THE INCREASING ROLE OF ISRAEL IN THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR

ISIS is planning a comeback, but it and other jihadist groups will have to contend with an empowered Jewish state

By Yochanan Visser

Israel Today
July 17, 2019

The Israeli spy agency Mossad and the IDF’s Military Intelligence have thwarted some 50 terror attacks worldwide over the course of three years Israeli broadcaster Mako reported at the beginning of last week.

The foiled terror attacks were the work of Iran and the Islamic State Jihadist group according to Mako.

Israeli intelligence delivered information about planned terror attacks against twenty countries among them Turkey where the Mossad helped foiling no less than 12 attacks by ISIS despite worsening diplomatic relations between Israel and the Erdogan regime in Ankara.

Intelligence was shared with Turkey even after Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan ramped up his vicious rhetoric against Israel during flare-ups in the conflict with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

Erdogan even likened Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and claimed Israel was committing “cultural genocide” against the Palestinian Arabs.

“Today, the Palestinians are subjected to pressures, violence and intimidation policies no less grave than the oppression done to the Jews during WWII,” The Turkish dictator told participants in a conference on Jerusalem last year.

Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein responded to the news by saying: “It appears that not only the citizens of Israel owe thanks to the Mossad. It would be interesting if the tyrant Erdogan would be kind enough to thank us for saving the lives of his citizens.”

Needless to say that Erdogan remained mum on the Mako report.

Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu of Israel, furthermore, revealed that Israeli intelligence had helped thwart an ISIS bomb attack on a Etihad Airways flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi by alerting Australian officials.

“That plane from Sydney to Abu Dhabi was going to be exploded in midair, We found out through our cyber activities, we found out that ISIS was going to do this and so we alerted the Australian police and they stopped this, before it happened,” Netanyahu told participants in a cyber security conference.

“If you multiply that 50 times, that will give you an idea of the contribution that Israel has made to prevent major terrorist operations, especially from ISIS , in dozens of countries and most of those cases were foiled because of our activities in cyber-security,” the longest serving Israeli PM added.

The Mossad also helped to foil a Hezbollah attack on the British capital London as well as an Iranian plot to bomb the French capital Paris Israeli officials told Channel 11 in Israel.

Israeli intelligence sharing on ISIS attacks against mostly Western countries could become even more important in light of recent developments involving the Jihadist organization.

According to a new report by the Institute for the Study of War ISIS is working on a come-back in Iraq and Syria while “categorizing all of its global operations as part of a campaign called “Soldiers Harvest”.

The campaign entails the regrouping of forces in Syria and Iraq where ISIS has some 30,000 fighters at its disposal and the expansion of operations to countries outside the Middle East.

In Congo, India and Pakistan ISIS has created three new ‘provinces’ while launching a devastating attack on Christians in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday.

ISIS has now embarked on a battle of attrition in Iraq and Syria where the Jihadist group is using vehicle-born improvised explosive devices (VIEBD’s) and motorcycle-born improvised explosive devices (MIEBD’s) to saw mayhem.

The Iraqi branch of ISIS has, for example, already staged a string of attacks with VIEBD’s and MIEBD’s against the oil-rich Kurdish city of Kirkuk.

On May 30, ISIS-leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the start of a “global battle of attrition and the end of the ‘Soldiers Harvest’.”

Since then, ISIS has conducted ‘operations’ in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, West-Africa, Libya, Somalia, Central Africa, Pakistan and the Sinai desert in Egypt.

The Jihadist group also prepared for a terrorist attack in Israel which was foiled after the Palestinian Authority security forces, which received a tip from Israeli intelligence, arrested a 23-year-old Palestinian woman from a village near Qalqiliya.

Over the past two months, ISIS also posted chilling images of imminent attacks on the Palace of Westminster in Great Britain and the Big Ben in London on social media.

“London attacks coming soon” red a banner on the poster depicting a burning Big Ben.

Another image posted by ISIS members depicted “a balaclava-clad man wielding a knife dripping with blood standing over New York city with the caption: ‘Just Terror. Fight them in your country,” the Mirror in Great Britain reported.

“When the sacred months have passed (a reference to Ramadan) then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in them at every place of ambush,” ISIS wrote on one of the posters referring to Surah at-Tawbah 9:5-15 of the Quran.