Israel and ISIS Are Allies. There. We Said It.

pmaitra

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Israel and ISIS Are Allies. There. We Said It.
When you bomb an ally, you apologize. When you bomb an enemy, you don’t. What does that make ISIS to Israel?

Richard Silverstein | Fri, Apr 28, 2017 | [SOURCE]



‘tacit’ or not, it’s still an alliance


In the midst of complaining about the Islamist threat to Israel and the world, Bibi Netanyahu conveniently forgets that his own country enjoys a tacit alliance with the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

It is an alliance of convenience to be sure and one that’s not boasted about by either party. But is not terribly different from one that Israel enjoys with its other Muslim allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

“Bogie” Moshe Yaalon served as defence minister in the current Israeli government until he had a falling out with Netanyahu in May 2016. Now Yaalon plans to form his own party and run against his former boss. Unfortunately for him, he’s not polling well and doesn’t appear to be much of a political threat.

So Yaalon enjoys the position of having little to lose. He can speak more candidly than the average politician. In this context, he spoke at length on security matters at a public event in the northern Israeli city of Afula this past Saturday.

Yaalon’s confirmation

There is always much that I disagree with whenever I read Yaalon’s views. For example, while warning in this video about the danger of favouring too heavily one side over the other in Syria, he essentially justifies Israel’s interventionist approach. It has largely favoured Assad’s Islamist opponents. Nor do I much like, in another context, Yaalon’s choice of political allies - from Islamophobe blogger Pam Geller to Meir Kahane’s grandson.

But he did reveal Israel’s ties to IS in Syria. I’ve documented, along with other journalists, Israeli collaboration with al-Nusra, an affiliate of al-Qaeda. But no Israeli until now has admitted it has collaborated with IS as well.

Yaalon implicitly confirmed this in his statement:

“Within Syria there are many factions: the regime, Iran, the Russians, and even al-Qaeda and ISIS. In such circumstances, one must develop a responsible, carefully balanced policy by which you protect your own interests on the one hand, and on the other hand you don’t intervene. Because if Israel does intervene on behalf of one side, it will serve the interests of the other; which is why we’ve established red lines. Anyone who violates our sovereignty will immediately feel the full weight of our power. On most occasions, firing comes from regions under the control of the regime. But once the firing came from ISIS positions – and it immediately apologised.”

The attack he refers to was never reported in Israeli media. Either the information was placed under gag order or under military censorship. It was suppressed most certainly because both the firing by an Israeli Islamist ally on Israeli territory and IS’s apology would embarrass both Israel and the Islamists.

What defines an ally?

Some critics claim that an IS apology doesn’t signify an alliance or serious collaboration between the Islamist group and Israel. To which I reply – when you bomb an ally you apologise. When you bomb an enemy – you don’t. What does that make IS to Israel?

Keep in mind, this is the same IS which beheaded a Jewish-American who had lived in Israel: Steven Sotloff. The same IS which raped Yazidi women and threw gay men off buildings. The same IS which has rampaged through the Middle East sowing havoc and rivers of blood wherever it goes. The same IS which Netanyahu routinely excoriates as being the root of all evil in the world. Like here, for example:

“Iran and the Islamic State want to destroy us, and a hatred for Jews is being directed towards the Jewish state today,” said Netanyahu, adding, “those who threaten to destroy us risk being destroyed themselves.”

It’s common knowledge that Israeli foreign policy going back to the days of Ben Gurion has been exceedingly opportunistic and amoral as exemplified in this infamous statement:

“Were I to know that all German Jewish children could be rescued by transferring them to England and only half by transfer to Palestine, I would opt for the latter, because our concern is not only the personal interest of these children, but the historic interest of the Jewish people.”

So I suppose one shouldn’t be surprised at this new development. But still it does momentarily take one’s breath away to contemplate just how brutally cynical Israel’s motives and choices can often be.

Source: Middle East Eye
 

pmaitra

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Moscow Accuses US of Supporting ISIS in Afghanistan
Russia accuses the US and NATO of “covering up their own support for terrorists, primarily ISIS militants” in Afghanistan

RI Staff | [SOURCE]



The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has quietly admitted to Congress that there is “no physical evidence” to back up the claim that Russia is arming the Taliban—but it appears that Moscow still has a few bones to pick with its wrongful accusers.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Department released a statement on Tuesday which accuses the of US of supporting terrorists in Afghanistan:

One gets the impression that to distract world public opinion from numerous mistakes made during the more than 15 year-long stay of the US and NATO contingent in Afghanistan, some people are trying to slander Russia, both on their own and with the help of their henchmen in Afghanistan, while covering up their own support for terrorists, primarily ISIS militants.

The statement cites a string of “strange” events in Afghanistan:

  • Reports of three US servicemen “with a consignment of arms” caught trying to sell weapons to ISIS fighters in the northern province of Sar-e Pol last January.
  • The US detained but then released the son of the head of the terrorist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU); he is now an ISIS commander in Afghanistan.
  • The night landing of two helicopters without identification marks in extremist-controlled territory in the Sayyad District; the helicopters then flew back to a NATO base.

The full statement is below:

Despite the assurances of the Afghan authorities that they will curb groundless accusations of Russia for allegedly supporting the Taliban, some Afghan MPs and heads of provincial Afghan security agencies continue to repeat these insinuations. This time, police chief of Kandahar Province Abdul Raziq alleged that Russia is helping the Taliban with money and arms supplies in cooperation with other countries. In addition, Fox News Channel in the US resorted to a well-known trick of manipulating public opinion by presenting in the same context reports about the appearance of unidentified helicopters in Kunduz Province bordering on Tajikistan and the smuggling of goods across the Tajik-Afghan border with the latest fantasies of Afghan pseudo analysts on the possible arrival of Russian military advisors to organise financial and logistics support for the Taliban.

The facts we have at our disposal show that the reality is completely different. Earlier the Afghan website Payam Aftab carried an article about the detention of three US servicemen with a consignment of arms in the Kokistanat District of the northern province of Sar-e Pol last January. ISIS commandos who were going to buy these arms from the Americans were caught at the same time with a huge sum of money. However, later on the US servicemen were released from custody and transferred to their command, while all documents, including interrogation records, money and arms mysteriously disappeared.

Even stranger is the release of Azizullah from the US Bagram Prison near Kabul in the autumn of 2016. He is the son of Tahir Yuldashev, head of the terrorist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Later on Azizullah was moved to the Darzab District of the Jowzjan Province in the north of Afghanistan, where he headed a unit of 25 militants that left the IMU for ISIS. As a result, Azizullah’s unit subjugated armed formations of the Taliban in some districts of the provinces of Jowzjan, Faryab and Sar-e Pol, compelled the local population to swear loyalty to ISIS and established a second open bridgehead of ISIS in the north of Afghanistan (after the first one in Nangarhar).

Finally, Sar-e Pol Governor Mohammad Zahir Wahdat confirmed on the record information about the night landing of two helicopters without identification marks in extremist-controlled territory in the Sayyad District. They went to the government air force base in Mazar-e-Sharif that also accommodates the NATO military base Camp Marmal.

One gets the impression that to distract world public opinion from numerous mistakes made during the more than 15 year-long stay of the US and NATO contingent in Afghanistan, some people are trying to slander Russia, both on their own and with the help of their henchmen in Afghanistan, while covering up their own support for terrorists, primarily ISIS militants.

Moscow has never shied away from speaking openly about what’s really happening in Afghanistan. Back in March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused NATO of indirectly supporting the Afghan drug trade.
 

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