Trump and Israel ally with ISIS-linked gangs

No, not an exaggeration

Donald Trump wants ISIS and its allies to police Gaza on his behalf. This is not an exaggeration.

This is an exclusive in the Telegraph of all newspapers - it’s a staunchly pro-Israel rag. As their opening sentence says:

The White House wants to recruit organised crime and drug-dealing gangs to form the new Gaza police force, The Telegraph can reveal.

Donald Trump’s administration has presented plans for a new security force heavily staffed by members of existing anti-Hamas armed militias, according to multiple Western officials.

We have covered this before. The Israeli state has armed and backed criminal gangs which have systematically looted aid in Gaza. As the Telegraph notes, these armed gangs have also committed murders and kidnappings.

And as they also note:

At least two of the major clan groups include members who have either actively fought alongside Islamic State, or declared allegiance to the terrorist organisation.

As the Telegraph further note, figures in these militia have fought with ISIS against Egypt.

And why are they recruiting these gangs? Because according to one US military source, Donald Trump’s so-called ‘peace process’ - which is nothing of the sort - “will not work without reliable security partners”.

Israel has long been backing ISIS-linked militia in Gaza. They were particularly keen on a militia led by Yasser Abu Shabab, who was recently killed in an internal squabble. According to the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, he was a prisoner of Hamas but escaped thanks to an Israeli air strike and offered his serves as a collaborator with the Israeli occupation.

As the people of Gaza were starving last year, Israel and its cheerleaders claimed that aid was being looted by Hamas. But it was in fact being systematically looted by these Israel-backed militia. They were openly operating in an area controlled by the Israeli army.

These links with ISIS have been repeatedly noted by other Israeli politicians. At the time, opposition leader Yair Lapid - who backed the genocide - said:

After Netanyahu finished giving millions of dollars to Hamas, he moved on to giving weapons to organisations close to ISIS, all off the cuff, all without strategic planning, all leading to more disasters.

To be clear his objection to Israel backing ISIS linked militia isn’t based on any concern about the welfare of Palestinians - just Israelis. And the objection is strategic, not moral.

The same applies to right-wing Israeli political leader Avigdor Lieberman, who also accused Benjamin Netanyahu of arming ISIS-linked gangs.

It’s striking, isn’t it, how Israel pushed the ‘Hamas Is ISIS’ narrative and both it and the US are now in cahoots with ISIS-linked militia.

The US allying itself to this form of extremism is not new. They armed and backed the Afghan jihadists fighting the Soviet Union in the 1980s, which as we all know, ended very well for everybody involved.

It just goes to underline the opportunism and cynicism of Western power. We’ve seen how the ‘war on terror’ was used to racialise Muslims and turn them into the enemy within - while the West will happily back actual extremists to serve its interests.

In the case of Gaza, it is very clear that the repeatedly openly stated plan of Donald Trump and the Israeli state to remove the entire surviving population of Gaza remains the intention.

As al-Jazeera note, as Ramadan begins, Israel is still preventing enough aid and basic supplies from getting into Gaza. The so-called ceasefire deal mandated that at least 600 aid trucks enter Gaza each day, but the real number is much lower, while Israel has violently killed hundreds of Palestinians since the so-called ceasefire began.

The genocide is ongoing, and it remains our responsibility to keep talking about it.