ISIS and Israel: Does ISIS's Rhetoric Match Its Strategic Reality?
20 October 2016By Will McCants
On October 23, 2015, ISIS released its first video in Hebrew addressing ''the
Jews occupying Muslim lands.'' ''Not one Jew will remain in Jerusalem,'' a masked
ISIS member warns. ''Do what you want in the meantime, but then we will make
you pay ten times over.'' This video is the latest in a string of statements
made by ISIS threatening to invade Israel and slaughter its citizens.
Does ISIS's rhetoric match its strategic reality? Does it really have its
sights set on Israel?
To be sure, Israel has seen an uptick in ISIS activity along its southern
border in recent months. In July 2015 ISIS's Egyptian affiliate ''Wilayat
Sinai'' claimed responsibility for three rockets that exploded in southern
Israel. The Gaza-based jihadist organization Sheikh Omar Hadid Brigade, which
might have ties to ISIS, launched a rocket attack on the Israeli port city of
Ashdod in May 2015.
ISIS itself makes the occasional threat. In February 2008, for example, Abu
Omar al-Baghdadi, then leader of the al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic State of Iraq
(ISI), announced his intention to oversee ''the liberation of Al-Aqsa,''
stating, ''…we ask God and hope that the [Islamic State of Iraq] will be the
cornerstone for the return of Jerusalem.'' In widely circulated videos released
in June 2014, an ISIS member states that Anbar is ''only a stone's throw away
from Al-Aqsa Mosque.'' In another video message released in July 2015, ISIS
members threaten to ''uproot the state of Jews,'' which will be ''run over by our
[ISIS] creeping crowds.'' More recently, ISIS released a series of videos
encouraging Palestinians to engage in lone wolf attacks against Jews. ''Bring
back horror to the Jews with explosions, burnings, and stabbings,'' says one
ISIS militant in a propaganda video, circulated with the hashtag ''#The_slaughter_of_
Jews.''
Despite its threats, ISIS tanks won't be rolling into the Holy Land anytime
soon. Overthrowing the Israeli government is not a pressing priority for the
ISIS high command. It's more interested in taking over Sunni lands where state
authority has broken down. Dabiq, ISIS's English-language magazine, summarizes
its strategy: weaken Muslim governments through terrorism, thereby creating
security vacuums (literally, ''chaos'' or tawahhush). ISIS fighters will move in
and establish new state-like structures (idarat). So far, ISIS has stuck to
this plan; its fighters are most active and successful in areas where there is
a security void. Israel, which has one of the mightiest militaries in the
Middle East, is the opposite of a security void.
Theologically, the defeat of Israel is also a low priority. Unusual for a
Sunni group, ISIS is motivated by Islamic prophecies of the End Times—or at
least pays a lot of lip service to them. Those prophecies envisage the
conquest of Jerusalem and a war with the Jews as the final act in the End
Times drama. ISIS is still in the first act, the reestablishment of the
caliphate. It still has to spread the caliphate throughout the world and
defeat the Christian infidels.
So despite its combative messaging, ISIS's threats to storm Israel are empty,
meant to recruit Muslims angry about the occupation rather than signal an
invasion. ISIS is focused on consolidating its state and expanding it into
Sunni Muslim lands; its gaze will remained fixed on Jerusalem but it won't try
to plant its flag there anytime soon.
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