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  CONTENTS

  Disclaimer

  Foreword

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Horror of Jihad

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Rise of Isis and the New Caliphate

  CHAPTER THREE

  ISIS: The World’s Most Ruthless and Powerful Jihadist Army

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hamas: Architects of Eternal Jihad

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Hamas: Israel’s Most Relentless Enemy

  CHAPTER SIX

  Hamas Creates a Unity Government with Fatah, Then Launches War

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Waging Lawfare: The U.N. Tries to Transform Our Soldiers into War Criminals

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The 2014 Gaza War: Who Are the Real War Criminals?

  CHAPTER NINE

  Hamas Systematically and Intentionally Violated the Law of War

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Stakes Could Not Be Higher

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Oppose, Don’t Appease: The Way Forward Against Jihad

  Acknowledgments

  Link to a Song by the Jay Sekulow Band

  Notes

  The portions of this book describing the rise of ISIS and its military capabilities and describing Hamas, its history, and many of its tactics are adapted from a series of papers presented by Jay Sekulow in July 2014 at Oxford University’s History, Politics, and Society program on Religion and Politics in the Middle East.

  FOREWORD

  This past summer, I was privileged to participate in a number of informative discussions with members of the University of Oxford faculty regarding the current state of affairs in the Middle East. These conversations centered on the emerging threat to human values posed by ISIS and other groups. As a consequence my eyes have been opened wide to the bracing capacity of radical jihadists to engage in human savagery. Once exposed to evidence of brutality that includes the deliberate shooting of babies in the presence of their mothers, the rape of women who were then told that the only way to redeem their honor was to blow themselves up as suicide bombers, and the summary decapitation of men, women, and children when they failed to comply with conversion edicts issued by Caliph Ibrahim, the leader of the Islamic State, it becomes impossible to remain silent.

  Given that ISIS poses an existential threat to a number of countries, including Israel, and represents a growing menace to lives of Yazidis, moderate Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Kurds, Christians, and Jews, it is highly doubtful that anyone but the most naïve among us would believe that negotiations, led by the United Nations or anyone else, are the proper way forward. Instead, readers of this new book by Jay Sekulow and his team will discover that evil such as this must be met with force. Nothing else will do. Sekulow describes the origins of ISIS and its ideological links to other jihadists, and clarifies 1) the fractured relationship between ISIS, a radical jihadist group that was founded in Iraq and Syria and has directed its efforts toward the creation of an Islamic Caliphate, and al-Qaeda, which has oriented its terrorist attacks against Western and Arab governments, horrifically exemplified by the events of September 11, 2001; 2) the breathtakingly rapid advance of ISIS in Iraq, fueled by its striking commitment to terror, a development that has been fostered by the bewildering courage deficit of the Iraqi military forces; 3) the ideological and visionary links between ISIS and Hamas that combine to threaten Israel’s existence; and 4) substantial evidence revealing how radical jihadist groups like ISIS pose a mounting threat to the American people. Adding urgency to Sekulow’s analysis, a U.S. senator recently explained how radical jihadists have collected the components necessary to assemble a bomb to “blow up” a U.S. city.1

  Given these developments, it bears noticing that the Enlightenment dream of inevitable human progress, grounded in the claim that we are all born free and equal in dignity and rights, and premised on hope that the arc of history bends toward justice, is now in tatters. This outcome fundamentally challenges Americans’ endless pursuit of individualism and tolerance. Readers of this book will discover that in our postmodern era, certain things are indeed intolerable. The failure to face the facts richly addressed by the authors of Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can’t Ignore exposes democratic nations to the rising danger that they—perhaps misled by the persistent fecklessness of the United Nations and other institutions, which refuse to recognize the obvious threat to Western civilization posed by radical Islamist jihadists—will capitulate to the prospect of appeasement, disaster, and death. Capitulation will enable the murderous forces, which have already been unleashed in the Middle East, to expand their territory and reach by directly encroaching on the West. Hopefully readers of this vital book will be roused to prevent this from happening, in prelude to the pursuit of a durable peace in an epoch rife with persecution based on savage ethnic and religious intolerance, and short on reconciliation.

  Harry G. Hutchison

  Visiting Fellow, Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford

  Professor, George Mason University School of Law

  CHAPTER ONE

  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 that 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.

  * * *

  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.

  * * *

  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.

  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 will to use them.

  Let’s begin with ISIS. As of the writing of this book, the terrorists of ISIS—once known as al-Qaeda in Iraq—control territory as large as an entire nation-state, with much of northern Syria and northern Iraq under its control. It is threatening Baghdad and the Kurdish capital city of Erbil, and it recently controlled (and still threatens) a poorly constructed dam near Mosul (one of Iraq’s largest cities). If that dam is blown, it would drown an entire region in a wall of water, killing hundreds of thousands.

  ISIS is brutal beyond imagination to anyone—Christian, Jew, Yazidi, and even Shiite Muslim—who is not aligned with its jihadist form of Sunni Islam. In Syria, ISIS has slaughtered Shiites, Christians, and Alawites (an obscure Islamic sect). In Iraq, it has done the same, giving Christians in conquered territories a chilling ultimatum: “Convert, leave your homes, or die.”

  Tens of thousands of Christians have fled. ISIS fighters have marked their homes and businesses in much the same way that Nazis marked the Jews of Germany and occupied lands, using an Arabic symbol that has come to mean “Nazarene”—a pejorative Middle Eastern term for Christians. They have sold Christian women as sex slaves, and there are numerous reports that they’ve beheaded children. None of this is a
surprise. All of this is completely consistent with their behavior in Iraq when America previously fought them.

  By late 2008, jihadists in Iraq were largely defeated, their leaders killed or captured, along with tens of thousands of their terrorist foot soldiers. Many had fled into Syria, and Iraq became a more stable and more humane place to live than it was when America invaded in 2003.

  But now, only six years later, ISIS is stronger than any jihadist group in world history. Americans have long—and rightly—feared al-Qaeda. After all, it carried out the most devastating attack ever on American soil. But if we have feared and fought al-Qaeda, consider the following facts about ISIS:

  • ISIS is more brutal than al-Qaeda, so brutal that al-Qaeda tried to persuade ISIS to change its tactics.1

  • ISIS is the “world’s richest terrorist group.”2

  • ISIS controls more firepower and territory than any jihadist organization in history.3

  • ISIS has reportedly seized “40kg of radioactive uranium in Iraq,” raising fears that it could construct a “dirty bomb” that could spread deadly radiation in the atmosphere, rendering entire areas uninhabitable and killing or sickening everyone within the radius of its radiation cloud.4

  And as if that weren’t enough, ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, reportedly told his American captors as he was released (we briefly detained him during the Iraq War), “I’ll see you guys in New York.”5 And now an ISIS spokesman has pledged to raise the black flag of jihad over the White House.6

  ISIS is not the only radical terrorist group in the Middle East. While al-Qaeda still has a presence, Hezbollah threatens Israel in the north, and myriad other terrorist groups fight in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere. But the one terrorist organization that is making a concerted, daily effort to kill as many Jews as possible is Hamas, the rulers of the Gaza Strip.

  Why focus on ISIS and Hamas? Aren’t they separate organizations fighting separate enemies? After all, Hamas—a designated terrorist organization under U.S. law—focuses its efforts on Israel while ISIS is fighting virtually everyone except Israel. It has launched attacks (moving from west to east) in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, and its fighters are now turning up in Iran.