Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore THE HORROR OF JIHAD It was the video no one wanted to see, that few people could bear to watch. A young American, James Foley, was on his knees next to a masked, black-clad jihadist. The jihadist was holding a knife. Foley began reciting a prepared text-delivered under the ultimate duress-condemning America. When he finished, he visibly braced himself. We all knew what was coming. The Foley beheading video was too graphic for YouTube. Twitter banned users who tweeted its horrific images.
And while few Americans actually watched the horrifying act, everyone knew what happened. It was ISIS, a new and horrifying jihadist force had been unleashed in the Middle East. And now they had slaughtered an American. Except ISIS wasn''t new. These horrible images weren''t unusual. Some of us had seen them before. The DVD was lying in the dust. Still weary from a midnight air assault where they''d attacked enemy-held objectives for hours throughout the evening and early morning, the troopers of the Second ("Sabre") Squadron, Third Armored Cavalry Regiment almost missed the evidence as they searched an abandoned village south of Balad Ruz, Diyala Province, Iraq.
The village may have been abandoned, but people had recently been there. Clothes were scattered on floors, cars and trucks were still parked outside homes, and there was blood, lots of blood. And it seemed fresh. It was a chilling sight. Soldiers stepped gingerly over children''s sandals and little girls'' dresses. They walked past bullet holes in walls, and they picked up cell phones left lying on tables in one- and two-room houses. Our soldiers looked for anything that would provide a clue to the fate of the villagers, but the more experienced knew they were looking for one item in particular-a DVD. In many ways, the DVD was a jihadist''s calling card, his method of bragging about his deeds in the years before smartphones and instant YouTube uploads.
Terrorists would compile "greatest hits" compilations, showing IED strikes on Americans, mass executions of Iraqis, and the detonation of suicide bombs. DVDs were so common that our soldiers were trained to expect an imminent attack if a civilian was spotted filming them with a video camera. And there it was, in a courtyard, in plain view. The troopers picked it up and kept it safe until it could be airlifted out, along with fourteen terrorist detainees, to Forward Operating Base Caldwell, a small American base just miles from the Iranian border. As soon as the DVD arrived, intelligence officers rushed it to their office, put it on computers set aside for reviewing terrorist material (which could always contain viruses or other malware), and started watching. What they saw was nothing short of horrifying. As with all jihadist videos, the camera work was shaky, and the sounds were chaotic and loud. While the cameraman yelled "Allahu Akhbar!" (God is great) into the microphone, a group of about thirty Iraqi men, women, and children were led at gunpoint into a field, a field our soldiers recognized as being near the abandoned village.
One by one, the Iraqis were separated from the group and placed in the middle of a small group of jihadists. The first one was a woman, not more than forty years old. As the camera zoomed in, she had a vacant, hopeless look in her eyes-a look of utter despair. The shouts of "Allahu Akhbar!" intensified until they all blended into one long, loud cheer, like the frenzy after a goal is scored at a soccer match. Then-as the shouting reached its peak and the camera zoomed close-the terrorists beheaded the woman. They didn''t do it with a clean chop of a sword like one sees on television or in movies, but instead by sawing furiously through her neck with knives. It wasn''t over immediately. As she choked on her own blood, the jihadists kept sawing, and sawing, and sawing.
Finally, they pulled her head off, waved it to the camera, shouted in victory, and motioned for the next terrified victim to come forward. How do we know this event occurred-one the mainstream media never knew about or reported? Because one of the authors of this book, a member of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) Law of War team who was deployed to Iraq at the time, saw the video with his own eyes. He walked through the streets of that village himself, stepping over bloody clothes. And he remembers. In fact, he can never forget. What was the name of that terrorist organization? Al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI. And after al-Qaeda rejected AQI because of tactics such as this, tactics so depraved and brutal that they even repulsed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, what did AQI become? The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. It became ISIS.
The sirens were some of the loudest noises I''d ever heard. They blasted apart the stillness of the day, assaulted my eardrums, and made me involuntarily duck. I was in Israel in 2008, just outside of the Hamas-held Gaza Strip. As chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, I was there (along with my son and coauthor of this book, Jordan) to meet with Israeli officials to discuss a response to utterly frivolous claims that Israel''s acts of self-defense against Hamas constituted "war crimes." To help us make our case, I wanted to see Gaza with my own eyes, to see what life was like in southern Israel under rocket fire. I got more than I bargained for. When the warning siren went off, I knew I was safe. I was in a command bunker, meeting with key Israeli leaders.
But my immediate thought wasn''t for my own safety; it was the same thought any father would have in the same circumstance. "Where''s Jordan?" "Where''s my son?" He hadn''t come down to the command bunker. Instead, he was outside, waiting, while I finished my meeting. From the moment the siren sounded until the moment the rocket hit, he had fourteen seconds to get to safety. Those were the longest fourteen seconds of my life. The rocket arced high into the air over Gaza. The Hamas rockets were less powerful back then, but the Iron Dome system that protects Israeli civilians today did not exist. In other words, that rocket wasn''t going to be shot down.
It was going to land, somewhere close to us. Somewhere close to Jordan. It hit seventy-five yards from my son. By the grace of God, the angle of the impact combined with the shape of the charge drove the blast away from Jordan. He was unharmed. But for a few terrifying seconds, I lived the reality of Israeli fathers and mothers-someone was trying to kill my child. Not just trying, but exerting maximum possible effort. That is life in southern Israel in the shadow of Hamas, a terrorist organization that digs tunnels with openings near homes and schools.
The tunnels are designed to allow squads of terrorists to run out, kill, or capture sleeping families, and dash back to Gaza before even the most rapid-reacting and elite soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces can respond. Hamas kidnaps and murders children, sends suicide bombers to restaurants, and summarily executes anyone it believes has ties to Israel. Hamas hides its rockets and bombs in schools and mosques, builds tunnels under United Nations facilities, and often surrounds its fighters with children and other civilians, using them as human shields. It hopes that Israel will either refrain from firing on known terrorists or that, if Israel does fire, enough children will die for the world to express outrage against Israel. In other words, this organization launches rockets hoping to kill children, and when Israel responds, it does all it can to make sure that only Palestinian children die. Either way, the goal is to kill the most innocent and vulnerable. Hamas has sworn not just to destroy Israel, the world''s only Jewish nation, but to kill Jews, to slaughter them. Its intentions mirror those of Hitler, even if its forces are not yet capable of the same kind of destruction.
Hamas has sworn not just to destroy Israel, the world''s only Jewish nation, but to kill Jews, to slaughter them. Its intentions mirror those of Hitler, even if its forces are not yet capable of the same kind of destruction. It seeks arms from Iran (as Iran is busy building a nuclear bomb), it backs jihadists in Syria, and it is-bizarrely enough-cast as a heroic freedom fighter by millions of Europeans and even a distressing number of Americans. The goal of this book is simple: to understand the horrific jihadist threat to Christians and Jews in the Middle East, a threat that will undoubtedly come to the United States if it is left unchecked abroad. Through ISIS and Hamas, Christians and Jews face a wave of persecution and violence that is, quite simply, genocidal in scope and intent. But the situation-while grave-is not hopeless. Unlike in dark times before, America actually has strong allies on the ground, willing to take the fight to the jihadists. Even Israel isn''t as alone as it has been, with Egypt proving to be even more helpful at times than the Obama administration.
In other words, the means exist to stop genocide-if only we have the.