risks deposition or assassination. The Shah and Anwar Sadat are prime examples of what happens to Arab leaders who buck the opinion of the Arab man on the street. Unlike in the West, ordinary Muslims take their religion seriously, and will not be dictated to by liberalizing elites, who drove much of the change in the West. Ironically, we owe our relative internal peace to the fact that Western man is a slave to material comforts, and as long as this is not disturbed, we will put up with the most outrageous slights to traditional values. The Muslim man will kill, often in gruesome ways, members of the literati or leadership who dissent from the orthodoxy. In Afghanistan, Najibullah and his brother were tortured to death, mutilated and hanged by the Taliban not because they were cruel - they were exceeded in cruelty by the Taliban. They were singled out for special treatment because they were apostates, as all Communists are.

Ultimately, Muslims in majority Muslim countries are not blank slates waiting for either the West or their leaders to write on. They have historical and cultural traditions that predate the leader of the moment by 1300 years and will literally defend those traditions to the death, not in open battle, but via subterfuge, assassination and coup. And these traditions are what drive Pakistani leaders to pretend to criticize the use of American drones to kill the Taliban over Pakistani airspace even though any gun-armed 50's era jet aircraft could shoot them down with impunity *and* they are actually personally happy that Uncle Sam is helping them with pest control. The Pakistani man on the street hates the US, and any leader who appears to be openly aligned with the US is obviously tired of public life (and perhaps of life altogether).

Posted by Zhang Fei 2013-11-03 22:58|| 2013-11-03 22:58|| Front Page Top

#8 The one thing the US did that collapsed Egyptian popular support for the Muslim Brotherhood was to back it.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2013-11-03 23:59|| 2013-11-03 23:59|| Front Page Top

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