Islamic State Denounces Peace in Gaza as a Nationalist Delusion
Plus Al-Naba’s Other Coverage of Israel and Gaza This Year
The main editorial in the 517th edition of Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter of the Islamic State (IS), published on 16 October, was a reaction to the Israel-HAMAS ceasefire agreement mediated by U.S. President Donald Trump and nominally in effect since 10 October. A translation is given below.
Al-Naba 517’s reference to the “petty state of the Jews” (dawilat al-Yahud) is the nearest IS gets to directly mentioning Israel: the article simply refers to “the Jews” throughout.1 HAMAS is not mentioned directly, which is not unusual in Al-Naba. What at first glance appears slightly strange, in an article premised on criticising something HAMAS has done, is that there is only one passing reference that clearly alludes to HAMAS, specifically to a HAMAS public statement, while the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), sometimes called “the Palestinian Authority”, is named in the first sentence and its leader, Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen), is also mentioned by name. The likely reason for this, however, is that IS wants to group HAMAS in with the PLO, since the Naba 517 editorial’s primary argument is that the Arabs in former Mandate Palestine have been led to disaster because they have followed nationalist leaders, whereas the only path to victory and salvation is Islam. By Islam, Al-Naba, of course, means IS and its ideology, which has no space for peace accords with infidels—however temporary—and instead mandates jihad until the end of time.
Of the mediators, IS’s animus, as expressed in the Naba 517 editorial, is reserved not so much for Trump as Qatar and Turkey, and to a lesser extent Egypt. An itemised grudge IS has against Turkey—the third time it has come up in four months—is the battle the Turks waged to get IS out of the Syrian city of Al-Bab in 2017.2 A final point of interest is that IS frames this Gaza peace deal as a successor to the one in Afghanistan that allowed the Taliban takeover in 2021,3 and the fall of Syria in 2024 to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led by Ahmad al-Shara (Abu Muhammad al-Jolani), the IS renegade whom Al-Naba has previously claimed was installed by the Americans and Turks. The common thread is an attempt to discredit IS’s Islamist rivals as ideologically deviant stooges of the West and the Jews, always among IS’s top priorities.
The Crossing to Camp David! [Al-Naba 517]
Whoever reads the clauses of the latest American version of the “Peace Summit” in Sharm el-Sheikh regarding the cessation of the war in Gaza will have his memory automatically return to the earliest peace conferences and summits between the “Palestine Liberation Organisation” and the Jews, which used to conclude so similarly it is as though some clauses were literally copied from the texts of previous agreements.
It is not by coincidence that the sponsors of this jahili agreement chose the city of Sharm el-Sheikh as the venue for holding the summit and signing the accord, for the city, since its “liberation” [from Israel in 1982], has become a qibla of peace with the Jews, a place for offering the sacrifices of pledges to preserve their security, and a preferred destination for their tourists, a natural fit in the context of the concept of “liberation” in the nationalist lexicon, just like the “liberation” of Damascus, Baghdad, Kabul, and so on.
To refresh the reader’s memory a little, we remind him that among the peace conferences hosted in the city was the “Peace Summit” held two decades ago [in February 2005], attended by the two tawaghit, [then-new PLO chief Mahmud] Abbas and [then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon, in which there was an official announcement of the end of what is known as “the [Second] Intifada” and a commitment to the “Road Map” plan for peace, something that the national liberation movements, then at the height of their enthusiasm, rejected and deemed a betrayal and negligence [or relinquishment of rights]. Yet they have today returned to it empty-handed, in the same city, under the sponsorship of the same international parties, with the addition of Turkey, the “arm of the Crusader West”, and Qatar, the godmother of taming and containment.
Among the contradictions of this Summit of Lies is that the butcher Trump promises the people of Gaza peace! That the “Butcher of al-Bab” [i.e., Turkey] lectures about reconstruction! That the Pharaoh of Egypt speaks about ending pain! And that Britain, the author of the “Balfour Declaration”, together with spiteful France, lead the efforts to rebuild Gaza, as though the historical invaders had gone out through the door and returned through the window.
On the stage of the theatre of peace, Trump said: “This is the dawn of a historic new day for the Middle East!” It is true that the Palestinians have long sung of the dawn of freedom and liberation; but was this “historic dawn” praised by Trump what they meant? Was it truly a dawn, or a dusk portending dark days for a wandering people groping for freedom where it is not to be found, continually tasting the bitterness of national experiences whose failed endings resemble one another, as they resemble their beginnings and “national” roots?
The “Peace Summit” sponsored by America, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, attended by more than twenty Heads of State, was a practical application of the “New Middle East” project drawn up by the Jews and the Crusaders through massacres, fire, and iron. Yet the world today applauds this deceitful summit and, with complete shamelessness, calls it the Summit of Peace!
Perhaps the worst of all the provisions of this summit, and they are all bad, as published by the Black House, is: “Dismantling extremism and radicalism in all their forms.” Trump affirmed this more explicitly in his speech before the Jewish Knesset, saying that “Gaza will not constitute a future threat to Israel’s security!”4
We have heard this proposal before, in the clauses of the Afghan version of the “peace agreement”, under which the Taliban took power and “Kabul was liberated”! Then we heard it again in the era of the “New Syria” after Al-Jolani assumed rule in place of [Bashar] al-Asad and “Damascus was liberated”! And now we are hearing it again in the first phase of the Gaza agreement. Do “liberation projects” only end with the conclusion of “renouncing terrorism” and guaranteeing Jewish and Crusader security now?! Or is there, as they say, more to the story?!
The real meaning of the Sharm el-Sheikh summit is the pledge to protect the security of the petty state of the Jews and to repent and desist from attacking it, and to engage in normalisation of relations with it, especially since many governments were waiting for the flood of blood in Gaza to subside so they could open the rivers of normalisation and official, public alliance with the Jews. And by this, we do not mean only the tawaghit of the Gulf, for the list is long.
Whether this new “peace agreement” falters or deepens, takes root, and sinks its fangs into the Palestinian body already replete with wounds and pain, we address our Muslim brothers in Palestine with an exhortation to patience, truth, and compassion. We remind them that God, exalted be He, has legislated for us an upright deen [lifeway], complete and perfect, set apart from all the others which He nullified, and jihad is ordained for us to guards it and repel those who assail it. This is the path of salvation, so take part in it as He loves and is pleased with, and reject as infidelity [wakfuru] all other paths of jahiliyya and nationalism, for they will only lead you to more summits of delusion. “Oslo” and its sisters are not far from you; they all came after jahili revolutions in which Islam was neither the means nor the sole solution. So listen and understand, and do not repeat the same mistakes. Know that the preservation of blood is not merely stopping it [being shed]; it may stop yet not be preserved! True preservation lies in pledging it [i.e., Muslim blood] and letting it flow only on the path of the prophetic methodology, under the banner of the Muhammadan shari’a [rayat al-shari’a al-Muhammadiyya].
At this time and in these dire circumstance, we do not console our Muslim brothers there only for their dead, because their grave affliction after all this bloodshed lies in the “accursed agreement” which, if it is carried out, would pave the way for a new era of conquest and international guardianship under the pretext of “forming a transitional body to administer Gaza” run by a “Peace Council” that depends on Jewish approval and will not depart from it by one cubit.
It is not unusual that the projects of “resistance and national liberation”, from Afghanistan through Syria to Palestine, should end with agreements of “settlement and peace and the renunciation of violence”, mediated by America, which is thanked [by HAMAS] for its efforts after having been “a partner in the extermination”! After all, this is the difference between the path of jihad and the paths of “national liberation”, a distinction that some continue in vain to try to dissolve. Nor was it unexpected or surprising that the “first crossing” should end the same way as the “second crossing”, with American signatures and promises, as if the nationalist armies and patriotic brigades have been marching from the first Camp David [in 1978] to another Camp David, only this time in Sharm el-Sheikh, or the “City of Peace,” as they call it.
Meanwhile, the mujahideen, al-rabiyun [those devout to their Lord] and al-ghuraba [lit. “the strangers”; the few pious men in a corrupt environment], continue making their way with complete steadfastness and certainty towards Khaybar, Mecca, and Hattin. They are coming inevitably, by the permission of Allah the Exalted, after this severe travail in which the people have become a “majority” that has lost confidence in every form of fighting against the Jews, and [it will be the mujahideen as] a small “sect” [or “faction”: tayfa], patient and believing, that God prepares as the instrument of His wisdom to lead in the coming religious wars, where stone and tree will cry out: “O Muslim, O slave of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
The staff of Moses (peace be upon him) was a miracle specific to his time, and no one may raise it [at the present time] and cleave the sea with it in search of a way out, for the age of miracles has ended. Rather, God has left for us the unsheathed sword of His Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and his path, remaining and extending until the coming of the Hour [qiyam al-sa’ah, i.e., End Times]. This, then, is the only way to cross [to salvation], O youth of Islam. With everything else—“Camp David” or “Oslo” or “Sharm el-Sheikh”—the names change, but the results remain the same.
The word “Gaza” has only appeared in four other issues of Al-Naba this year, always in the editorials.
In one case Gaza was only mentioned in passing. The editorial for Al-Naba 478 on 16 January was a gloating response to the wildfires in the United States. Gaza was brought up briefly because some Muslim Brotherhood factions had claimed the fires were a divine punishment for the U.S. stance on the Israel-HAMAS war, which IS mocked viciously since the Brotherhood has previously “rejected any connection between the calamities striking America and Europe and divine retribution” over Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and so on. The Brethren had in those instances proposed “scientifically-explicable causes” and “forbade rejoicing over such events”, only to now drop their façade of “moderation” over Palestine. “This is a partisan jurisprudential selectiveness”, Al-Naba thundered, and demonstrated that the Brotherhood’s “fluctuations and inconsistencies … are no less erratic than the fluctuations and shifts in the climate”.
Al-Naba 492 on 24 April had a bit more substance about Gaza, but it was far from the main focus. The editorial was a condemnation of Al-Azhar for offering condolences upon the death of the Roman Pope, Francis, and a broader attack on Al-Azhar’s “interfaith” engagement with the Catholic Church. The headline of the article was: “Al-Azhar’s Pope and the Vatican’s Shaykh”. IS was furious that Al-Azhar and its aligned media had sculpted the image of Francis “in such a way that they nearly forget his disbelief, his Christianity, and his call to Trinitarianism”, and did so using “two pretexts”: “his alleged ‘humanity’ and his stance on wounded Gaza”. “Humanity” is obviously not a metric IS recognises—the group was not impressed with Francis being buried in a modest tomb near a railway station so he could remain close to the poor—and IS heaped scorn on Al-Azhar for “dragging Gaza into the story of [admirable] ‘papal characteristics’” since all of the Pope’s calls to “stop the war” were notably unsuccessful: he expired before the conflict did.
The head of Al-Azhar not only “mourned [Francis] as a ‘brother and friend’,” according to Al-Naba 492, but suggested there was a bond “beyond ‘humanity’” because the late Pope had been part of the Jesuit Order, with its “mixture of ‘contemplation and social effort’, making him, in this sense, Azhari in method!” All of this was of a piece with Al-Azhar going “beyond [condolences] to praise, commendation, glorification, and veneration [of Francis], as though they were Vatican trumpets and preachers of popery!” IS ridicules Al-Azhar for elevating the Pope in this way when he was criticised from within his own Church for doctrinal laxity, “such as his refusal to condemn homosexuals” (the word used is “shawadh”, lit. “deviants” or “perverts”). IS also lists Francis’s “rejection of linking terrorism to Islam” as among his “devilish traits, which the media lauded abundantly”.
The willingness of Al-Azhar and other Muslims to engage the Pope is said by Al-Naba 492 to be dangerous, since “those of insight [know] the Pope represents another face of the Crusader invasion, the intellectual and missionary invasion, the soft weapon of Christianisation, which seems to have affected people more than the military invasion did.” IS claims this damage Al-Azhar has done to the umma (Muslim community) is rooted in its defective methodology: Al-Azhar is described as “Sufi” and its employees dismissed contemptuously as “dervishes”. The proof of Al-Azhar’s errors can be seen in the contradiction between its stance “toward the Christians and their Popes and their stance toward the Jews and their rabbis, though the ruling in the Book of Allah is one and the same. Allah has commanded us to … show enmity toward them [both]”.
It is here that IS, as it has so often before, forcefully argues against making Palestine a totemic issue among Muslims and insists that the hatred of Jews must be eternal and based purely religious premises, with no consideration given to Israel’s behaviour. As Al-Naba 492 puts it:
[Al-Azhar sending condolence] reflects the instability of creed [or doctrine: aqeeda] among many who oppose the Jews but not the Christians, contrary to what the Mother of the Book [Umm al-Kitab, i.e., the Qur’an existing in heaven before it was revealed to Muhammad] establishes.
Hence you see the common people describe one who deals with Jews as a traitor, while one who deals with Christians is not the same! They attack the “rabbis” but remain silent about the “popes”. Their hatred of the Jews and their rabbis is not purely creedal [or “religious”: diniyya], but is mixed with a lot of nationalism, influenced by the “Palestinian cause”, which was nationalistic in origins and remains so, lost and wandering, far from the goal of faith, as distant as Al-Aqsa is from the Flood [Al-Tufan]. …
Whoever does not uphold God’s right upon him, through tawhid [monotheism], enmity toward His enemies, and loyalty to His allies, how will he find the path and stand in the right camp during the time of trial [fitna] and the great war [at the End of Days]?
Two other editorials this year have more substantively dealt with Gaza.
The main editorial of Al-Naba 500 on 19 June, entitled, “The State of Persia and the State of the Jews”, was a theological-strategic argument. IS had three broad points. First, that scripture and the sacred historiography of Islam make clear Muslims should be pleased Iran and Israel are at war, since they are both infidel powers and thus any damage they do to one another is welcome in itself, as well as possibly opening up opportunities for the jihadists. However, (point two) by IS’s reckoning Islam does not permit Muslims to actively take a side in an intra-infidel clash, yet many Muslims have violated their creedal obligations by siding with Iran because (point three) “the Palestinian cause” has become an improper object of veneration for too many Muslims, a nationalist idol that leads to neglect of other Islamic responsibilities and can be manipulated to lead Muslims astray, as has happened with (Sunni) Muslims supporting Iranian Shi’is just because they claim to be fighting for Palestine.
The Naba 500 editorial begins with a lament that so many Muslims have lost sight of the traditional understanding of Islam and become “confused” about the objectives and standards they should be working for. “They no longer see the truth as truth and falsehood as falsehood”, says Al-Naba, and instead of making God’s will the centre of their lives, “they have placed ahead of it many other nationalistic and patriotic objectives. Among the results of this is what we see today with many people supporting the Iranian Rafidite [Resistance] Axis under the pretext of their fighting the Jews and their pretended attachment to Palestine.”
Al-Naba goes on:
The alignment of many people behind the Rafidite camp, and their feeling pain for its pain and grief for its affliction, is caused by a deviation from the doctrine of tawhid [aqeeda al-tawhid], in meeting falsehood on its paths and dissolving into its camps. These people have handed themselves over to the Rafidites, joined their Axes, and believed their promises to defend Palestine, while the Jewish–Iranian war, in its three rounds, has proven that Iran has proceeded in all its military actions from its own self-interest. Its three false promises came only as reactions to the killing of its commanders and the striking of its capabilities; neither Jerusalem nor Gaza had anything to do with it.
When delving more deeply into the reality of Iran’s partisans, we find that the veneration of these people for the Iranian Axis is due to their veneration of the Palestinian cause and their placing it above the rank [or station: maqam] of Islam, rather than subordinate to it. For when the measure of Islam disappeared from the lives of these people and they cast aside the shari’a of God behind their backs, they adopted other standards by which to judge matters. Among these is that they made the Palestinian cause a measure and metric for commending individuals and groups, regardless of their deen or manhaj [methodologies]. By this nationalistic, jahili standard, the Rafidites have gained the loyalty and support of these partisans.
This is the reality that overshadows the Jewish-Rafidite conflict today, and it is the same reality that has dominated the Palestinian cause since its first shot was fired. It is for this reason that you will not find in the Palestinian cause a single person killed who has not been granted the rank of martyrdom: the Muslim, the apostate, and the unbeliever are all equal to them! Indeed, even if they were soldiers from the [Communist] “Japanese Red Army”, their graves in southern Lebanon are inscribed with: “Martyrs”!
IS condemns sympathy for Iran, since it was “Persian Iranian commanders who led the war against the Muslims [i.e., IS] in Iraq and Syria [Al-Sham] in alliance with the Roman Crusaders … Then the wheel turned against them … so they began to be killed by the same American aircraft that had previously provided air cover for their forces in Mosul and elsewhere”.
IS insists that the ongoing conflict is “between two competing anti-Islamic projects: the project of the Greater Jewish State and the project of the Greater Persian State! Both are driven by their greed and hatred in invading our lands and desecrating our sanctities, and no wonder, for both parties are fierce enemies of Islam, as their records, past and present, demonstrate.” As such:
No one has the right to make us choose between the camp of the Jews and the camp of the Rafidites, for they are the same … The Muslim has no choice except complete alignment with the camp of Islam, whose core is tawhid and jihad. Our joy at the Jews and the Rafidites fighting one another and at their mutual losses in this war is a legitimate joy at the harm done to two principal enemies of Islam; one of them is more unbelieving and the other more dangerous. There is no clearer proof of the danger of the Rafidites than the fact that many of the people of the qibla [i.e., Muslims who pray towards Mecca] have been deceived by Iran and its Axis, whereas you do not find even a tenth of that deception among the unbelieving Jews.
Even if Iran were to kill thousands of Jews, that would not make it a protector or an ally of the Muslims, for it is an unbelieving Rafidite State, warring against us and steeped in our blood, hostile to the Companions of our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). How, then, do they differ from the unbelieving Jews?! And let Muslims realise that whoever allied with America in the invasion of our lands in Iraq and Syria will not liberate Palestine for them, and those who betrayed and abandoned their functional arms in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza in deference to Persian national interests are even more treacherous and unreliable.
Operationally, says Al-Naba, “Muslims must hasten to exploit the chaos resulting from these wars by intensifying jihad on every level: in supply, support, preparation, recruitment, mobilising, and armament”. “Beware of missing the opportunity”, Al-Naba add: trust in God necessary, but “victory does not come by wishing”, and “if you do not take the initiative, your enemy will”. Al-Naba contends that the wars between “the Jews, Rafidites, and Crusaders will not cease in quantity or quality”, and the breakdown of relations into a shooting war “is a good thing that no Muslim can dispute”.
IS mocks the idea that there has been a serious rupture between Europe and Israel as the kind of delusion that can only be believed in “by the ‘dervishes of the Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood]’, the partisans of Iran”. Instead, IS, in its antisemitic way, sees Israel as getting increasingly powerful:
What has happened with Europe and America lining up behind the Jews in their war confirms the growing domination of the Jews over the international scene, especially after they brought down Iran’s “arms” [adhru] in Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria, and reached its “heads” in Tehran, along with its nuclear programme, which the Jews have had on their target list since its inception, had penetrated to its very marrow, and chose the ideal time to neutralise and strike at its strongholds, as though they had been established under their very eye!
All that has happened confirms the continued ascendancy of the Jews and their unique level of domination, surpassing America and Europe, which are nothing but their puppets, whether willingly or unwillingly, whether [Israel is] governed by Netanyahu or any other “Netan” [/natan, foul or stinking one]. This prompts us to remind readers of what we have already addressed, in the first hours of the war on wounded Gaza: that the Jews lead America and Europe, not the other way around. This is done through the [Jewish] “lobbies” in the economy, the media, and other sectors, and this accords with the realistic shar’i view [put forward by IS] of the obligation to fight the Jews wherever they are [around the world], not only within Palestine, because their presence in Palestine is the fruit of their efforts and activities outside it. Whoever does not realise that has lost the way to Jerusalem.
IS concludes the Naba 500 editorial:
Returning to where we began: the Jews and Rafidites are unbelievers and enemies of the Muslims. They allied and conspired, along with the Crusaders, to wage war on us yesterday, and today God has set enmity between their hearts and plotted against them, so that war has ignited among them. The more the war intensifies between the two parties, the more the Muslims win and gain. But this does not absolve them [Muslims] from the need to urgently strive to acquire the means of power that will enable them to confront the coming ascendancy of the Jews and the chronic hatred of the Rafidites.
The editorial in Al-Naba 513 on 18 September is entitled, “The Tragedy of Gaza”, but the argument was only tangentially about Gaza, let alone Gazans or Palestinians more broadly. IS’s reiterated, as it always does, that fighting for Palestine qua Palestine is illegitimate, and instead contends that the Islamically sound means of fighting Israel is terrorism in the West and overthrowing the Arab governments.
Al-Naba 513 opens the editorial by saying the situation as getting worse for Gazans and then came, on 9 September, “the Jewish army’s bombing of the statelet [duwayla] of Qatar, ‘the mediator’, in the middle of its capital and centre of sovereignty, to which the latter responded with an emergency Arab summit that gathered together at one table America’s protégés, including the ‘New Syria’, and they asserted with one voice that these Jewish practices ‘undermine the efforts for peace’! Notably, the Jewish escalation from Palestine to the Gulf coincided with the anniversary of the signing of the ‘Abraham Accords’ for peace!”5
Away from these “political squabbles”—which have gone on over “the Palestinian arena since the British conquest and [will continue] until the banner of the shari’a is raised there”—the Palestinians are facing the “most dangerous” moment since “the ‘Nakba’,” says Al-Naba, with the wholesale expulsion of the Palestine Arabs from the Strip being a real possibility. This “obliges their Muslim brothers, east and west, to support them, each according to his ability, beginning with those nearest to them, and then those beyond”.
Getting to its point, IS directs anger over this tragedy at the Arab governments and the West that allegedly stands behind them. Muslims’ ability to support the Palestinians will necessarily be limited, says Al-Naba, as it has been in all prior crises, “because [jihadist volunteers] always collide with the ‘national borders’, drawn by invaders and guarded by the tawaghit, which generations have been raised to glorify, and learned loyalty and enmity based upon them!” On “any of the four taghuti borders surrounding Palestine”, says Al-Naba, in “Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and the old and new Syria”, those wanting to join in the war against Israel will find that “Arab apostate soldiers stand, performing ‘their national duty’ in protecting and securing the Jews’ borders”.
For those of proper faith, then, Al-Naba says there are just two “practical options available”:
Terrorism against the West: “to carry out bold, courageous operations targeting Jewish and Christian gatherings and neighbourhoods everywhere, especially in the Crusader European countries such as Belgium, France, Britain and others”. Or
Terrorism against the Arab governments: “These are the ‘walls of the Jews’ behind which they fight, and with their fall the awaited battle with the Jews will begin inside their fortified towns.”
IS says that only those whose “nationalism prevails over their deen and emotions overpower their creed” can disagree with them about this, and quotes from the January 2024 speech by IS’s official spokesman, Abu Hudhayfa al-Ansari:
We say and affirm that the current battle with the Jews is in fact a battle more with the Jews’ allies than with the Jews themselves. The chapters of the recent war they have waged on Gaza confirm that, where the collusion of the apostate Arab governments weighed as heavily on the people of Gaza as the American bombs and missiles. Therefore, the only legitimate [shar’i] solution lies in fighting all of these people.
Al-Naba incites “the lone mujahid [al-mujahid al-munfarid] and the zealous Muslim … to follow either of these two tracks according to his capability”, but there is a very firm warning that this must be done for Islamic reasons, not for the sake of Palestine per se. Those who respond to IS’s call to engage in terrorism in Western or Arab countries must do so because of “the strength of their faith-driven motive and their doctrinal starting-point”, “only out of our piety and devotion to God Almighty, stemming from the fact that Palestine is Muslim land which an infidel enemy has attacked and whose people are unable to repel his aggression”.
Expanding on the point, Al-Naba says:
We make this incitement on the basis that the battle with the Jews is a holy war,6 not a mere temporal battle fought over the fertility of its soil, the mildness of its climate, or the ease of its terrain. These are nationalist, not jihadist or faith-based, motives, and this [nationalism] is what has shaped the “Palestinian cause”, paralysing its progress and diverting its compass since its inception, making it into a national-ethnic cause that adopts Islam as a slogan, not as a path, and regards Islam as an obstacle, not a point of departure [or foundation: muntalaqan].
A Muslim must set out to support his Muslim brothers in Palestine and beyond from these legitimate muntalaqan and shar’i aims that the leaders and shaykhs of the Islamic State have spelled out repeatedly in their speeches and audio messages, acting in accordance with the principles of the Book [i.e., Qur’an] and the Sunnah … and all of these revolve around the central aim of jihad: “Fight against them until there is no more fitna and the deen is wholly for Allah” [Qur’an 8:39].
Contrary to popular misconception, the Islamic State movement has attacked Israel multiple times, the first time in 2005, but IS has been equally clear that its war to return the whole territory of former Mandate Palestine to Islamic rule is part of the general obligation on Muslims never to surrender, and to recover if lost, any land that has been under the shari’a, no matter how briefly. IS has specified that this means Palestine is no more and no less a priority for re-conquest than Spain (note the “and beyond” above).
IS concludes with a grisly exhortation that if Muslims have fixed before them the correct religious motives for wanting to get involved in the jihad against Israel, they should proceed to massacre infidels in the West. Al-Naba recommends soft civilian targets and large gatherings, specifying religious festivals,7 where its murderous loyalists can revel in “the moans of the children [and] the screams of respectable women”.8 In this way, says Al-Naba, the “evil” can be brought “against the Jews and their helpers”, preparing the ground for the mujahideen to overrun the Jewish State and “heal the hearts of believing people”.
NOTES
The Islamic State does not as a rule abide by the Arab convention of referring to Israel as “the Zionist Entity”, and IS’s founder, Ahmad al-Khalayleh, the infamous Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, straightforwardly referred to “Israel” in at least one public statement.
In the caliphate era, Al-Bab in northern Syria became the Islamic State’s crucial gateway to the outside world, the point of entry for the foreign fighters and the point of departure for terrorist operatives sent around the world. IS’s Amn al-Kharji (External Security), the intelligence branch responsible for directing the global terrorism, was headquartered in Al-Bab from no later than the time of the caliphate declaration in June 2014 until February 2017, when Turkey evicted the jihadists from the city, with the help of Free Syrian Army-branded rebels, in a brutal urban battle. The loss of Al-Bab clearly remains a sore point for IS: it was brought up in two recent editorials in Al-Naba, in issues 506 (31 July) and 510 (28 August).
The battle of Al-Bab is now nearly-forgotten in the West, but at the time it was a rather big news story because it was the culmination of Turkey’s Operation EUPHRATES SPRING, launched into Syria in August 2016, which was the first direct, on-the-ground confrontation between a NATO army and the Islamic State, and the fall of Al-Bab significantly cut off IS’s access to external resources. There was also considerable controversy surrounding the operation, ab initio because there existed narratives, many of them circulated by Russia, accusing the Turkish government of being behind IS’s rise, thus there were popular conspiracy theories about what Ankara was “really” doing, and once the operation was underway the United Nations was not too happy about how it was conducted, nor were some “human rights” activists.
It has to be conceded that a lot of civilians were killed and many buildings were destroyed in Al-Bab by Turkish airstrikes, artillery, and close-quarters fighting. Of course, the blame for this lay with the IS terrorists, who prevented thousands of civilians leaving Al-Bab and then used them as human shields, embedding their skeleton crew of fighters and other military infrastructure among the population and in civilian structures like hospitals, while booby-trapping numerous private homes and otherwise provoking clashes with Turkish troops and their FSA auxiliaries in crowded residential areas.
(Curiously, while the U.N. has of late acted as if Islamist terrorists using human shields in urban combat theatres such as Gaza is a myth, a month after Al-Bab fell the U.N. condemned rather forcefully the terrorists’ use of human shields as the cause of “the massive loss of civilian lives in west Mosul”. One could not possibly speculate on what accounts for this discrepancy.)
Interesting, too, there is no mention of Al-Qaeda, which is integrally tied to the Taliban and in no serious sense a separate entity.
The exact quote from Trump at the Knesset was: “HAMAS will be disarmed, and Israel’s security will no longer be threatened in any way, shape, or form.”
The Abraham Accords were signed on 15 September 2020.
“Holy war” is a loose translation of “ma’raka deeniyya” (معركة دينية), a battle over the deen, which is often translated as “religion” but means something more like “lifeway”, the all-encompassing system of Islam.
The reference is almost certainly intended to be and will be understood as Christmas events, which have been regular targets of IS in Europe for a decade. A Christmas market in Germany was attacked in 2016 by IS and one in France was attacked in 2018. A spate of Christmas and Christian targets were targeted across Europe in 2023. This is a well-understood problem. Germany has already announced that a number of Christmas markets will not be allowed to open this year, as Berlin has done for several years now.
The term translated as “respectable women” is “al-hara’ir”, which literally means “free-born women” and has connotations with “honourable” or “chaste”. The sinister point IS is trying to convey is that its loyalists should try to murder “decent” Western women, even by IS’s lights, rather than target “slags dancing around” at a nightclub or some other category of women the Islamists regard as fair game for random slaughter. The intention is for the terrorism—the “propaganda of the deed”—to underline IS’s belief that there are no “innocent” unbelievers: the only choices are conversion to Islam, accepting subordination under Muslim rule, or death.