Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned against the rising tide of extremism in the world on Sunday, asserting that the Islamic State, Hamas, al-Qaida, the Nusra Fronta, Boko Haram and Hezbollah are all "branches of the same poison tree."
Speaking during a meeting with a visiting Israel Bonds leadership delegation, Netanyahu said all of the groups in question share the same ideology.
"The main difference between ISIS [Islamic State] and Hamas is that these guys cut off heads, while the other guys shoot at heads."
"The main difference between ISIS [Islamic State] and Hamas is that these guys cut off heads, while the other guys shoot at heads."
Netanyahu sent his condolences to the British people for the loss of David Haines, the British aid worker who was purportedlybeheaded by an Islamic State terrorist in Syria, as seen in a video released on Saturday.
"We understand the barbarism that they are dealing with," Netanyahu said.
"We understand the barbarism that they are dealing with," Netanyahu said.
He added that the threats spreading in the area were also posing a challenge to Israel's defense of its own borders.
"We need a very strong defense against them. We need a strong army and also a strong economy. Achieving a balance between them is one of the central goals before us and I intend to achieve both strong security and a strong economy," Netanyahu said.
"We need a very strong defense against them. We need a strong army and also a strong economy. Achieving a balance between them is one of the central goals before us and I intend to achieve both strong security and a strong economy," Netanyahu said.
Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz downplayed on Sunday the prospect of Israel confronting the Islamic State if it were to move on Jordan, but confirmed that if the monarchy requested help, it would be in Israel’s interest to answer the call.
"Jordan is a strong state, but still if Jordan was truly in danger from these jihadist extremists and asked for our assistance — Israel has a very clear interest in the existence of Jordan,” Steinitz told Israel Radio.
Steinitz, who recently led a trip to the US to discuss upcoming nuclear talks with Iran, emphasized that while Israel approved of Obama’s plan to build a coalition to confront IS, Washington should not be distracted from Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
“IS is a threat for a few years; Iranian nuclear weapons will be with us, if Iran becomes a nuclear power, for dozens of years,” he reasoned.
On Friday, Channel 2 quoted unnamed Israeli diplomatic sources to the effect that Israel had told the US that if IS began making inroads in Jordan, the Jewish state would not hesitate to act militarily.
In June, The Daily Beast reported that senior Obama administration officials told senators in a classified briefing that if Jordan were to face a military onslaught from IS, it would “ask Israel and the United States for as much help as they can get.”
Extremists have also targeted Jordan in the past. The Islamic State’s precursor, known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, was founded by a Jordanian national, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Under his leadership, the group carried out a triple bombing on Amman hotels in 2005 that killed more than 50 people.
A wary Jordan has taken steps to shore up its defenses, forming a special task force to deal with possible IS threats, dispatching reinforcements to its border with Iraq and expanding anti-terror laws in June.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Sunday Australia would deploy 600 troops to the United Arab Emirates to join the US-led international coalition gearing up for war against Islamic State jihadists.
Abbott’s announcement comes two days after Canberra lifted its terror alert level to “high” on growing concern about Australian jihadists returning from fighting in Iraq and Syria.
Abbott said the deployment of about “400 air personnel and about 200 military personnel” followed a formal request from Washington for Australia to contribute to the international coalition against the rampaging Islamist group.
Australia is prepared to engage in international operations to disrupt and degrade ISIL (IS) because of the threat that this murderous death cult poses not just to the people of Iraq, not just to the people of the Middle East, but to the whole world including to Australia.”
The last truck from Russia’s second humanitarian aid convoy to the Eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk has returned home after delivering its cargo.
All vehicles had reached the Ukrainian-Russian border without incidents and the last of them crossed the border in the direction of Russia at around 6:30 pm local time (2:30 pm GMT). Early on Saturday, a convoy of 245 trucks colored in white paint crossed the border and headed to Lugansk to bring much needed relief supplies to the residents of the war-torn city.
The 2,000 tons of Russian humanitarian aid include food, power generators, water purification systems, medicine and blankets. The convoy was welcomed by the population of Lugansk as people lined up on the sides of the roads and waved Russian flags.
After unloading in Lugansk, the trucks made their way back to Russia’s Rostov region, which is bordering Ukraine.
The second Russian convoy has arrived just in time as the city almost ran out of first batch of humanitarian aid delivered on August 22, Valery Potapov, deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, said.
“The supplies from the first convoy have almost ended. We still have a small amount of canned meat, but we had to use our own stock to provide people with sugar and cereal,” Potapov told RIA-Novosti news agency.
The handout of the aid to the people will begin in Lugansk on Monday, he said.
Potapov added that its “more or less calm [in Lugansk] because of the so-called the cease-fire” and“people began returning (to their homes) en masse”, which makes it difficult to predict how long the aid will last.
Meanwhile, Ukraine claimed that the second Russian humanitarian aid convoy entered the country illegally.
Ukrainian border officials were not allowed to inspect the cargo, Col. Andrey Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's National Security Council, said.
But Russia’s Federal Security Service has denied the claims, saying that it offered full cooperation to the Ukrainian side.
“We repeatedly suggested that Ukrainian border guards and customs officers take part in inspections of a humanitarian convoy that was passing through border and customs control at the Donetsk border-crossing point, but the Ukrainian side rejected the offer,” Nikolay Sinitsyn, a spokesman for the FSB's border department in the southern Russian Rostov region, said.
Obama’s hope to do anything of substance in Syria took another severe blow yesterday as the U.S.-backed and armed Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF) struck a peace deal with ISIS, according to both Arabic and English language news reports.
The SRF had only a few months ago been deemed by the U.S. foreign policy establishment as “the West’s best fighting chance against Syria’s Islamist armies.”
Now AFP reports:
Syrian rebels and jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have agreed a non-aggression pact for the first time in a suburb of the capital Damascus, a monitoring group said on Friday.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the ceasefire deal was agreed between ISIS and moderate and Islamist rebels in Hajar al-Aswad, south of the capital.Under the deal, “the two parties will respect a truce until a final solution is found and they promise not to attack each other because they consider the principal enemy to be the Nussayri regime.”Nussayri is a pejorative term for the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.
According to media reports, other groups joining the ceasefire with ISIS include Liwa Ahrar Turkman al-Golan, Liwa Hittin and Liwa al-Umma al-Wahida.
When seeking U.S. heavy weapons, including TOW anti-tank missiles, SRF commander Jamal Maroof was full of bravado,declaring war against ISIS. In May, McClatchy reported that SRF and other “vetted moderate rebel” groups had received TOW missiles from the U.S. and posted videos of their use.
But as soon as weapons were being delivered to Maroof’s SRF forces, he was giving interviews to Western media making clear that “al-Qaeda is not our problem.”
During that interview where Maroof talks about receiving U.S. military aid and his soldiers receiving U.S. training, there is one curious artifact in the background:
The SRF’s ceasefire with ISIS puts yet another nail in the coffin of the claims by the U.S. foreign policy establishment that there are “vetted moderate” Syrian “rebels” that we can rely upon.
As I’ve reported here at PJ Media over the past week, the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army is operating openly with ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, the official al-Qaeda affiliate, in certain areas. I also noted an L.A. Times article last Sunday where a reporter traveling with fighters from the U.S.-backed and armed Harakat al-Hazm, one of the first groups to receive U.S. heavy weapons, was told that the group fights alongside Jabhat al-Nusra. And earlier this week I reported on a statement by a Free Syrian Army commander admitting his group is in an alliance with ISIS fighting near the border with Lebanon.
As Congress takes up a bill to fund Obama’s plan to arm and train so-called “vetted moderate” Syrian “rebels,” even some analysts are beginning to admit that finding the right allies in Syria will be difficult. With the State Department’s disastrous record so far of identifying “vetted moderate rebel” groups who refuse to ally with al-Qaeda and ISIS, and ISIS leaders openly bragging about the U.S. arming and training rebels groups that have now defected to ISIS, some prudent caution on the part of Congress is in order before throwing more money and weapons into Syria and Iraq.
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