Making sense of Mid East’s many forces

By J. Zel Lurie

J. Zel Lurie
J. Zel Lurie

DELRAY BEACH, Florida — The Jihadists come in all shapes and colors, but there are various well-defined divisions. The first is Al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11. Their enemy is the modern countries of the West, headed by the United States. They destroyed the World Trade Center 13 years ago and killed many thousands. Al-Qaeda is Sunni, and its chief descendant has changed into a fanatical Muslim sect. Its chief interest is establishing a Caliphate and is no longer interested in combating the “great Satan” of the West. Al-Qaeda announced the expulsion of ISIS last February.

While the media and President Obama are full of the brutality and territorial scope of ISIS and its restoration of the 17th century Caliphate, the United States Intelligence has been warning us about the dangerous offshoots of Al-Qaeda which is a direct threat to the United States and the West.

The Shiites are heretics to these Sunni militants, but this makes it difficult for Iran. However, Iran saw an opportunity to attack Israel and supported the Hamas Sunnis in Gaza and the Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Both are now history. Hamas has 1.7 million Muslim residents in a narrow coastal strip. They waged the war to lift Israel’s siege. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is leading the fight to keep ISIS out. The New York Times wrote on September 22nd that Hezbollah and the United States were on the same side. Forgotten is the fact that Hezbollah is responsible for the death of more U.S. Marines than were killed in Afghanistan. Years ago, they blew up a Beirut building where the Marines were sleeping. American forces were almost immediately withdrawn from Lebanon.

That was before George Bush decided to invade Iraq and before Al-Qaeda sent men to the United States schools to become pilots who would capture  U.S. airplanes on 9/11.

The descendants of the original Al-Qaeda group are flourishing and remain a menace to the United States and Western Europe much greater than ISIS. According to the U.S. Intelligence, the al-Nusra Front and an associated group named Khorasson are a real threat to the U.S. security.

The al-Nusra Front is sitting on Israel’s border with Syria. In the last week of August, they captured 43 Fijian soldiers serving in the United Nations Peacekeeping Force on the Israeli-Syrian border. An Israeli paper reported that Qatar paid $20 million to ransom the Fijians. In early September, the main U.S. peacekeeping force of Philippine soldiers were evacuated together with the Fijians to the Israeli controlled Golan Heights where they will continue to report to the UN on violations of the Israeli-Syrian troops as they have done for many, many decades. The IDF and the U.S Intelligence will keep a wary eye on the Jihadasts on the Israel frontier while the rest of the world is occupied with the brutality of ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

On Sunday, September 21st, 60 Minutes devoted two-thirds of its season’s premier to ISIS, which has captured territory in northern and central Iraq to the west as far as Kurdistan and to the east as far as Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan appeared on the program. He stated flatly that Jordan’s borders were secure. He did not say that he was certain because he knew that the IDF would come to Jordan’s aid if its borders were threatened. An American Intelligence officer said that ISIS had an annual income of a billion dollars.

Unmentioned in the program was a chief source of ISIS’s income.The oil extracted by ISIS from Syrian and Iraqi wells is trucked to Turkey where it is sold on the black market at a ten percent discount. ISIS also received a heavy ransom for the 49 Turkish diplomats at the Turkish consulate in Mosul who were held for more than three months. Ankara denies paying ransom.

ISIS is using its funds to buy recruits in Western slums. These trained, brain-washed terrorists with foreign passports will be a menace for many years to come.

Meanwhile, Israel has begun a campaign in the United States against Hamas and Qatar. It started with a full-page ad in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal signed by Elie Weisel. The London Times refused to publish the ad because the accusations against Hamas were exaggerated.

No one mentioned the fact that Israel is trying to divert Western opinion from the evils of its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. When I say Israel I mean Israel’s right-wing coalition government. The people want peace.

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Lurie, a centenarian, is a freelance writer with a long history in Middle East journalism.  He may be contacted via jzel.lurie@sdjewishworld.com 

 

2 thoughts on “Making sense of Mid East’s many forces”

  1. thank you for the education but it did not go deep enough,
    why the resurrection of the caliphate and the forces behind it ?.
    the Muslim masses have been planning this after the defeat of the Ottomans it was an underground organization without leadership or power until Erdogan and his gang come to power, their mission is to establish the glory of the Ottoman Empire and unite all Turkic and Muslims under Turkish rule.
    Erdogan’s own words, “democracy is like a bus, you get on it to get where you want, and then you get off”.

  2. Author,
    The closing clause of your otherwise strikingly superficial analysis, reveals the deep Jew-Hatred pathology you are struck with. Such that it prevents any serious response to your writings, and shows how deeply disengaged from reality you are. Are you aware of the Arab-Islamist incitement and consequent hatred to Israel and the Jews? Have you bothered to explore it in Hebrew or in Arabic before you blame the Jews with the “evils of occupation”? Don’t you know that Israel is a democracy, and the Government represents the people and their percepts? And by the way, aren’t you aware of that the people of Israel are much more right leaning than their Government? Don’t you know that a rock-solid majority of Israel would not give over any additional inch of his land to Arabs, in the ludicrous hope to appease them. Don’t you know that the vast majority of Jews here around in Israel, stand steadfast in their rejection of the “Palestinian” bluff, and would repel any Islamist attempt to steal away chunks of their Land – the Land of Israel, and delegitimize the “settlements”? And why is that? — because the Gov’t of Israel is much more prone and attentive to the American pressure than the people of Israel!

    Shana Tova to all the people of Israel – wherever they are, and to our beloved country – Eretz-Yissra’el

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