Looking Beyond the Salafi Sheikhs

By S. Mubashir Noor –

Israel is one of few masters of puppets, covertly funding and moulding modern Islamic extremism

We keep asking the wrong questions. Sure, it’s surreal how ISIS and Al-Qaeda spill fellow Muslim blood in the name of their shared Allah. More confounding though, is their reluctance to target an openly named nemesis, even by way of suicide attacks or beheadings.

If the global jihadi rank-and-file are ever polled about Islam’s biggest enemy, America and Israel will easily figure on top. Curiously, whereas the US has been subject to their wrath a number of times over the years, culminating in 9-11, Israel remains untouchable.

This is certainly not for lack of options. Israel, like the US, has many soft-targets around the world. In reality, the majority of the Muslim world and a few Central African states excepted, their diplomatic and business interests are everywhere.

In July 2014, Israel launched a military operation in Gaza that mowed down over 2,000 civilians in the space of a month, claiming self-defense. ISIS and Al-Qaeda were conspicuous by their silence, despite copious anti-Semitic rhetoric for recruitment and propaganda purposes.

Besides taking to Twitter with boilerplate condemnations, no reprisals took place to avenge their fallen brethren-in-faith. How odd, since both consider it their life’s work to end Muslim subjugation by the infidels.

Could it be that the Zionist zeal in defending Israel scares them? Perhaps they feel ill-equipped to take on Mossad? Their track records suggest otherwise.

Al-Qaeda had the organization and finances to strike the American heartland on 9-11, and wage a global jihad. Similarly, ISIS continues its blitzkrieg run through the Levant, using sophisticated weaponry and war tactics that would put many modern armies to shame.

It can’t be the fear of death or retribution either. The ultimate jihadi dream is to go out with a bang, while taking along as many enemies as possible. From Bin Laden to Al-Baghdadi, martyrdom for the cause has been glorified as the fastest way to heaven. What then?

Plausibly, the rabbit hole of international terrorism runs a lot deeper than most of us, or even jihadi underlings, can fathom. Israel is one of few masters of puppets, covertly funding and moulding modern Islamic extremism.

To understand its actions, one must understand the mindset. The Jewish psyche is one scarred by existential threats. As a people, they have been on the brink of genocide many times in history, leading to one exodus after another out of their promised land.

Around 700 BC, the old kingdoms of Israel and Judah were first unhinged, then destroyed by the Assyrians and Babylonians respectively. In 1099 AD, during the Christian Crusades, 6,000 Jews were massacred after the fall of Jerusalem. In modern times, the Nazi death-camps of World War II took persecution to a whole new level.

Zionism gained strength among the Jews in the twentieth-century, as a nationalist and political movement, with the express purpose of reclaiming the Holy Land. The 1917 Balfour Declaration gave them hope, and on 14 May 1948, the state of Israel, led by David Ben-Gurion, formally declared its independence.

From the outset, war with its Arab neighbors was inevitable. Egypt, Jordan and Syria begrudged the carving out of a Jewish State, from what they considered Arab Palestine. Twice they tried overcoming Israel, in 1948 and 1967, both times ending in defeat, and territorial gains for the victor.

These events set in motion a long-term policy for Israel based on innate pragmatism and self-preservation. The Zionist leaders genuinely feared a Middle Eastern reenactment of the Holocaust, which Arab public discourse only fueled. Hence Mossad, and its spymasters, became the very extension of their paranoia and hyper-vigilance.

Their approach is two-pronged. First, sow discord within the Arab ranks. With numerical superiority and multiple fronts of attack, it’s only a matter of time before the enemy overruns Israel. Secular Arab nationalism, the kind represented by Gamal Abdul Nasser and Yasser Arafat, is especially dangerous. Creating religious fault-lines will eat the enemy from within.

It is documented fact that Israel created and nurtured Hamas as the counterpoint to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Similarly, the origins of Al-Qaeda can be traced back to the 1930s, and an entity called the Jewish Agency, the Jerusalem arm of the World Zionist Organization.

In a December 2014 interview with Press Television, Alexander Prokhanov, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused Mossad of training ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria with CIA help. Retired US General Thomas McInerney had already acknowledged this. In a September 2014 interview with Fox News, he stated “we helped build ISIS.”

Furthermore, Israel seeks to expel the Arab population of Palestine, and compel Jews worldwide to immigrate and replace them. This nullifies the threat of a fifth column in another Arab-Israeli war, and dilutes the UN Security Council Resolution 446. If no Arabs live in ‘occupied Arab territories’, there is, hence, no illegal occupation to speak of.

Right now, every one in three refugees worldwide is Palestinian, with the total number a staggering 6.5 million. In contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu keeps pressuring the 500,000 French Jews to immigrate to Israel, considering recent, unsubstantiated, hate crimes in France.

Remarkably, since the post 9-11 rise of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, not a single human or material asset of the state of Israel been targeted by the terrible twosome, their sworn enemies. It is time we in Pakistan looked beyond the Salafi Sheikhs and their madrassah fronts, to those who would truly benefit from maligning Islam.

The writer is a freelance columnist based in Islamabad