Israel Stays Out Of ISIS Fight, Despite Beheading Of Israeli Citizen Sotloff
On Wednesday, the Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said the Islamic State was an “unauthorized organization” in Israel, a statement that links the country more directly to the international fight against ISIS, a group that has taken over large swaths of land in both Iraq and Syria. But aside from that statement, the Israeli government has remained largely silent on ISIS, while its U.S. ally works to assemble an international coalition against the extremist group whose atrocities have horrified the world.
The statement arrives just one day after a video surfaced showing ISIS beheading U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff. The Israeli foreign ministry confirmed Wednesday that Sotloff was an Israeli citizen, as well as American. But despite Sotloff’s affiliation with Israel, senior politicians there have yet to publicly condemn the Sunni militant group for its violence.
Israel has avoided getting involved in the fight against ISIS for two reasons, experts say: because it does not see the group as a direct threat and because it is wary of involving itself in a battle that aligns with the objectives of the Syrian regime, a longtime political rival.
“Part of the Israeli security doctrine is not picking fights that it doesn’t want to engage in,” Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense and Democracies, a nonprofit policy research group, said. “We are not going to see blistering rhetoric out of Jerusalem in the way that we saw with Hamas during Operation Protective Edge.” For the past two months, the Israeli Defense Force has been battling Hamas militants in Gaza in a conflict, called Operation Protective Edge by the IDF, that killed more than 2,200 people.
During the conflict, Israel consistently used rhetoric attempting to undermine Hamas' legitimacy, and denounced its militants as “terrorists.” It has yet to use similar words against ISIS. The difference, analysts say, is that unlike Hamas, ISIS has not attempted to attack Israel.
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http://www.ibtimes.com/israel-stays-out-isis-fight-despite-beheading-israeli-citizen-sotloff-1677730
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Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)No better way to help ISIL than for Israel to declare them an enemy.
starroute
(12,977 posts)Jonathan Schanzer has worked as a counterterrorism analyst for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.[2] Prior to that, he was a Research Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Mr. Schanzer got his start in the policy world as a research fellow at the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank headed by scholar Daniel Pipes. ... Schanzer holds a BA from Emory University and a masters degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Middle Eastern studies.
(See also http://www.loonwatch.com/2013/01/bush-era-neo-con-schmuck-jonathan-schanzer-shills-for-nasty-islamophobia-movement/)
underpants
(182,823 posts)Oh yeah no they won't.
