We welcome your comments to this and any other CIJR publication. Please address your response to: Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, PO Box 175, Station H, Montreal QC H3G 2K7 – Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284; E-mail: rob@isranet.wpsitie.com
ISIS, Syria, Iraq and – Israel: Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Arutz Sheva, July 2, 2013— Israel, while mourning its sons, is, however, facing a new situation in the Middle East.
Iraq and Iran: A Plague on Both Their Houses: Zalman Shoval, Jerusalem Post, July 2, 2014— There is a hard and fast rule in the Middle East: always expect the unexpected.
For Jordan, a Greater Jihadist Threat From Within: Elhanan Miller, Times of Israel, June 29, 2014 — The rapid advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in northern Iraq has set off warning bells in Jerusalem, which fears a Jihadist takeover of Jordan, Israel’s eastern neighbor and a Western ally.
Don’t Fight in Iraq and Ignore Syria: Anne-Marie Slaughter, New York Times, June 17, 2014— For the last two years, many people in the foreign policy community, myself included, have argued repeatedly for the use of force in Syria — to no avail.
Netanyahu’s Steady Hand: Daniel Pipes, National Review, July 2, 2014
What Does an “Islamic Caliphate” in Iraq Mean?: Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi, JCPA, July 1, 2014
Jordan Faces Looming Crisis With ISIS: David Singer, Jerusalem Post, July 2, 2014
Jordan’s Ticking Time Bomb: Mathew Markman, Jerusalem Post, May 25, 2014
ISIS, SYRIA, IRAQ AND – ISRAEL
Dr. Mordechai Kedar
Arutz Sheva, July 2, 2014
Israel, while mourning its sons, is, however, facing a new situation in the Middle East: 1. The Arab world is imploding into itself: our enemies – led by Syria – are drowning within a swamp of blood, fire and tears (this doesn't make me happy, but it is the objective truth). The Jihadists challenge country after country (Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and while they are at it, Saudi Arabia and Jordan). The "Zionist Enemy" has long ceased to be a unifying element. Arab Nationalism has turned into an empty mantra and Arab solidarity is a fig leaf covering hatred, extremism, conflict and subversion of one regime against another.
2. Those living in Zion, our homegrown Israelis, are sobering up from their "peace" binges", because they now understand – even if not at the highest possible resolution – that a Palestinian state, if such an entity does arise, will be another Iraq, Syria, etc or end up like Gaza. As time passes, trust in our neighbors corrodes more and more. I was never a fan of this trust, but the man in the Israeli street now asks himself if a Palestinian state will actually stop the ISIS forces if they threaten to cross the Jordan? I am not ignoring the Iranian threat and Iran's ability to worm its way into Iraq and Syria in order to advance its own interests on the ruins of those countries. A situation in which Iran expands westward would probably awaken the west because it brings the Shiite radicalism closer to Europe, and it might be backed by nuclear power. That's why the general picture, excepting Iran, is one of a geo-strategic improvement as far as Israel is concerned, despite the instability taking over the region. As far as an Islamic State rising in Iraq and Syria, this cannot happen for several reasons:
a. It is impossible to run a modern state by 7th century Sharia law. For example – how does one run a banking system without interest? b. The world will not allow a state like that to continue because the world fears the terror it will export. No one will do business with that state. c. They will have to do without some of the Sharia instructions in order to be accepted by the general population and then the conflicts between the pragmatic moderates and the dogmatic fundamentalists will begin. They will begin to battle one another. d. Every intelligence service in the world has agents inside ISIS because they accept everything that moves. That means that when they start internal fighting they will become extremely vulnerable. e. What happened in Afghanistan until late 2001 was that al-Qaeda infiltrated the Pakistani dictatorship of Mula Omar like a virus. Al-Qaeda can hardly do that to itself. It needs another governing body to use as a base. f. ISIS is an organization that lives on conflict, movement, expansion, massacres, revenge on enemies and armed robbery. These fighting bandits do not know how to do anything besides shooting and killing.
That is why I am not worried about the establishment of an Islamic state because even if one arises, it will disintegrate and split up in no time and turn into a few local Emirates under the rule of several warlords. Despite that, in the event that their advance in Iraqa continues to reap successes, more and more people will join their ranks, and they will have enough strength to take advantage of success in Syria against Assad, in Lebanon against Hezbollah, in Jordan against Abdallah – and will try their luck against Israel. Their maps include Israel, and there is danger of border skirmishes, with possible forays in Judea and Samaria, because there will be plenty of people there who will want to get on the bandwagon and imitate ISIS' methods: Is it impossible to shoot from one moving vehicle into an Israeli one on the roads of Judea and Samaria? Is it impossible to position a machine gun on a pickup truck, travel the roads at night and shoot at Israelis and their homes?
And why can't this scenario be repeated in the Galilee and the Negev? This scenario is intended to fill Israeli hearts with fear (terror), but that does not establish a state. If Israel can stand strong in the face of the terror wave that ISIS will create, it will guard its borders. It is possible that the despicable murders of our beloved three boys as well as last week's shooting on the Golan – purposeful aim at people working on the fence – is the beginning of this wave.
IRAQ AND IRAN: A PLAGUE ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES
Zalman Shoval
Jerusalem Post, July 2, 2014
There is a hard and fast rule in the Middle East: always expect the unexpected. The, so far, successful “Blitzkrieg” of the radical Sunni Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a case in point – but so were others before: the creation of al-Qaida and its ability to attack the US on its home ground, was one, the “Arab Spring” and its chaotic consequences for the whole region (though, to its credit, Israeli intelligence took a less panglossian view than most in the West) was another. And now it is ISIS and what looks like the rapid unraveling of Iraq, albeit the implications of the mayhem there and in Syria are unfortunately much wider.
As Professor Louis René Beres of Purdue University put it in a recent article, the ongoing turmoil in Iraq and Syria “signals potentially catastrophic regional transformations” which could lead to chaos all over the Middle East – with plausibly dramatic consequences for the security of all states in the region, or even beyond. ISIS, though similar in its Islamist ideology and outlook to other jihadist organizations around the Muslim world, is different in one important respect: its aim is not merely to supplant the regimes in various countries, but to erase national borders altogether and create a radical Sunni caliphate in their place, first in Syria and Iraq, then in the rest of the Middle East – and later in North Africa and parts of Europe.
ISIS’s next target could be Jordan which, in spite of its generally effective military capabilities, may be deemed especially vulnerable due to its own home-grown Islamist elements and because among the hundreds of thousands of refugees which have entered the country since the beginning of the Syrian rebellion, there may be more than a few who are sympathetic to ISIS’s cause. The threat to Jordan, among other things, once again underscores the importance of Israel as America’s only firm strategic ally in the region – and the significance to both, as well as to others in the region, of their defense-related ties.
In this connection, it is clear that Israel, of course, cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the turmoil in Iraq and elsewhere – not only because of ISIS’s ideological expansionist designs on itself, but more concretely, because Israel’s own optimal “strategic depth” is the eastern border of its Jordanian neighbor. It is in this context that one must also regard Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s announced plan for constructing a security fence all along the Jordan Valley. Though this may not be popular, it should be pointed out that this, whatever the outcome, is bound to have also financial implications, i.e. Israel’s defense budget will probably have to be increased again, above and beyond the recent NIS 1 billion increase – meaning that either taxes will have to be raised or other budgetary allocations cut.
Obviously, this new configuration of jihadism will also impact America’s efforts to combat Islamist terrorism; while up until now those efforts mainly focused on eradicating disparate terrorist groups in the not-always-coherent al-Qaida network, the US will now have to reckon also with the territorial aspects of jihadism, which may necessitate measures quite different from those employed until now, potentially including the kind of outright military steps which the Obama administration had been eager to avoid. Be that as it may, the crisis in Iraq, and indeed the ongoing violence in Syria, are not the sort of civil wars the Middle East has known for ages, nor just a religious bloodbath between Shi’ites and Sunnis – but a “to the death” struggle between two competing forces for overall geopolitical superiority and hegemony in the Middle East as a whole – a struggle in which Shi’ite Iran is playing an increasingly important role.
One probable reason for the growth of ISIS was the West’s failure to sufficiently support, with arms and money, the non-Islamist rebels against the Assadists in Syria, as a result of which the Islamist rebels gained the upper hand. Turkey also must bear part of the blame. By allowing ISIS to proliferate across its border with Syria and allowing it easy access to all the battlefields there, Ankara now pays a steep price, including in economic terms, for the chaos it helped to create. Soli Ozel, a Turkish political analyst, has described the rapid fall of Mosul in Iraq to the ISIS insurgents as “the epitome of the failure of Turkish foreign policy over the last four years,” a failure which, not to forget, also included its strained relations with its natural allies, the US and Israel.
Though late, but hopefully not too late to cope with the rapidly expanding crisis, which the US now realizes, also affects vital American interests, including, but not only, oil – Washington is weighing different options regarding how to deal with it in both political and military terms. Astoundingly, there are those who favor cooperating with Iran in order to bolster the disintegrating military forces of Baghdad’s Shi’ite rulers – or in the words of US Secretary of State Kerry: “the Obama administration is willing to talk with Iran…. And is not ruling out potential US-Iranian military cooperation in stemming the advances of Sunni extremists,” explaining that the US was “open to discussions if there is something constructive that can be contributed by Iran.”
There were also rumors that in his recent meeting in Geneva with the Iranian delegation to the nuclear talks, US Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns raised the possibility of cooperation with Iran on the Iraqi situation. For appearance’s sake the Iranians seem to be playing hard to get, though they better than anyone else realize that any role ascribed to them in Iraq by the Americans would be a significant boost to their geopolitical ambitions – not only with regard to propping up their client government in Baghdad, but more importantly also to their strategic designs in the region as a whole. In connection with this, Republican Senator John McCain has commented: “The reality is, US and Iranian interests and goals do not align in Iraq, and greater Iranian intervention would only make the situation worse – the United States should be seeking to minimize greater Iranian involvement in Iraq right now, not encouraging it.” Indeed, the idea of cooperating with Iran (!) must be deemed both illogical and immoral.
It is clear that any warming of the US-Iranian relationship – and this would be the inevitable result of an America-Iranian synergy in Iraq – will grant the Ayatollah regime greater scope for its nefarious activities in the region, as well as against its own people, just as it would automatically strengthen its hand in the nuclear talks with the “five plus one” (US, Russia, China, Britain, France plus Germany) – and open the door to a permanent Iranian military presence in Iraq. This in turn would, among other things, result in a growing threat to the security and integrity of both Jordan and Israel- while Iran’s proxy in Lebanon and Syria, Hezbollah, which aroused a great deal of antagonism among Arab peoples around the region because of its involvement in the Syrian tragedy on behalf of President Bashar Assad – would get a new lease on life from Iran’s enhanced position. Furthermore, Washington’s traditional Sunni allies in the region, though alarmed by ISIS, would not look very favorably on the US aligning itself with a Shi’ite Iran whose ambitions threaten their basic interests, perhaps their very existence.
The threat posed by ISIS must, indeed, be stopped – and the US has the means to do this – but none of this justifies a counterproductive and immoral decision to join forces with Iran. This isn’t a case of “good guys” and “bad guys” – both being equally bad in this case – but with one of them, Iran, racing towards attaining nuclear arms, threatening genocide against another country, making an all-out effort to undermine the interests of the US and its allies in the region – and directing and funding its own brand of terrorism around the world. If ever there was a case of “a plague on both their houses,” this is it. There are no easy answers. One would, however, like to trust American policy makers to be sufficiently prescient to make the right decisions. Though the situation in Iraq indeed seems increasingly chaotic, complete disaster may still be avoided by decisive American action – in fact, this would be precisely the sort of situation President Barack Obama referred to in his recent West Point speech, justifying unilateral actions where American vital interests were involved.
FOR JORDAN, A GREATER JIHADIST THREAT FROM WITHIN
Elhanan Miller
Times of Israel, June 29, 2014
The rapid advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in northern Iraq has set off warning bells in Jerusalem, which fears a Jihadist takeover of Jordan, Israel’s eastern neighbor and a Western ally. Former national security adviser Yaakov Amidror told Army Radio on Sunday that Israel should extend aid to Jordan in its potential fight against ISIL if such assistance is requested. “We need to help with whatever they may need in order to overcome the problems developing on their eastern borders,” he said. The ex-security official’s statements followed a report in the Daily Beast on Friday quoting sources close to the Obama administration as saying that Jordan may soon request “as much help as it can get” from Israel and the US in its fight against ISIL.
Ostensibly, King Abdullah’s concerns regarding an outside menace may have some merit. A video posted online in April depicted a number of Jordanian ISIL fighters, including a child, tearing up their passports and threatening to assassinate the “tyrant.” But an Israeli expert on Jordanian politics told The Times of Israel on Sunday that the likelihood of Jordan’s army collapsing in the face of an ISIL onslaught, like the Iraqi army has so far, is extremely low. The jihadist risk to Jordanian stability, if anything, comes from within, he said. “The Jordanian situation is completely different from the Iraqi one,” said Assaf David, a fellow at Hebrew University’s Truman Institute for Peace and the Forum for Regional Thinking at Molad. “Their army is in a much better situation. We must bear in mind that the Americans destroyed the Iraqi army in 2003 as part of the de-Baathification process,” he said, referring to the marginalization of supports of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party from state apparatus following his ouster. “This is one of the main reasons for [the Iraqi army's] collapse.” The Jordanian army is better trained and equipped than the Iraqi army, David noted, and it also receives continuous regional and international support. The Daily Beast leak, he opined, was an orchestrated attempt by Israel, the US and Jordan to convey a message to ISIL whereby “you will not only be messing with Jordan, but also with Israel and the US.”
ISIL indeed has a long score to settle with the Hashemite Kingdom. Jordan collaborated with the US in intelligence gathering which led to the June 2006 targeted killing of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian national who headed al-Qaeda in Iraq and is widely considered ISIL’s “spiritual father.” Jordan has been historically soft on home-grown Salafi jihadism, a fact which is now coming back to haunt it, David added. Earlier this month it released Salafi leader Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi from prison, and last week acquitted radical preacher Abu Qatada of plotting a terror attack against the American school in Amman in 1998. “Jordan has been winking at jihadists for quite a few years,” David said. “It hasn’t waged all-out war against them, but instead fights them in a sophisticated manner which includes attempts to co-opt jihadists and keep channels open with them.”
One case in point is Mohammed Shalabi, also known as Abu Sayyaf, a radical Salafi from the southern Jordanian city of Ma’an, which has experienced jihadist fermentation since ISIL’s successes in Iraq. Abu Sayyaf has downplayed ISIL’s presence in Jordan, playing to the sensitivities of Jordan’s ruling elite, David said. “Abu Sayyaf has also been in and out of Jordanian prisons. Why don’t they lock him away in a dungeon for many years? Because the Jordanians deal in a very sophisticated way with Salafi jihadists,” he said. Jordan isn’t immune to ISIL from within, David added. Like many other Arab countries Jordan has spent its energies cracking down on the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood only to wake up to threat of jihadism at the very last moment. “Eventually, you either choose to work with a pragmatic Islamist opposition that respects the political rules of the game or you have nihilists on your hands who believe in nothing.” But today, a massive wave of Iraqi refugees flooding Jordan from the east poses a greater threat than a military ISIL invasion of the kingdom, he said.
The intellectual stream of thought represented by ISIL, known as Salafiya-Jihadiya or Salafi jihadism, has always been more attractive to Trans-Jordanians; as opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood that has appealed to the Kingdom’s sizable Palestinian population, he noted. “The Muslim Brotherhood is essentially an urban movement, while Salafi jihadism is more connected to the periphery and the countryside, as well as to underprivileged urban areas,” David said. In Ma’an, protesters dubbed themselves “the Falloujah of Jordan,” a reference to the staunchly Sunni city in Iraq’s Anbar Province where ISIL has gained poplar support. Although a jihadist wave akin to the ISIL in Iraq is still far off, David concluded, “judging by the anti-monarchical sentiment among the Kingdom’s tribal periphery, Jordan has cause for concern.”
DON’T FIGHT IN IRAQ AND IGNORE SYRIA Anne-Marie Slaughter
New York Times, June 17, 2014
For the last two years, many people in the foreign policy community, myself included, have argued repeatedly for the use of force in Syria — to no avail. We have been pilloried as warmongers and targeted, by none other than President Obama, as people who do not understand that force is not the solution to every question. A wiser course, he argued at West Point, is to use force only in defense of America’s vital interests. Suddenly, however, in the space of a week, the administration has begun considering the use of force in Iraq, including drones, against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which has been occupying city after city and moving ever closer to Baghdad.
The sudden turn of events leaves people like me scratching our heads. Why is the threat of ISIS in Iraq a sufficiently vital interest, but not the rise of ISIS in Syria — and a hideous civil war that has dismembered Syria itself and destabilized Lebanon, Jordan and now Iraq? I suspect White House officials would advance three reasons. First, they would say, the fighters in Iraq include members of Al Qaeda. But that ignores recent history. Experts have predicted for over a year that unless we acted in Syria, ISIS would establish an Islamic state in eastern Syria and western Iraq, exactly what we are watching. So why not take them on directly in Syria, where their demise would strengthen the moderate opposition? Because, the White House might say, of the second reason, the Iraqi government is asking for help. That makes the use of force legitimate under international law, whereas in Syria the same government that started the killing, deliberately fanned the flames of civil war, and will not allow humanitarian aid to starving and mortally ill civilians, objects to the use of force against it. But here the law sets the interests of the Iraqi government against those of its people. It allows us to help a government that has repeatedly violated power-sharing agreements in ways that have driven Sunni support for ISIS. And from a strategic point of view, it is a government that is deeply in Iran’s pocket — to the extent, as Fareed Zakaria reported in his Washington Post column last week, that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki would not agree to a residual American force because the Iranians forbade it.
The third reason the White House would give is that America fought a decade-long war in Iraq, at a terrible cost. We overturned a stable, strong but brutal government, although far less brutal than President Bashar al-Assad’s has proved to be, and left a weak and unstable government. We cannot allow our soldiers to have fought in vain, the argument goes, so we should now prop up the government we left in place. This is where the White House is most blind. It sees the world on two planes: the humanitarian world of individual suffering, where no matter how heart-rending the pictures and how horrific the crimes, American vital interests are not engaged because it is just people; and the strategic world of government interests, where what matters is the chess game of one leader against another, and stopping both state and nonstate actors who are able to harm the United States. In fact, the two planes are inextricably linked. When a government begins to massacre its own citizens, with chemical weapons, barrel bombs and starvation, as Syria’s continues to do, it must be stopped. If it is not stopped, violence, displacement and fanaticism will flourish.
Deciding that the Syrian government, as bad as it is, was still better than the alternative of ISIS profoundly missed the point. As long as we allow the Syrian government to continue perpetrating the worst campaign of crimes against humanity since Rwanda, support for ISIS will continue. As long as we choose Prime Minister Maliki over the interests of his citizens, all his citizens, his government can never be safe. President Obama should be asking the same question in Iraq and Syria. What course of action will be best, in the short and the long term, for the Iraqi and Syrian people? What course of action will be most likely to stop the violence and misery they experience on a daily basis?…
The answer to those questions may well involve the use of force on a limited but immediate basis, in both countries. Enough force to remind all parties that we can, from the air, see and retaliate against not only Al Qaeda members, whom our drones track for months, but also any individuals guilty of mass atrocities and crimes against humanity. Enough force to compel governments and rebels alike to the negotiating table. And enough force to create a breathing space in which decent leaders can begin to consolidate power. On the legal side, we should act in both countries because we face a threat to global peace and security, precisely the situation the United Nations Security Council was established to address. If nations like Russia and China block action for their own narrow interests, we should act multilaterally, as we did in Kosovo, and then seek the Council’s approval after the fact. The United Nations Charter was created for peace among the people of the world, not as an instrument of state power. This is not merely a humanitarian calculation. It is a strategic calculation. One that, if the president had been prepared to make it two years ago, could have stopped the carnage spreading today in Syria and in Iraq.
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters Shabbat Shalom!
Netanyahu’s Steady Hand: Daniel Pipes, National Review, July 2, 2014 —Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an important speech worthy of discussion when he addressed the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv on June 29.
What Does an “Islamic Caliphate” in Iraq Mean?: Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi, JCPA, July 1, 2014 —On the first day of the month of Ramadan (29 June 2014), the day on which World Pride Day was celebrated as a marker of social and cultural progress, the reestablishment of the Islamic caliphate (state) was declared in Iraq and a caliph was appointed to lead it.
Jordan Faces Looming Crisis With ISIS: David Singer, Jerusalem Post, July 2, 2014—Jordan has mobilized its military forces along Jordan’s 180 kilometer border with Iraq – deploying rocket launchers, armored personnel carriers and tanks following the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) reportedly taking control of the Trebil crossing between Iraq and Jordan on 23 June.
Jordan’s Ticking Time Bomb: Mathew Markman, Jerusalem Post, May 25, 2014—A beacon of stability in the Middle East, the Hashemite Kingdom is perpetually challenged by the need to moderate between the monarchy’s pro-Western orientation and the Islamist tendencies of the country’s population.
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