Written evidence from the Community Security Trust (ISI0014)

Summary

• ISIL, and ISIL inspired terrorists, pose a considerable risk to the UK and its interests.
• A key component of ISIL and wider Salafi Jihad ideology is its antisemitism and incitement to violence.
• Four deadly attacks aimed against Jewish communities in continental Europe in recent years have been undertaken by those reportedly linked to or inspired by ISIL or Salafi Jihad groups.
• Any attack on the UK Jewish community perpetrated or inspired by ISIL elements could undermine community cohesion.
• Iran, and its proxy Hizballah, have engaged in international terrorism and antisemitic incitement against Jewish communities worldwide.
• Any future cooperation between the UK and Iran in fighting ISIL could undermine HMG’s counter-extremism strategy.

Introduction

1. This submission is from the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that advises and supports the UK Jewish community in matters of antisemitism, extremism and terrorism. This submission will restrict itself to those areas of the Inquiry that relate to CST’s work and implications for the security of the UK Jewish community.

ISIL’s Terrorist Threat to the UK

2. Government, Police and the Security Services have all assessed the serious terrorist threat that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)[1] poses to the UK and its interests. A primary component of this comes from the security implications of British nationals who travelled abroad to fight with jihadist groups, returning to the UK skilled and potentially motivated to undertake attacks at home.

ISIL’s Terrorist Threat to Jewish Communities in the UK and Worldwide

3. CST agrees with these assessments, and it also emphasises that global Salafi Jihad organisations, such as ISIL, Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, specifically target Jews and Jewish communities worldwide. Indeed, data show that Salafi Jihad terrorism currently poses the greatest threat to Jewish communal security.[2] The damaging impact of a successful mass casualty terrorist attack on UK Jewish communal life would be devastating, and cohesion in British society could be put at risk.

4. From 2012 to 2015, the terrorist impact against Jewish communities has been tragically demonstrated in four deadly attacks in Europe: Toulouse, Brussels, Paris and Copenhagen. These attacks were perpetrated by European Muslims who were followers and supporters of global jihadist organisations, though not all of them linked to ISIL. Mohamed Merah, who killed four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse in March 2012, had trained in camps linked to al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban. Mehdi Nemmouche, who allegedly murdered four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014, is believed to have spent over a year with ISIL in Syria prior to the attack. In January 2015, Amedy Coulibaly killed four people at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris in conjunction with the AQAP-linked Kouachi brothers who attacked the Charlie Hebdo office earlier the same week. Coulibaly had pledged his allegiance to ISIL in a video made before the attack. Although it is not thought that he had previously travelled to Syria or Iraq to join the group, his wife, Hayat Boumedienne, fled to Syria to join ISIL and was interviewed for ISIL publications.[3] ISIL also published essays praising Coulibaly’s murderous actions.[4] Finally, Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, who murdered a volunteer security guard at the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen in February 2015, pledged allegiance to ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on the day of the attack, and he had previously shared a prison cell with an ISIL sympathiser during an unrelated stint in prison.

5. In the aftermath of the January 2015 Paris attacks, the UK’s National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC, formerly ACPO) announced an increase in the terrorist risk assessment for the Jewish community in the UK, an increase that remains in place at the time of writing.

6. Anti-Jewish incitement is commonplace in ISIL (and other Salafi Jihad) public discourse, which promotes anti-Jewish hatred in its sermons, speeches and communiques on the Internet and social media. Given this violent anti-Jewish discourse, it is not surprising that ISIL and global jihad movements have attacked Jewish targets. While the UK as a whole is at risk, Jewish locations are often important secondary targets even when Jews are not the primary targets.

7. Since 2001, Salafi Jihad groups have attacked Jewish communities and Israelis living abroad in multiple locations around the world. In recent years, police and security services worldwide have foiled numerous jihadist plots against Jewish targets. Since 2010, police action has prevented at least three potential terrorist plots against Jewish communities in London and Manchester, though these were unrelated to ISIL.[5]

Antisemitism in ISIL Discourse

8. ISIL’s official materials often include derogatory references to Jews alongside calls for attacks in the West. These are featured in ISIL’s publications produced for Western audiences, such as Dabiq (in English) and Dar al-Islam (in French), in its prolific video messages and in speeches by ISIL leaders. Anti-Jewish references are interlaced with variants of classic antisemitic conspiracy theories that Jews (or ‘Zionists’) control global media and politics; that they dictate the foreign policy of the United States and other Western powers; or that they are secretly colluding with Shia Muslims to subvert Sunni Islam. The consequence of such views is that anti-Jewish terrorism draws on the interplay between extremist ideologies, anti-Jewish incitement and antisemitic worldviews.

9. ISIL antisemitic conspiracies, just as with Al-Qaeda, influence their worldview and their modus operandi. Prof Christopher Andrew, the official historian of MI5, has explained that Western observers often fail to understand the mind-set of fanatics and dismiss their obsessive conspiracy theories as irrelevant: “All fanatics are necessarily conspiracy theorists…the most dangerous fanatics, despite their conspiracy theories, are calculating and often dangerously effective.”[6] It is important to note that conspiracy theories, however irrational, can inform and motivate political violence on the part of those who believe them.

10. Consider the following examples:

• In July 2014, ISIL leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, in his first address as the newly self-declared Caliph of Islamic State, spoke of the world being divided into two rival camps.[7] He referenced Jews and Crusaders as being in the camp of kufr (disbelief) but also noted that Jews were allegedly mobilising all the other groups in this camp.

•        In the second issue of Dabiq, the writers referred to the fighting between Israel and Hamas in the summer of 2014 and quoted the hadith discussing the end-times vision of a mass annihilation of Jews.[8]

•        In September 2014, ISIL’s chief spokesman, Sheikh Adnani, released an audio message calling for violent lone actor attacks on “disbelievers” worldwide.[9] Adnani also made numerous anti-Jewish references, repeatedly calling President Obama the “mule of the Jews” and stating that international efforts to intervene against ISIL emerged in order to protect Jews.

•        In August 2015, ISIL released a video about ISIL’s economic theory that invoked a classic antisemitic trope of Jewish control over the world’s financial systems.[10]

•        A recurring theme in ISIL material is an obsessive conspiracy theory that Jews are secretly collaborating with Shia Muslims (referred to in derogatory terms as Rafidah) in order to undermine Sunni Islam. In a March 2015 message, Sheikh Adnani claimed that, “The Jews want to hand over all the Muslims’ lands to the filthy Rāfidah.”[11] That same month, a Friday sermon in a mosque in ISIL-controlled Iraq focused on the origins of Shia Muslims, portraying Shi'ism as being invented by a Jew and calling on God to curse the Jews.[12] In an issue of Dabiq, an entire article focuses on Iranian Shia eschatology and develops a complex theory of Shia-Jewish plans to kill Arabs.[13] The article describes the Mahdi (Shia saviour) as actually being the Dajjal (devil) who speaks Hebrew, rules according to the Torah and is followed by Jews.

11. ISIL supporters continue to use social media to disseminate antisemitism and violent incitement against Jews globally. For example, during violence in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza since September 2015, an Arabic hashtag translating as “slaughter the Jews” has been widely circulating amongst ISIL-associated and ISIL-supporting Twitter accounts. From 8th to 29th October, over 80,000 messages used this hashtag. Many of these tweets were populated by violent antisemitic imagery and included tweets urging individuals to undertake attacks against Israelis and Jews. This campaign also influenced some English language tweets, with several English-language ISIL-associated accounts posting threatening messages using the hashtags “stab a Jew” or “slaughter the Jews.”

12. Furthermore, ISIL’s antisemitic incitement has been fuelled by the production and release of numerous Arabic and Hebrew language online videos, in which alleged ISIL fighters specifically call for violence against Jews in Israel and worldwide.[14]

13. Since April 2015, ISIL-linked Twitter accounts, including those of British foreign fighters, have circulated an English-language jihadist guidebook “How to Survive in the West” that, among other targets, recommends to “set off the car bombs near Synagogues.”[15]

The potential for involving Iran in the fight against ISIL

14. CST has made previous submissions on Iran, its hostile foreign policies and terrorist activities against Jewish communities worldwide.[16]

15. While the current UK-Iran rapprochement may be a positive development in some policy areas, the prospect of including Iran as a partner in the fight against ISIL could have a negative effect on the UK Jewish community and undermine HMG’s policies on counter-extremism. This is based on at least three aspects:

• Iran continues to engage in state-sponsored terrorism
• Iran’s senior leaders consider ISIL to be a conspiracy created by the West and “Zionists” to divide Muslims
• Iran’s leaders, especially Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, espouse antisemitic conspiracy theories that influence Iran’s foreign policy decision-making

16. Both Prime Minister Cameron’s policy speech on extremism (July 2015) and HMG’s Counter-Extremism Strategy (October 2015) outline domestic priorities of working to prevent the diffusion of violent and non-violent extremist ideologies. These ideologies, and the actions they produce, can damage social cohesion, foster local animosity and contribute to hate crime. While the Strategy’s section on international engagement acknowledges that these policies focus on domestic extremism, paragraphs 42-45 clearly state that HMG seeks “to build a more robust international response to counter extremist ideology and propaganda” and to do so through the UK’s international networks and partners. UK-Iranian cooperation to fight ISIL could compromise the Government’s counter-extremism policies, given that Iran’s leadership itself promotes extremist views and practices state-sponsored terrorism. 

17. Iran remains a state sponsor of terrorism that directly and indirectly promotes terrorism against Jewish communities worldwide and Israeli institutions and individuals abroad. The potential for the UK to coordinate military activities, or share intelligence, with Iran could involve practical cooperation with a regime that has actively used international terrorism and antisemitism as tools of its foreign policy.

18. At least since the late 1980s, Iran (primarily through its Qods Force) and its proxy Hizballah have been linked to several plots against Jewish and Israeli locations worldwide.[17] Iran makes little distinction between Israeli/Zionist and Jewish targets. The most devastating attack was the July 1994 car bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, Argentina that resulted in 85 fatalities. Since 2012, Iran and Hizballah have reportedly been responsible for a series of attacks, including the deadly bomb attack on a tourist bus in Burgas Airport; foiled attacks in Bangkok and Baku; attempted simultaneous attacks in New Delhi and Tbilisi; and more foiled attacks in Mombasa, Lagos, Kathmandu, Larnaca and Limassol.

19. During the March 2013 trial in a Cypriot court of Hizballah operative Hosem Taleb Yaacoub, it was revealed that he told police as follows: “I was just collecting information about the Jews. This is what my organization is doing, everywhere in the world.” He was found guilty of planning to attack Israelis and holding membership of Hizballah, a criminal organisation. Another Hizballah operative was found guilty in Cyprus for a similar plot in June 2015. These events confirm Hizballah’s ongoing efforts to target Jews globally.

20. Senior Iranian leaders have publically stated that ISIL and other Salafi Jihad organisations (which they refer to as Takfiris) are creations of Zionism, Israel and Western governments, and that these powers support ISIL in order to divide and weaken Islam. These views appear to be commonplace public statements and should not be considered purely as rhetoric disseminated for domestic consumption.

21. This notion has been publicly enunciated at the highest echelons of Iranian public discourse: Ayatollah Khamenei has declared that the USA created takfiri groups and “set them against the Islamic ummah”[18];  President Rouhani described ISIL’s violence in Iraq as being “the mercenaries of Zionists”[19]; Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, described ISIL as “a political scam that is trying to cause a rift on religious grounds and protect the interests of the Zionist regime”[20]; and Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization and one of Iran’s principal negotiators, stated that, “Takfiri terrorists are the child of the global arrogance and the International Zionism.”[21] 

22. Iran also promotes antisemitism as a component of its foreign policy. Indeed, Ayatollah Khamenei has espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories on several occasions.  This includes, among others, his conspiratorial definition of Zionists:

“When we say “Zionists” we do not only mean the usurping Zionist government. That is only part of the Zionist entity. The Zionists form the major capitalists of some countries, including the United State (sic) of America, and dominate the politics of that country. Today, unfortunately, the United States, its Congress and its government, are under the spell of Zionism in different financial, economic, cultural, political and propaganda arenas. The bulk of the propaganda organs of the world mass media, furthermore, are controlled by the Zionists. Most of the famous news agencies which you know of are controlled by them. The few that do not belong to them, in fact move in harmony with them.”[22]

November 2015