Delving into the Daf by Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow

A New Wave of Terror Hits the Holy Land

And How the IDF is Battling ISIS in Israel

By Tzvi Leff

On March 22, Mohammad Ghaleb Abu al-Qi’an woke up in the Bedouin town of Hura, a sandy hamlet situated in Israel’s Negev desert. First publishing a fiery screed on Facebook pledging allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group, Qi’an then climbed into his stolen blue Hyundai minivan and drove to nearby Be’er Sheva’s sprawling BIG shopping center.

Al-Qian didn’t stop driving when he reached a teeming bus stop and hitchhiking post, plowing into the dozens returning home from work and instantly killing two women. The Bedouin Islamist then disembarked from the vehicle and drew the kitchen knife he had armed himself with, stabbing and killing another two people.

Only when a nearby bus driver shot and killed the terrorist with his personal sidearm did the deadly rampage come to an end. The combined ramming and stabbing onslaught was Israel’s deadliest terror attack since two

Palestinians opened fire at Tel Aviv’s tony Sarona Market in 2016.

An elementary school teacher and father of five, Al-

Qian had previously served two years in prison after being caught attempting to travel to Syria in order to join ISIS’s campaign against President Bashar Assad’s government. The indictment was damning; after special forces arrested him at Ben Gurion Airport in 2015,

Al-Qian admitted to exploiting his position at a large

Arab school to recruit his impressionable charges into a radical Salafist ideology.

Far from showing remorse, Al-Qian boasted about the clandestine terror cell he established in Israel that aimed to wage armed jihad against “the Zionist infidels and the enemies of Islam.” In closing arguments, the prosecutor urged the judge to impose the maximum possible sentence, telling the court that “criminals like the defendant are a ticking time bomb, and it’s impossible to know when the countdown will begin.”

The grisly terror attack two weeks ago shocked Israel, coming from an Arab Israeli with full citizenship who collected a monthly salary from the Ministry of Education. Yet the panic really took hold four days later when Ayman and Ibrahim Ighbariah opened fire at a bus stop in the northern city of Hadera.

First shooting and killing Border Police officer Shirel fellow citizens.

If terrorism had traditionally been motivated by nationalist terror groups, the attackers were now fervent devotees of ISIS’s goal of establishing a worldwide Islamic caliphate. Israel has never experienced anything like it.

A WOrLdWide CALipHATe

had a bachelor’s degree, and over half enjoyed a middle class upbringing.

Their unlikely background meant that intelligence agencies had a particularly difficult time keeping tabs on local ISIS cells. Compounding the problem was the fact that many jihadists returned home on their foreign passports after fighting in Syria and Iraq, slipping back into France, Germany, and England to set up local terror networks.

Aboukrat at point blank range, the two cousins drew their stolen IDF-issue M-4 assault rifles and embarked on a murderous shooting spree. Killing Yazan Falah, another Border Police officer, the terrorists were cut down by undercover commandos who happened to be eating at a nearby restaurant.

The elite operatives prevented a massacre. Ayman and Ibrahim had been armed with no less than two machine guns, four pistols, and over a thousand bullets. Both were wearing body armor and had clearly planned to murder as many Israelis as they could.

Hadera’s deadly spree established a pattern. Like Al-Qian, Ayman and Ibrahim Ighbariah were Israeli citizens, residents of the nearby Arab city of Umm AlFahm. Like Al-Qian, Ayman and Ighbariah were admirers of ISIS and had published a video earlier in the day in which the masked jihadis declared their allegiance to the terror group while standing in front of its infamous black flag. Like Al-Qian, the cousins had previously done time in 2015 for attempting to fight with ISIS in the civil war ripping Syria apart.

The panic barreling through Israeli society hit a fever pitch when 27-year-old Palestinian Diaa Hamarshah opened fire at a busy Bnei Brak thoroughfare, killing three passerby and Arab police officer Amir Khoury who had rushed to the scene. Like the previous attacks, Hamarshah was an ex-convict who did time for attempting to become a suicide bomber and wrote a Facebook post filled with Islamist incitement prior to setting off to fulfill his murderous fantast.

By now, it was clear; Israel was experiencing a deadly terror wave unseen since the Second Intifada. But while Israel has a long history battling terrorism, this wave was different. If previous attacks were committed by Palestinians, Israeli Arabs were now turning on their

Founded in 2011 as an offshoot of Al Qaeda, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is infamous for its public beheadings of Western hostages and strings of terror attacks its followers have committed around the world. Claiming to practice the authentic brand of Islam dating back to the days of Mohamed, the radical Sunni terror group seeks to establish a worldwide Caliphate administered according to the dictates of Sharia law. ISIS rose to global prominence after it exploited the chaos resulting from the bloody Syrian civil war to conquer large swaths of territory. At its height in 2015, the radical group controlled a third of Syria and 40% of Iraq, including major cities such as Tikrit, Mosul and Anbar.

At the same time, ISIS-affiliated jihadists pulled off dozens of the deadliest attacks Europe has ever seen. This includes a triple suicide bombing at a Brussels Airport in 2015 and blowing up 130 people at France’s Bataclan theater a year later.

From the outset, ISIS presented a unique challenge for global counterterrorism efforts. The Islamic State attracted tens of thousands of Westerners drawn to its vision of building a new world order run according to Muslim law.

While traditional terror groups such as al-Qaeda recruited primarily amongst poor and disaffected immigrant communities, ISIS saw tens of thousands of educated and successful professionals flock to its ranks. Doctors, engineers and lawyers, people with advanced academic degrees who had previously lived an upstanding life as law abiding citizens, picked up and moved to Syria to battle the infidel Assad government.

A prominent example of this phenomenon is Mohammed Emwazi. Born in London, the terrorist known colloquially around the world as “Jihadi John” was working as an IT expert and had graduated from the University of Westminster. But in 2013, Emwazi flew to Syria and was next seen beheading hostages in a series of gruesome videos.

According to a study by the World Bank, 30,000 fighters hailing from 85 countries had joined ISIS as of 2015. Out of those, 80% had graduated high school, 45%

SHiN BeT FALLS ASLeep

When ISIS began becoming increasingly popular, Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency cracked down. Fearing that ISIS would recruit amongst Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, the agency launched a comprehensive The new wave of iSiS-inspired effort to stamp out the radical ideology when it was still small. terrorism rocking the Beginning in 2013, a special unit was organized, Jewish State has made tasked with monitoring social media pages known to promulgate incitement. Intelligence officers kept tabs it clear that israel’s on what was being taught at Israeli Arab schools; those intelligence community had returning from countries such as Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia were interrogated upon landing at Ben fallen asleep at the wheel. Gurion Airport, and extremist mosques were put under surveillance. The mammoth effort played a key role in ensuring that ISIS never took hold within the Israeli Arab community. At a time when ISIS enjoyed widespread popularity in Muslim communities throughout Europe, only 87 Israelis and Palestinians were convicted of belonging to the extremist group. That was then. The new wave of ISIS-inspired terrorism rocking the Jewish State has made it clear that Israel’s intelligence community had fallen asleep at the wheel. While usually highly professional and viewed as one of the world’s most advanced counterterror bodies, the Five people were killed in Bnei Brak Shin Bet is now undergoing withering criticism for its failure to foresee and stop the recent murderous spree. Every one of the recent string of attacks could have been prevented. As opposed to “lone wolf” terrorists which are difficult to prevent, as no one save for the jihadist himself knows what he is plotting, the attacks in Be’er Sheva, Hadera, and Bnei Brak were carried out by