Meanwhile, the social media giants are too busy silencing foes of jihad terror and Sharia oppression of women to pay any attention.
“New Study Analyzes Hizballah’s Online Recruitment of Palestinian Terrorists,” IPT News, November 1, 2019:
A lot of attention has been devoted to the Islamic State’s use of the internet to inspire or direct international terrorist attacks. But little has been written about how Hizballah uses similar approaches to recruit and execute attacks, with the exception of a few outlets like the Investigative Project on Terrorism and the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. A new study published last month in the CTC Sentinel explores this development by analyzing several cases of Hizballah’s alleged social media efforts to recruit Israeli Arabs and Palestinians to kill Israelis.
From the end of 2015 through 2017, both the Islamic State and Hizballah recruited terrorists outside their base countries using social media and encrypted communications platforms to help people form cells and conduct terrorist attacks abroad. Several high-profile Islamic State virtual plots were carried out successfully killing people in Europe and beyond during this period. Hizballah, on the other hand, has thus far failed to execute an attack using Palestinians recruited online. But foiled, covert plots still point to a major, yet poorly understood, terrorist threat to Israel. By hiding behind anti-Israel Facebook groups, Hizballah can oversee plots from afar, at a limited cost to the organization.
The latest study compares and contrasts six publicly available cases of Palestinians recruited by Hizballah handlers online. In each case, Hizballah operatives develop ties with individual Palestinians through anti-Israel Facebook groups. After establishing a relationship, the Palestinian recruit is instructed to continue discussions over encrypted e-mail and other communications platforms. The recruit is then asked to form cells with other trusted people in the West Bank. According to the analysis, all of the recruits and cell members were young men from across the West Bank between the ages of 18-32. The sole exception was 49-year-old Mustafa Ali Mahmoud Basharat – who did not make it very far in the planning process before Israel foiled that plot.
In most cases, Hizballah used secure platforms to send instructions on how to build explosive devices. Palestinian recruits usually conducted surveillance of Israeli military targets, unless Israeli authorities disrupted the cell early on the planning process. Hizballah’s instructions ranged from kidnapping Israelis , carrying out bombings, and conducting shooting attacks against Israeli military targets. In one case, a Hizballah-led cell started to build explosives to use in a suicide bombing targeting an Israeli bus.
Beyond inspiration and direction, Hizballah provided material support. The terrorist group promised, and often sent, large financial transfers to Palestinian recruits. Muhammad Zaghloul, for example, was promised $25,000 but only received $5,000 after Israeli authorities blocked part of the transfer. Zaghloul used the money to buy a sub-machine gun and ammunition after proposing to assassinate a senior IDF officer. Israeli authorities arrested the cell during the plot’s final stages in January 2016, as the cell was potentially en route to carry out the planned attacks. Later that year, another cell, led by Mustafa Hindi, acquired rifles and participated in target practice.
According to the analysis, some Hizballah handlers hid their identities. But several plots were allegedly overseen by prominent Hizballah figures including Jawad Nasrallah – son of Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah – and Fa’iz Abu-Jadian, a well-known Hizballah operative based in the Gaza Strip. Based on his involvement in recruiting Zaghloul, the U.S. State Department designated Jawad Nasrallah in November 2018 as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). Abu-Jadian, on the other hand, works for Hizballah’s Unit 133 – a division specifically created in the early 2000s to facilitate Palestinian terrorism against Israel.
Since the mid-1990s, Hizballah has been active in stoking violence against Israel from the Palestinian territories and helping Iran transfer money to Palestinian terrorist organizations. During the Second Intifada, Iran tasked arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh with strengthening Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Coordination between Hamas and Hizballah helped Palestinian terrorists execute the deadliest attack against Israelis during the Intifada: a 2002 suicide bombing at the Park Hotel during a Passover holiday gathering which killed 30 people and wounded 140. After several setbacks, however, Unit 133 gradually oriented its attention toward virtual recruitment campaigns.
There are likely more cases of Hizballah’s “virtual entrepreneurs” that Israel has not released. But the drop in open-source reporting on this development after 2017 points to several potential explanations outlined in the CTC Sentinel study. Israel’s ability to thwart each plot may have discouraged Hizballah’s efforts to continue recruiting operatives online. The terrorist group appears to be prioritizing other fronts lately, including in-person recruitment among networks on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. Prospective terrorists in the West Bank may also be less inclined to seek ties with Hizballah, as the popular violent uprising plaguing Israel since September 2015 largely came to a close in mid-2016.
But the overall threat from online recruitment has not gone away. Hizballah’s main benefactor Iran may be taking the lead in recruiting Palestinians online to conduct intelligence and terrorist attacks against Israeli targets. One 2018 plot involved Iranian intelligence personnel, based in South Africa, seeking to cultivate a terrorist cell in the West Bank. In July, an Iranian-directed scheme in Syria sought to recruit Palestinians using fake Facebook profiles before moving on to encrypted communications platforms.
The Palestinian Authority is similarly concerned by these developments. Hizballah front groups in the West Bank facilitate trips for young Palestinians abroad to meet with Iranian and Hizballah members. As Hizballah and Iran strengthen their presence in Lebanon and war-torn Syria, the Islamic Republic and its main Shi’a partner continue to look for additional ways to strike Israel covertly.
mortimer says
Western social media see jihadists as their useful allies because both are the enemies of non-Globalists. The allies of the Globalists must never be criticized and no one must admit how BARBARIC Islam truly is.
IT’S A GAME OF ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.
Both the Leftards and Muslims have a supremacist GLOBALIST, UTOPIAN AGENDA, but those agendas end in two very different visions of UTOPIA. However, both UTOPIAS are in reality NIGHTMARISH.
We know how their UTOPIAS end: The Leftarded UTOPIA ends predictably in the GULAG ARCHIPELAGO and the Muslim AGENDA ends in MASSIVE SLAVERY and ABUSE of non-Muslims.
The social media and Islamists see themselves eventually ruling over all others starting with CONTROLLED INFORMATION and CENSORSHIP … by managing and suppressing contradictory information, stopping debate of controversial matters and silencing alternate voices with dissident opinions. Dissent is INTOLERABLE for the Left and Islamism.
Leftards and Islamist agree on everything, except for what constitutes UTOPIA. That is why LEFTARDS and Muslims can be friends temporarily … at least for now … until they finally attain power themselves.
When they attain the power each wants, their Unholy Ally will be rejected swiftly and they will slaughter their previous ally without mercy.
Neither Leftism nor Islamism is tolerant. Tolerance is merely a temporary measure prior to attaining unopposable power and supremacy.
Wellington says
Finely and accurately expressed, mortimer.
jerome says
qUITE RIGHT mORTIMER!
gravenimage says
Hizballah using social media to recruit Muslims to murder Israeli civilians
………….
Hideous, but this does not surprise.
This goes along with this other horrifying story today:
“Muslims operating slave markets on Instagram, Google Play, Apple apps”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/11/muslims-operating-slave-markets-on-instagram-google-play-apple-apps
Muslims are using our own civilized inventions to enslave and murder Infidels.
mortimer says
Agree … slave markets are Islamic. The name ‘Islam’ means ‘submission’ and no one is as submitted as a slave. Islam is a euphemism for ‘slavery’.
The end-game of Islam is to enslave everyone that has not been murdered resisting Islam’s clutches.
Most people are cowardly and confused and think the Islamic crocodile will eat them last.
Lilith Wept says
Moslems say they are “slaves of Allah”….moslems even say that Jesus said he was a slave of Allah when he supposedly spoke as an infant from the cradle!
There is the difference, Christians are children of God, moslems are slaves of Allah…
How can slaves love their master?
One has choices, and free will, the other has no freedom , moslems have no choices in any matter once Mohammed and Allah have decided something, and questions cause moslems to loose their faith….
One can freely choose to leave Christianity with no repercussions,
the other will be killed if they leave Islam,
One loves, the other submits.
One is peace and tolerance, the other hatred and killing.
Wellington says
Indeed, gravenimage, just as Muslims will use Western freedom to destroy Western freedom.
gravenimage says
Agreed, Mortimer and Wellington.
Angemon says
Good thing that FB is focused on cracking down on “far right” and “white supremacists”, right?…
gravenimage says
+1
Walter Sieruk says
It should be made clear that the Muslim terror organizations, Hezbollah, as well as Hamas and P.I.J. etc. are all fated to fail in their Islamic agenda of destroying the State of Israel and replacing with Islamic “state.” The reason that they will lose in the end and lose hard is because the members of those jihad terror entities are striving against the Will of God. The members who compose those Islamic terror groups might be too ignorant to know this, nevertheless the truth is the God had given all this land that now composes the State of Israel, including all of the West Bank, to the Jewish people. This may be found in the Bible, as seen in, for example, Genesis 28:13-15. 35:10-12. Deuteronomy 32:48,49. Psalm 105:7-11. 135:4. In other words the Jews have tall this land by Divine Right. Furthermore, the Jewish people should have this land by historic rights as shown in First Kings 4:20,21, 24,25. 8:55, 56.
Still, in all fairness, there is one way for mullahs and ayatollahs of Iran and the Muslim members who make up Hezbollah, Hamas and the P.I.J. to convince God to change His Mind about being so much for Israel and then cause Him to turn His back on Israel and then have that nation be no more. That way is for the members of the jihad organizations to gather together and then change the laws of astrophysics, including those laws of astrophysics the control the sun, the moon and the stars. For God had declared in His Word, the Bible, in Jeremiah 31:35,36. “Thus saith the Lord, Who gives the sun for a light by day and the ordinances of the moon and stars for a light by night…The Lord of host is His name. If those ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever.”
Walter Sieruk says
Those poor brainwashed Muslims who are thoroughly mind programmed by the mullahs and imams to the extent that they can’t even think for themselves, as the jihadist members of Hezbollah .Furthermore, those .Islamic terror entities a specifically Hezbollah along with Hamas and Islamic Jihad have with their jihadist scheming along with the PA and Abbas with their intention of destroying the State of Israel and replacing her with some kind of Islamic “state” is an Islamic agenda that is fated to fail in the end. For all of such Muslim schemes and effort will come nothing in the end. The reason is that all their plots and striving against the State of Israel are all lose in the end .This is because Abbas is greatly overruled by the God of the Bible. Who is the Supreme and Ultimate supporter of Israel. As reflected in the following verses of the Bible. “A man’s heart may be full of schemes, but the Lord‘s purpose will prevail.” Proverbs 19:21. [N.E.B.] Also, Psalm 135:4. This informs the reader that “The Lord has chosen Jacob to be His own and Israel His special treasure.”
jerome says
“The palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Abba Eban quote.
Still true today.
If Israel gives up its weapons there will be no Israel or jews, if the other side does give up its weapons , there will be peace.
Neither event is ever going to occur.
The aim of the muslims is the re establishment of the caliphate and dominance over the non muslim world.
Because it is enshrined in muslim’s holy books and they are immutable , things can never change for the better.
War is the inevitable outcome in various forms , maybe even leading to a final massive confrontation or single Massive Event.
The muslim vast majority is anti semitic anti Israel and anti USA.
But mainly their hatred is towards jews first and christians second.
It is no coincidence that there is more jew hatred in the Koran than in mein kampf.
Added to this hatred of course is the age old rest of the world anti semitism which is getting worse, emboldened by the blatant hate expressed by imams everywhere and the deep seated hatred in major democracies -like in the USA congress and the house of commons in the UK.
Also it is no coincidence that Europe is being overrun by muslims. Once they gain control of some countries they will have access to nuclear weapons.
And that is going to happen eventually as the Europeans Germany, France, etc are already getting there.