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Some lessons from the Westminister terror attack

Mar 30, 2017

Some lessons from the Westminister terror attack
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Update from AIJAC

Update 03/17 #05

As readers are doubtless aware, last week saw yet another apparently ISIS-inspired “lone wolf” attack in London, which killed four people and left more 50 injured, when 52-year-old Briton Khalid Masood first drove into a crowd on Westminister bridge and then attacked police with a knife before being shot dead. This Update features some of the best commentary on what the attack tells us about the current terrorist threat and how to counter it.

First up is former American law enforcement official and author Patrick Dunleavy who points out that the radicalisation of Masood, born Adrian Elms and raised as a Christian, followed a pattern very common among Jihadists. He was arrested for petty crimes and then radicalised in prison – before travelling to the Middle East. Dunleavy calls attention to different ways in which prisons around the world are failing to adequately address this serious threat – including evidence that radical Islamist material is widely available in prison libraries and that many prison chaplains sympathise with Muslim extremist views. For Dunleavy’s full look at this important aspects of counter-terrorism, CLICK HERE.

Next up is American columnist and think-tank head Cliff May, who looks at the need to confront the ideology behind such attacks. He notes that a major ISIS publication Rumiyah, specifically calls for attacks along the lines of the Westminister attack in its latest edition – while promoting an ideology that says all non-believers can justly be murdered. He notes that British PM Theresa May got it right in her response, speaking of “Islamist terrorism”  and recognising the role of an ideology based on Islamic scripture without implying that  most Muslims approve of this ideology. For his larger discussion, CLICK HERE

Finally, a new paper by veteran Israeli academic and former diplomat Dore Gold  – part of a larger publication on the  Israeli counter-terrorism experience – takes on the oft-heard claim after attacks in Europe that such terror attacks are qualitatively different from those in Israel and thus there is no basis for comparison or counter-terrorism cooperation with the Israelis. Usually, Gold notes, this claim is based on claiming that attacks in Israel are “political”, part of the Palestinian national struggle, and can thus be addressed through diplomacy, while those in Europe cannot. Gold reviews much historical and other evidence in an attempt to demonstrate that the claim that Palestinian terrorism is territorially-motivated, and thus resolvable through territorial concessions, just does not stack up. For this complete piece, CLICK HERE. The larger work of which it is a part, entitled Lessons from Israel’s Response to Terrorism, edited by Fiamma Nirenstein, can be accessed here – including useful chapters on: social resilience, legal responses, human rights and counter-terrorism, cyber-terror, and delegitimising terrorist groups internationally, among other topics.

 

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Article 1

London Terrorist Followed the Jihadist’s Twisted Path From Prison to Terrorist

 

by Patrick Dunleavy

IPT News, March 27, 2017

Before he drove violently into the crowd on Westminster Bridge, before plunging the knives into the police officer’s body, Khalid Masood‘s twisted path into terrorism followed an all too familiar pattern from petty crimes to prison radicalization, to violent jihadist.

Radical Islamist terrorism once again struck innocent victims in Europe, this time killing four people in London and injuring at least 50 more.

Radical Islamist terrorist organizations like ISIS recommend the instruments of cruelty used in this attack, a motor vehicle and a knife. They have been used in the past to kill non-believers in Berlin, Nice, Woolwich, Jerusalem, Quebec, Oklahoma City and beyond.

The emerging profile of the terrorist, Khalid Masood, also paints an all too familiar image of a jihadist bent on killing as many people as possible on the path to paradise.

Masood, a 52-year-old UK native, was born on Christmas day in Kent as Adrian Elms and was raised as a Christian. He was known as an intelligent student and an excelling athlete during his time in Huntley School for Boys. He spiraled downward from there, starting with a 1983 arrest for property damage. He spent at least two periods in three different HMPS correctional facilities, including for assault.


What turned the athletic, bright young Adrian Elms from Kent (right) into Westminster terrorist Khaled Masood (left)? Like for so many other jihadists, a prison conversion and radicalisation.

It was there in prison where he was believed to have been radicalized. The susceptibility of an inmate in British prisons to Islamist radicalization is well documented. Extremist literature, like ISIS’s Inspire magazine, is present, as well as convicted terrorists who exert undue influence on the general prison population.

The vast majority of imprisoned terrorists refuse to attend any de-radicalization programs, leading former Scotland Yard Counter Terrorism Commander Richard Walton to tell Sky News that “very few” inmates convicted for ISIS-related crimes had reformed. Other critics go even further, noting “that many “deradicalization” programs established by Western governments have been fraught with repeated and embarrassing failures.”

Hanif Qadir, a former jihadist, believes that prison chaplains are unable to address the problem. Many of them may sympathize with a form of Islam that is both Wahhabi and Salafist in nature. This problem, unvetted Islamic clergy, was also found to exist in the U.S. prison system, according to a report done by the inspector general for the Department of Justice in 2004.

Government records show that thousands of articles by Islamist ideologues like Hasan al Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Syed Qutb, and Anwar al-Awlaki have been available in U.S. prison libraries.

My book, The Fertile Soil of Jihad, documented how ex-cons have often followed up their prison radicalization with travel to Islamist hotspots in the Middle East for further indoctrination. Masood went down that road as well.

He traveled to Saudi Arabia and worked there for several years after his release, settling upon his return into Luton, a city well known for radical Islamist elements, including the radical Islamic cleric Anjem Choudary, now serving time in prison for terrorism-related crimes. It was sometime after returning to the UK that Masood became a person of interest in an ongoing terrorism investigation, although MI-5 never connected him directly to any specific terror plot. He simply fell off the radar until Wednesday’s attack in London.

An alarming number of terror plots and attacks involve people who started out as criminals, were radicalized in prison, and then re-entered society bent on killing in the name of Allah. The 2010 New York State Police Vigilance Report found that almost 50 percent of people charted with terrorist-related crimes had prior contact with the criminal justice system. The Paris and Brussels attacks were in part carried out by former inmates. The Berlin, Copenhagen, and Toulouse attacks were similarly committed by individuals radicalized in prison.

Islamist radicalization in the prison system is a global problem that must be recognized and addressed effectively. Yet some groups, like the Anti Defamation League, choose to focus more on the threat posed by white supremacist prison gangs and appear to overlook the threat posed by radicalized Islamist ex-cons, some of whom have specifically targeted the Jewish population for attacks.

Examples include the Newburgh Four plot to bomb a New York synagogue, Mohammed Merah’s shooting attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, and Amedy Coulibaly’s massacre inside a Paris kosher grocery store.

As to which is the greater threat, prison gangs or Islamist radicalization, Kevin Smith, the former Assistant U.S. Attorney who successfully prosecuted a group of inmates who formed a terrorism cell within the California Department of Corrections known as Jam’iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (JIS), articulated it most succinctly when he testified before the House Committee for Homeland Security looking into the threat posed by Islamist radicalization in the prison system. Smith said, “It is my professional opinion that this particular group of radicalized inmates presents an exponentially greater danger to innocent individuals and civilians out on the outside.”

Members of most prison gangs do not blow up themselves (and others) to gain 70 virgins.

Counter terrorism authorities have an opportunity now to act decisively against this group of potential terrorist recruits before the next attack occurs. Prison is a controlled environment. Radical literature must be removed. Clergy must be better vetted. And inmate associations and communications must be better monitored. Prison officials do not need a FISA warrant to listen to an inmate’s telephone call or read his mail.

Monitoring terrorists who are about to be released from prison must be enhanced to include a registry, much like that required for sex offenders, that gives authorities the ability to know where the subject is living and working. Information regarding radicalized inmates must be shared between correctional, law enforcement and intelligence agencies seamlessly. The present system of cooperation is sporadic and often subject to turf wars.

Without these tools, we again will be forced to watch the familiar story of the common criminal turned violent terrorist unfold.

IPT Senior Fellow Patrick Dunleavy is the former Deputy Inspector General for New York State Department of Corrections and author of The Fertile Soil of Jihad. He currently teaches a class on terrorism for the United States Military Special Operations School.

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Article 2

A bloody day in London town

 

The ideologies driving the carnage can’t be fought until they’re understood

 

By Clifford D. May

Washington Times, Tuesday, March 28, 2017

“The Kafir’s Blood Is Halal For You, So Shed it.” That’s just one of the catchier headlines in a recent issue of Rumiyah, a slick online magazine published by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL.

A “kafir,” of course, is a non-Muslim. “Halal” means religiously permissible. As for Rumiyah, that’s Arabic for Rome, one of the Christian capitals that the leaders of the Islamic state hope to conquer. (The other great Christian capital, Constantinople, fell to soldiers of the caliphate in 1453. It’s now called Istanbul.)


ISIS’s Rumiyah magazine: Provided a blueprint for an attack like the one in London last week.

Was Khalid Masood — the convert to Islam who last week staged a terrorist attack at London’s Houses of Parliament, seat and symbol of British democracy — a reader of Rumiyah? If so, he might have been inspired by an article late last year urging people like him to do precisely what he did: drive a vehicle into a crowd of non-Muslims, “smashing their bodies with the vehicle’s strong outer frame while advancing forward — crushing their heads, torsos, and limbs under the vehicle’s wheels and chassis.” Mr. Masood then exited the vehicle and stabbed a police officer — a tactic used frequently against Israelis in recent years.The Western response to such atrocities has become ritualistic. The police say they are investigating and are uncertain about the perpetrator’s motive. Foreign heads of state condemn the attack, offer condolences and pledge solidarity. Leaders of the nation attacked defiantly announce that life will go on and no one will be intimidated.

Next, comes the debate over whether Islam should be implicated or vindicated. In this instance, a conservative MP, Michael Tomlinson, asked Prime Minister Theresa May whether she agreed that the term “Islamic terror” was inappropriate.

“I absolutely agree, and it is wrong to describe this as ‘Islamic terrorism,’ ” she replied. “It is ‘Islamist terrorism.’ “


British PM Theresa May got it right when she said “It is wrong to describe this as ‘Islamic terrorism’… It is ‘Islamist terrorism.’ “

Clever of her. She did not dismiss the attack as “violent extremism.” She did not suggest that the attacker might just as easily have been a Rastafarian, Zoroastrian or Buddhist. She tacitly recognized that ideologies based on Islamic scripture drive such terrorist attacks while avoiding the implication that most Muslims approve of such ideologies.

This nuanced explanation should have become the norm long ago. Instead, many on the left insist that Islam is simply and only a “religion of peace.” Muslims who contradict that are “perverting” Islam. Non-Muslims who contradict that are Islamophobes.

Meanwhile, many on the right believe it is only the Islamists who are practicing “true” Islam. They implicitly concur with the Islamists that 21st century Sufis, Ismailis and Ahmadis are heretics, as are Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el Sisi (both have gone to war against Islamists) and the millions of Kurds who reject Islamism because they recognize the existential threat it poses to their proud nation.

Islamism is not a complicated ideology. Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, wrote: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” Among the mottos of the Muslim Brotherhood: “Jihad is our way; death for the sake of Allah is our wish.”

Some Islamists believe the path to power can be cleared only with the sword. We may call them jihadists. Some Islamists see other routes, for example through the ballot box or demographic change. Some Islamists even claim to eschew violence. But to infer from that they embrace non-violence as a principle would be a mistake.

All Islamists, even those who are clean-shaven and wear neckties, are committed to the supremacy of their religion and their community, the umma, the “nation of Islam,” over all other religions, communities and nations.

No one would argue that when we condemn “white supremacism” we risk offending all people of pallor. So why is it “politically incorrect” to speak candidly — and condemn unequivocally — Islamic supremacism?

Another fact often avoided: Islamists can be Shia as well as Sunni. The earliest Islamist attacks against Americans (the Barbary pirates notwithstanding) were carried out in 1983 in Beirut, first against the U.S. Embassy, then against the barracks of the U.S. Marines who were there to serve as peacekeepers. Most analysts agree that Hezbollah, a Shia organization funded and instructed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, was responsible.

Neither Hezbollah nor Iran’s rulers have become more moderate over the decades since. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sees himself as leading a global jihadi revolution against the United States and the liberal world order. The significance of this appears to have eluded many policymakers.

How, for example, did President Obama not understand that the deal he cut with Iran’s rulers will establish them as a legitimate members of the nuclear weapons club within less than a generation — even if “Death to America!” remains their goal and rallying cry? And does President Trump grasp that if the defeat of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq further empowers Tehran, the American victory will be Pyrrhic?

Sunni and Shia Islamists are rivals — not enemies. Neither would take issue with the unnamed author of the Rumiyah article noted above who asserts that “striking terror into the hearts of all disbelievers is a Muslim’s duty.”

Whether that view is based on true Islam or a perversion of Islam really doesn’t matter. Either way, it’s an expression of the most dynamic and lethal ideologies now spreading around the world. We need to more seriously study these ideologies. We need to more candidly discuss what Islamists intend to do to those who refuse to embrace or appease them. Only then can we hope to formulate a coherent and effective strategy to defend ourselves.

• Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for The Washington Times.

 
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Article 3

Is the Terror Against Europe Different from the Terror Against Israel?

Amb. Dore Gold

Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs

The war of the West against the rising tide of jihadist terrorism cannot be won without full coordination between the members of the coalition of threatened countries.

Since the terrorist attacks in the 1960s, terrorist organizations have geographically distributed their assets across a number of countries to recruit their manpower, engage in military training, park their financial assets, and provide safe passage across different states. Their goal was to create an international terrorist network, whose components would be beyond the reach of any Western military powers.

What has now become clear is that effective solidarity among states has become a prerequisite for ultimately succeeding in this conflict.

Yet, in the aftermath of the Islamic State’s brutal attacks in Paris during 2015 that left 129 dead, there began a discussion in the international media of whether the terrorist attacks against Israelis could be compared with the newest jihadist assault on European capitals.

A number of voices rejected any comparison.

Israel’s terror problems, it was argued, were “political,”1 and part of a Palestinian national struggle. Therefore they could be addressed through diplomacy. What Europe faced came from a completely different motivation that was not amenable to any compromise. Israel could cut a deal with the Palestinians, while Europe had no such options with ISIS or al-Qaeda. When in 2015, an ISIS executioner pointed his knife to the Mediterranean and declared, “We will conquer Rome,” before beheading Egyptian Copts on a Libyan beach, he presented goals which no European could even agree to negotiate. This set the stage in European capitals for the conclusion that there was little the Europeans could learn from Israel.

But was such a conclusion warranted? There are two dimensions to the classic European position. First, the Palestinian attacks on Israel are largely political, the thinking goes, that is, they are part of a territorial conflict over the future of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Many Europeans (and part of the Israeli political class) view the Palestinians as a people under occupation that employ violence as part of their “resistance.” The assault on Europe, they claim, comes from an ideologically-driven Islamist motivation and not from a territorial dispute.

Attacks on Israel Are Not Territorially-Motivated

Recent events have challenged this European distinction. In 2005, when Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip, those who perceived the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as territorial were in for a surprise. It might have been expected that terrorist attacks by Hamas and other groups, like rocket launches from Gaza territory into Israel proper, should have been reduced in number, but the exact opposite occurred. Whereas in all of 2005, including the period after withdrawal, the number of attacks numbered 179, in 2006, the year after Israel’s military and civilian presence had been removed, the number of attacks actually shot up to 946, increasing by 500 percent.

Thus, even when its territorial demands in Gaza were largely addressed, Hamas could not give any hint that it was even partially satisfied. Those who persisted to argue that the rocket assaults from the Gaza Strip came about because of territorial considerations, may have pointed to Israel’s ongoing presence in the West Bank. But if that was true, then the Palestinian terror groups should have launched most of their violence from West Bank territory and left Gaza alone. Clearly, that did not happen either.

The fact of the matter was that Israel had been at war with Palestinian groups which had been driven by much wider motivations than the liberation of a given territory controlled by Israel. In the case of Hamas this is relatively easy to demonstrate. The 1988 Hamas Charter, which that organization refuses to alter, states unequivocally that it is a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood; it is committed to the destruction of the State of Israel, not an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But Hamas’ ambitions go much further.

Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood2 in Egypt in 1928, set forward as one of his goals the recovery of formerly Islamic territories, specifically mentioning “Andalusia (Spain), Sicily, the Balkans, the Italian coast…” and other areas. According to a report on the Muslim Brotherhood commissioned by former British Prime Minister David Cameron in 2014, the organization’s ideology, which also stressed jihad, was never disowned and inspired many terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda and its offshoots. Indeed, Jamal Sanad Al-Suwaidi, who heads the most important think tank in the United Arab Emirates, has concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood “spawned” al-Qaeda’s most important leaders, from Abdullah Azzam to Osama bin Laden.3

Muslim Brotherhood leaders

Generations of Muslim Brotherhood leaders (top row left to right): Sayyid Qutb, the philosopher of militant Islam school of thought; Hassan  al-Banna, the founder; (bottom row right to left): Ibrahim al-Hudaybi (of the movement’s younger generation), a blogger and grandson of the sixth general guide, Mohammed Badie, the current “general guide”  [supreme leader]

The report stressed that through its chief ideologue in the 1960’s, Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood promoted takfiri doctrines “permitting the stigmatization of other Muslims as infidel or apostate.” Thus the movement posed a direct threat to the Arab state system and not just to the West. The British study reports that the Muslim Brotherhood has a global network that runs through an International Guidance Bureau. In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood periodical, published in London, Risalat al-Ikhwan, used to feature on its cover page – until as recently as November 2001 – a quote of Hassan al-Banna in Arabic, which read “Our goal: world domination.”

Hamas ideologues make reference to such expansive ambitions. Take for example, Sheikh Yunis al-Astal, a member of the Hamas Parliament, and who on April 11, 2008, declared on Hamas television, “Rome will be conquered just like Constantinople was.” He added that Rome would become “an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread through Europe in its entirety.”5 This theme has been stressed by other jihadi groups today, like ISIS, whose chief strategist until his death in 2016, Abu Muhammad al-Adani, declared, “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted.”6

Thus Al-Astal was not alone in making such statements. Moreover, he was not a peripheral figure in the Gaza Strip and has been an important religious authority for Hamas, having headed the Department for Islamic Law at the Islamic University in Gaza. He has even been coined as the “Mufti of Hamas.” Given this background, it should not be surprising that Hamas in the Gaza Strip has been fully capable of working with the branch of ISIS in Northern Sinai, known as Wilayat Sinai, offering training, weapons, and medical treatment in Gaza hospitals.

What about Fatah, the party of the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen)? Fatah was formed in 1964, before Israel captured the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six Day War. Moreover, many of the founding generation of Fatah spent time within the Muslim Brotherhood. Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) joined the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip. Yasser Arafat fought with the Muslim Brotherhood forces in 1948 instead of joining one of the Palestinian units at the time. Similarly Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) joined the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo.

Even the name “Fatah” invokes a commitment to a wider Islamic cause and not just a narrow nationalist movement. Fatah is a reverse acronym in Arabic for “Palestinian National Liberation Movement.” Yet, the word Fatah alone refers to the victory won during the early Islamic conquests of the 7th century. It is also the name of a chapter in the Quran. In deliberately choosing this name, its founders invoked terminology that implied that the liberation of Palestine from Israel will lead to a new period of expansion for Islam.

Throughout its history, Fatah was able to coordinate with movements that were far more Islamist in orientation. Prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini’s forces underwent training in Lebanon in Fatah military camps. It was not unusual for Lebanese Shiites to become active in Fatah. The most famous case was Imad Mughniyah, who joined Yasser Arafat’s Force 17 and then went on to form Hizbullah, the pro-Iranian global terror organization.

Fatah outreach to the Islamist world expressed itself in other ways. In the aftermath of the first Gulf War in 1991, the Sudanese leader, Hassan Turabi, hosted a series of international gatherings in Khartoum of major militant Islamist groups. Those attending the meetings included Hamas, Yasser Arafat, the Algerian organizations, and even Osama bin Laden, before he established his headquarters in Afghanistan. Fatah and Hamas went through periods of rivalry and full military coordination, like when they formed a joint command during the Second Intifada, known as the National and Islamic Forces under Marwan Barghouti.

There is one area in which many European diplomats connect the terror against Israel and the activities of the jihadist movements like ISIS. For decades it has been broadly assumed that if Israel would only solve the Palestinian problem, then one of the grievances driving the jihadi movements would be removed and the West would be more secure. This thesis has been proven to be false time and time again.

Looking back at the 1990’s, the first major breakthrough between Israel and the Palestinians was reached with the signing of the 1993 Declaration of Principles, also known as the Oslo Accords. In the years that followed, a series of implementation agreements were signed like the 1994 Gaza-Jericho Agreement, the 1995 Interim Agreement, the 1997 Hebron Agreement, and the 1998 Wye River Memorandum.

But looking in the same parallel period, there was no correlation between Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy and the reduction of the hostility from the jihadist threat. For in those very years, al-Qaeda’s threats on the West seemed to only worsen: in 1993,was the first World Trade Center attack; in 1995 was the first al-Qaeda attack in Saudi Arabia; followed in 1998 with the attacks against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; in 2000, the USS Cole was attacked in Yemen; and finally in 2001, the United States was struck in the 9/11 attacks.

Arab-Israeli diplomacy did not ameliorate this growing problem. There simply is no correlation between Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and the attacks by al-Qaeda against the West. The negotiations that Israel undertook had their own value, but its concessions were not in any way a panacea for the strikes of the jihadi movements against the U.S. or its European allies. To neutralize this challenge a cohesive military strategy is needed for the West, the Arab states that are threatened, and Israel. It thus stands to reason that, just as all three face similar threats, the models developed in Israel for dealing with terror merit attention in Europe and beyond.

Notes

1 Eva Illouz, “In Dealing With Terrorism, France Mustn’t Look to Israel for Answers,” Haaretz, November 19, 2015. http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.687144. See also; Die Zeit.

2 “The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamic mass movement whose worldview is based on the belief that ‘Islam is the solution’ and on the stated aim of establishing a world order (a caliphate) based on Islamic religious law (Shariah) on the ruins of Western liberalism. With extensive support networks in Arab countries and, to a lesser extent, in the West, the movement views the recent events in Egypt as a historic opportunity. It strives to take advantage of the democratic process for gradual, non-violent progress towards the establishment of political dominance and the eventual assumption of power in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries.” The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, June 19, 2011. http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/data/pdf/PDF_11_033_2.pdf.

3 Jamal Sanad Al-Suwaidi, The Mirage, United Arab Emirates, P.O. Box 4567, p. 588.

4 Photo: The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, June 19, 2011. http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/data/pdf/PDF_11_033_2.pdf .

5 Hamas MP and Cleric Yunis Al-Astal in a Friday Sermon: We Will Conquer Rome, and from There Continue to Conquer the Two Americas and Eastern Europe, MEMRI, April 11, 2008.https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-mp-and-cleric-yunis-al-astal-friday-sermon-we-will-conquer-rome-and-there-continue-conquer/transcript.

6 DABIQ, Fourth Issue, p. 37. “The Failed Crusade.” The cover notably shows the flag of ISIS flying over the Vatican.

Ambassador Dore Gold has served as President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs since 2000. From June 2015 until October 2016 he served as Director-General of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Previously he served as Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN (1997-1999), and as an advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

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