ISIL, ISIS, JSIL and MOSSAD

I was recently reading an article in Haaretz, about a member of the British Labour Party and a controversy surrounding a comment made, that “Israel's Mossad intelligence agency runs ISIS”.The person involved had also posted on Facebook, the Islamic State had failed to attack the state of Israel "because the dog doesn't bite his own tail." 

While Haaretz focused on the statements of this person, it’s worth giving some wider perspective to the origins of such claims and why a seemingly ordinary British member of the Labour Party, would use social media to make such allegations. 

When the 2014 crisis broke out in Iraq, both print and Social Media were buzzing with a variety of theories and allegations surrounding the Islamic State, which over a period of two years, has re-branded from ISIS, ISIL, IS to Daesh. At the time, Europe wide claims stated the crisis in Mosul was part of a legitimate “Sunni uprising” against the “oppressive Shiite” regime of Nouri Al-Maliki. 

It was also claimed that upon declaration of the “Caliphate”, the Islamic State began to provide welfare, full employment and a functioning electricity supply. There were European organisations, which claimed the situations faced by the Yazidi’s on Mount Sinjar, the theft and the letter “N” being drawn onto Iraqi Christian properties, were a fabricated intelligence led “crusade”, to prompt a second Iraq invasion by the United States and Great Britain. 

In 2014, there was also the belief on Social Media, that the failure of Islamic State to extend its battle frontiers into Palestine, resulted in the conclusion that it had no intention of ever attacking Israel, which was to lead it to becoming a creation of the MOSSAD agency. This resulted in the transformation of ISIL into the JSIL , with reference to the Jewish State, and claims made that the change to IS was secretly orchestrated to include the words Israeli Security. 

Pictures circulated online, included a fighter lifting up his balaclava to reveal the face of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This belief was reinforced by claims, that expansion plans of ISIS, across Syria and Iraq, matched the “Zionist expansion plans” to extend Israel’s borders from the rivers Nile to the Euphrates. 

To legitimize the actions of European IS recruits, comparisons were made with European Jews taking up service in the Israeli Defence Force. Such beliefs were being openly expressed through Social Media sites, with allegations emerging from a variety of sources, including from within the UK. 

In frequency, these claims overtook other European held views towards Islamic State, where comparisons had previously been drawn to the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. One British suicide bomber was also described as a “sweet person” by a member of the UK parliament.

by Hussein Al-alak, editor of Iraq Solidarity News (Al-Thawra). You can follow @TotalyHussein on Twitter