Islamic State and al-Qaeda Are Still Going Strong

Jan. 14 2022

Drawing on the State Department’s latest terrorism report, Thomas Joscelyn comments on the persistence of the two largest international jihadist groups, and sees little reason for complacency:

The U.S. has hunted down many senior al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) figures over the past two decades. And the State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism highlights the top al-Qaeda personnel taken out in 2020. But the two most senior al-Qaeda and IS leaders on the planet—Ayman al-Zawahiri and Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal Rahman al-Mawla, respectively—have survived the American-led manhunt. They’ve also survived the bitter rivalry between their two organizations. This is no small accomplishment.

Does this matter? I think it does. It demonstrates that America’s high-value targeting campaign has missed some of its highest value targets.

One line in the report deserves additional emphasis. It reads: “Senior AQ leaders continued to reside in Iran and facilitate terrorist operations from there.”

As I’ve written on many occasions, the State and Treasury Departments have regularly exposed al-Qaeda’s network inside Iran since 2011. As Treasury first reported, the Iranian regime and al-Qaeda entered into a “secret deal” some years ago. Under the terms of their “agreement,” al-Qaeda is allowed to operate its “core facilitation pipeline” on Iranian soil. According to the State Department’s latest report, that remained the case throughout 2020.

Read more at FDD

More about: Al Qaeda, ISIS, Terrorism, U.S. Foreign policy

The Democratic Party Is Losing Its Grip on Jews

Since the 1930s, Jews have been one of America’s most solidly Democratic ethnic groups. Although, true to form, a majority again voted for Kamala Harris, something clearly has shifted. John Podhoretz writes:

Over the course of the past thirteen months, Jews in America have been harassed, threatened, seen their ancestral homeland derided as a settler-colonial genocidal state. They have seen Jewish kids mistreated on college campuses. And they have seen the Biden administration kowtow to Muslim populations hostile to Jews and the Jewish state in Michigan. They have heard the criticisms of Israel’s efforts to defend itself, and have noted the silence from the administration when it came to anti-Semitic assaults and the refusal of college presidents to condemn the treatment of Jews and Jewish topics under their ambit.

And Jews have acted.

The initial evidence from last night’s election is that there has been a significant shift in the Jewish vote from previous elections, a delta of anywhere from 10 to 40 percent overall.

Read more at Commentary

More about: 2024 Election, American Jewry, Anti-Semitism, Democrats, U.S. Politics