Parallels
Long term strategy is what motivates both ISIS and Zionists. All's fair in love and war, so torturing and killing civilians is the order of the day. It's all about land, so both are aggressively expansionist. Ethnic cleansing and racism based on spurious historical readings are necessary. At the same time, both are movements demanding strict adherence and willingness for self-sacrifice. Most are dual citizens, so a security threat. The ISIS fantasy is the same as the Zionist 'foreign policy'. Just replace Jew with Muslim (i.e., Wahhabi/ salafi). At least the Zionists aren't picky about who they call a Jew.
Why would Israel promote Hamas?
Just as the US washed its hands of al-qaeda when they stopped following the US script, when Hamas showed itself as an effective resistance movement and a competent governing party, Israel switched to persecuting it, tacitly defending the Palestinian Authority. Things were catching up to Israel. It had its wayward Hamas and now a terrifying, if not particularly competent, more extremist Islamist group on its doorstep.
It looks like ISIS became the new Hamas for Israel, the real thing, politically off the wall, the latest 'proof' of the bankruptcy of Islam. What to do?
ISIS and Hamas: enemies or allies?
Hamas, which fought a deadly battle with ISIS supporters in Jerusalem in 2009, has been dismissed by ISIS as a distraction from its caliphate project. Though ISIS was clearly against its principled policies of struggling against Zionism, Hamas wisely refuses to condemn ISIS as terrorist, "a term used by many countries for political purposes," according to Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.
"We are all Islamists, and it is ideologically difficult for us to condemn them as terrorists. We are accused of the same by the West and some Arab countries," he said, stressing that Hamas will never join the US alliance against ISIS. Hamas leader Ahmed Youssef explains: If the insurgency in Syria and Iraq is seen as terror, based on the killings taking place there, then the United States and Israel, which have killed thousands of innocent people, ought to be condemned as well. "Nevertheless, we condemn all acts that fall outside the context of the international law and Islamic teachings."
ISIS nonetheless condemned the Hamas government as insufficiently Islamic, justifying its call to overthrow Hamas as a first step toward confrontation with Israel. Some ISIS fighters even burned the Palestinian flag during the Israeli invasion of Gaza in July 2014 because they consider such nationalist symbols indicative of the decline of the Islamic world, which succumbed to national divisions through the creation of an independent "nation-based" political state. One tweet stated, "The Hamas government is apostate, and what it is doing does not constitute jihad, but rather a defense of democracy." [which salafists oppose]
That explains Israel's tacit support of ISIS in Syria at least up until it became clear ISIS was on the way out. Wounded ISIS fighters were ferried into the Golan heights for treatment and then returned. Israel-sourced arms were discovered in abandoned ISIS locations. Israel bombed Syria, but targetted only Iran-linked forces. This all seemed too bizarre to be believed, but makes sense in the 'long run' strategy of Israel to keep the resistance divided, brazenly accelerating the illegal settlements while ISIS re-educated its flock for some distant confrontation with Israel.
YHWH vs Allah
But isn't that a gamble, encouraging the Palestinians et al to make the anti-Israel campaign religious? Maybe God is on the Muslims' side? YHWH and Allah should be one and the same, but Jews are God's special people. In Like everyone else " but different (2001), Morton Weinfeld recalls as a child asking his father two questions:
*If there was a war between Canada and Israel, who would win?
*And which country would we support?
He answers: The first: I know the answer to that one. The second: That remains a tough question.
Weinfeld's tone is flippant about a serious charge against Canadian Jews--Canadians who put Israel first--as opposed to Jewish Canadians, who put Canada first. He makes light of the otherness unique to Judaism as a religion, making it, in its tribal form, the engine of anti-Jewish prejudice.
Suppose in a war against Israel, Canada won, as part of a world movement to end Israeli Apartheid (no thanks to ISIS)? And Israel, as a nuclear power, was willing to go the full mile rather than admit defeat? Weinfeld probably had something else in mind, relying on the Jews' ancient pact with YHWH. Weinfeld isn't worried about the possibility that Israel might lose.
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