Hamas's
Terror Recruiters Rely on Mix of Old and New Media
by Yaakov Lappin
Special to IPT News
February 15, 2019
|
|
|
|
Share:  
|
  Be the
first of your friends to like this.
Coded messages on a satellite television station and Facebook are some
of the tools Hamas has been using to plot a series of terrorist atrocities
against Israelis.
A recent Hamas terror attempt to launch suicide bombings, stabbings, and
shooting attacks against Israelis illustrates how the organization combines
new and old media to promote death and destruction.
Like hundreds of attacks Hamas plans ever year, Israeli security forces detected and prevented this one. But Hamas in Gaza
remains determined to keep looking for new ways to evade Israeli
intelligence. This determination led it to use the Gaza-based Al-Aqsa
satellite television station and Facebook to attract new recruits in the
West Bank, who then receive instructions on how to go out and kill
Israelis.
The recruitment attempts are part of a wider, dangerous, strategy by
Hamas's military wing to evade Israeli detection, and send suicide bombers
into Israeli cities from the West Bank. They illustrate just how deceptive
the everyday quiet on Israeli streets is, and how hard Israel's security
forces must work to preserve it.
Israel's Shin Bet intelligence agency on Wednesday announced the
uncovering of a secret Gaza-based Hamas unit dedicated to recruiting
Palestinians in the West Bank and east Jerusalem for terrorist attacks
against Israel.
Dozens of young Palestinians – men and women – communicated with this
unit and began planning violence in line with the instructions they
received, according to the Shin Bet.
The agency said it learned of the latest plots and traced them back to
the Gazan Hamas unit after questioning several terror operatives under
arrest.
One, named by the Shin Bet as Kutiba Al-Nuaja, who is from the West Bank
town of Yata, was arrested by Israeli security forces in December. During
questioning, the Shin Bet learned that Al-Nuaja began communicating on
Facebook with a Hamas operative in the Gaza Strip one year ago. It named
that handler as Muhammad Arbid.
Al-Nuaja first thought his handler was a journalist, since Arbid's
clothes had the word "press" glued on when he appeared in rioting
incidents along the Gaza – Israel border.
Arbid connected his new recruit with a second Hamas handler, who
presented himself as a member of the organization's military wing. The
second handler encouraged Al-Nuaja to conduct terrorist attacks for Hamas.
To prove that he really was communicating with Hamas's military wing,
his handlers asked him to choose a random verse from the Quran, and then
watch a specific show on the Al-Aqsa satellite channel the next day. The
host, he was told, would read the relevant passage. The promise came true,
and the recruit was assured.
Al-Nuaja's handlers told him to conduct a suicide bomb attack on board a
bus in the Israeli city of Lod, which is home to both Jews and Arabs. He
was arrested days before he was supposed to receive his suicide bomb belt.
The Shin Bet's detection had prevented another mass casualty attack.
A second suspect, Baha Shajiah, also aged 21, from the West Bank village
of Deir Jariri, was a religious studies student at Al Quds University, east
of Jerusalem. Jariri headed a secret Hamas student cell at his campus, and
had already served a two-year sentence after being convicted of membership
in a Hamas cell that was planning suicide bombing and shooting attacks on
Israelis.
In December, he once again found himself in Israeli custody. During
questioning, the Shin Bet said it learned that the suspect had been in
contact with a Gazan Hamas operative via Facebook.
Jariri's handler told him that "people from the Al-Aqsa station are
inviting him to be active in Hamas." The Shin Bet named that recruiter
as 24-year-old Musa Alian, from Jabaliya in northern Gaza. Musa identifies
himself on social media networks as a journalist.
Hamas used the same recruitment technique with other suspects. They too
were lured into terrorist cells with messages from Al-Aqsa TV and Facebook.
Using this technique, a Nablus resident was instructed to conduct a
stabbing attack in an Israeli community, but he was arrested before he
could act. Gazan Hamas recruiters told an east Jerusalem man to set up his
own terrorist cell and conduct surveillance missions, like photographing
busy sites in the Israeli capital.
In one extraordinary case, Hamas used Al-Aqsa TV to prove a West Bank
recruit really was talking to the military wing by telling him to tune in
at a specific time and watch the host place his coffee cup down on the
table at the start of the program, and then recite a particular sentence
from a poem.
After the program's opening graphics, the presenter deliberately set
down his coffee cup, before reciting the words: "They declared the
following: I do not worry when I am killed for Allah as a Muslim. [I am not
worried about] what side I fall to the ground, dead for Allah."
"By watching the broadcast, the operative in the West Bank received
confirmation of what he had heard from the operative in the Gaza
Strip," the Shin Bet said.
This usage of the television station was instrumental in Israel's
decision to bomb its studios in the Gaza Strip on Nov. 12 during an
exchange of fire with Hamas.
Israel's intelligence services considered the channel to be a central
aspect of Hamas's recruitment mechanism.
The Shin Bet also named two Al Aqsa TV hosts as notable aides in the
military wing terrorist messaging system.
But Hamas did not just use the station to pass on coded confirmations to
its new recruits. It also used it to incessantly incite Palestinians to
violence.
"We must return to [our land] – above ground, underground, by means
of demonstrations, bombs, weapons, explosives, explosive belts... We must
return to our land," Hamas cleric and TV host Iyad Abu Funun declared on the station last April.
In recent years, the station also hosted figures like Hamas's Deputy of
Religious Endowments, Abdallah Jarbu, who
said: "The Jews are foreign bacteria... The Quran itself says that
they have no parallel... May he annihilate this filthy people."
Ultimately, these efforts at fomenting jihadist violence reflect the
strategy of Hamas's leadership, described by a Shin Bet source as
undermining "stability in the West Bank at any cost."
Yaakov Lappin is a military and strategic affairs correspondent. He
also conducts research and analysis for defense think tanks, and is the
Israel correspondent for IHS Jane's Defense Weekly. His book, The
Virtual Caliphate, explores the online jihadist presence.
Related Topics: Hamas, Media, Recruitment
| Yaakov
Lappin, Al
Aqsa television, Palestinian
incitement, Shin
Bet, Kutiba
al-Nuaja, Muhammad
Arbid, West
Bank recruitment, Baha
Shajiah, Iyad
Abu Funun, Abdallah
Jarbu
|
Print
Send
RSS
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment