How Times Of Israel Fed ISIS Is Israel Conspiracy Nonsense
By
Brian of London
-
April 26, 2017
It is a deeply ingrained in parts of the darker internet that Israel or Zionists along with neo-con Jews and other “deep state” Americans created ISIS or allowed it to come into being. The existence of these conspiracy theories is not hard to come across or follow.
A couple of days ago former Israeli Defence Minster, Moshe Ya’alon, participated in a 40-minute interview with Eli Levi (from Israeli TV’s Channel 10) at a cultural event in Afula. Out of this long interview the increasingly left-wing WordPress blog, Times of Israel,
pulled the following:
Ex-defense minister says IS ‘apologized’ to Israel for November clash
Moshe Ya’alon’s office refuses to elaborate after alluding to contact with terror group
Former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon on Saturday said the Islamic State terrorist group in the Syrian Golan Heights “apologized” for attacking an Israeli unit.
“There was one case recently where Daesh opened fire and apologized,” Ya’alon said, using the terror group’s Arabic nickname.
This was not picked up by any significant news site in Israel because, frankly, it’s not nearly as explosive as ToI’s correspondent has painted here (including the conspiratorial “refused to elaborate” lede). Also note Ya’alon left office in May 2016, well before this incident occurred.
ToI tried to make this “apology” out as some sort of illicit communication between someone in Israel and a terrorist organisation. It would appear their entire post was a vehicle for this single paragraph with which to attack Netanyahu’s government (a favourite pastime for them):
Israel and much of the Western world considers the Islamic State affiliate in the Syrian Golan Heights, known as the Khalid ibn al-Walid Army, to be a terrorist group. Communication with them is technically illegal under Israeli law, constituting contact with an enemy agent.
Here is
Dickie Silverstein’s translation (yes I’m using him as a source deliberately) of the part of the conversation that ToI has built their entire blog post around:
…Within Syria there are many factions: the regime, Iran, the Russians, and even al-Qaeda and ISIS. In such circumstances, one must develop a responsible, carefully-balanced policy by which you protect your own interests on the one hand, and on the other hand you don’t intervene. Because if Israel does intervene on behalf of one side, it will serve the interests of the other; which is why we’ve established red lines. Anyone who violates our sovereignty will immediately feel the full weight of our power. On most occasions, firing comes from regions under the control of the regime. But once the firing came from ISIS positions–and it immediately apologized.
Of course the ever unreliable Dickie follows that quote with this gem:
The attack he refers to was never reported in Israeli media. Either the information was placed under gag order or under military censorship.
Which is a bit odd because it doesn’t take much work to find that the one and only time ISIS were responsible for shooting at the Israeli Defence Forces, it was widely reported everywhere both within Israel and abroad:
The
Ha’aretz version begins:
A number of ISIS fighters were killed after exchanging fire in the first direct clashes between Israel and the Islamic State on Sunday in the southern Golan Heights. In the incident, the Shuhada al-Yarmouk organization, which has pledged allegiance to ISIS, exchanged fire with Israeli forces. No soldiers were wounded.
Several mortar shells exploded following a brief exchange with the IDF’s Golani Brigade before Israeli air forces spotted a car armed with a heavy machine gun. The aerial vehicle bombed the car and it appeared as if its four occupants were killed.
From which we can reasonably infer that the Israeli Air Force took out a Toyota pickup truck like one of these:
So what exactly does it mean that ISIS “apologised” for Israel destroying their pickup truck?
Lets review what happened. Some Islamic State fighters either deliberately (because they saw some Jews) or accidentally sent a few rounds in the direction of Israel.
Israel is not interested in backing one side or the other in Syria but if anything lands on our side we shoot back immediately. I’m making an educated assumption here but this is not even a decision which gets very high up the command chain: Israeli forces on the ground are fully empowered to fire back at anything or anyone dumb enough to engage.
Islamic State shot at Israel, caused no damage whatsoever and in return suffered at least four fatalities and more than paintwork damage to one of their finest mechanised fighting machines. And then THEY apologised to Israel for shooting at us in the first place: it might even have been a non-verbal apology. Just the mere fact that they took their well deserved beating and slunk off the battlefield promising not to prick us again is an apology. Speculating again: they may also have sent some message via a semi-public Telegram account as they are known to do with claims of responsibility.
This is the only reasonable reading of Ya’alon’s off the cuff remark and that is further confirmed by the fact that the rest of the rabidly anti-Netanyahu Israel press completely failed to make a big deal out of this. Only the bit player Times of Israel journalist thought fit to write this up into a big deal.
But of course, as usual, this became yet another solid piece of “evidence” for the popular conspiracy theories that Israel created and maintains ISIS and that the apology was delivered in person by Islamic State Mossad operatives at their weekly board meeting.
Russia Today RT.
Tel Aviv remains so “neutral” in the Syrian conflict that even Islamic State terrorists have on at least one occasion “apologized” to Israel for mistakenly attacking IDF soldiers in the occupied Golan Heights, according to a former Israeli Defense Minister.
Information Liberation (the site which also quoted the Dickie Silverstein paragraph I had above):
Also note that last paragraph: instead of realising that the reason no other Israeli sites ran this story (and ONLY RT and the always anti-Israel Independent internationally) is because it’s complete codswallop. However, the conspiracy loving sites take that as evidence it’s been suppressed!
And countless other alt-right and conspiratorial sites and YouTube channels went off into excited overdrive having been furnished with this great ammunition by Times of Israel’s wilful inability to correctly read Ya’alon’s typical Israeli military braggadocio.
This is just one of many we have parked up on the Golan Heights facing Syria:
I can categorically assure you that Islamic State’s Toyota pickups do not represent a strategic threat of invasion to Israel. That tank, by the way, is fitted with its own personal form of Iron Dome: even a rocket-propelled grenade would be shot out of the air before it got to the tank. In the skies above we have, probably, the best air force in the world.
ISIS are an ideological threat within our borders, but seeing as they’re just following the same Islamic playbook as Hamas and Fatah terroists already within our borders, they just represent another trademark or logo of the same relentless Islamic Jihad we’ve always faced.
Having said all that, as we saw again just this week, if stray mortars or artillery shells land on our side of the border, no matter who shot them, Assad or ISIS or anyone else, we fire back immediately.
Well done Times of Israel, well done.
I know which one of these two I’d bet on.