Hamas Leader Directing Terror From Turkey
Israel is eyeing a Hamas mastermind headquartered in NATO-member Turkey as one of the likely architects of a series of purported “lone wolf” terrorist attacks carried out in recent weeks in Jerusalem and the West Bank, this column has learned.
Informed security sources told KleinOnline that the tracks of the recent bloody campaign apparently lead to Salah al-Arouri, a Hamas leader based in Turkey, who has amassed significant power within the terror group’s infrastructure and directs his own rival Hamas wing from his sanctuary in the NATO country.
In the last week alone, there have been 11 terrorist attacks here, claiming the lives of two Israelis and wounding others. Many of the attacks took place during Ramadan, which began June 18 and runs through July 17.
On Wednesday, June 24, Israel’s Shin Bet security services said it conducted a joint operation with the Israel Defense Forces in recent months that uncovered Hamas terrorist cells in major West Bank cities, including Hebron, Nablus, and the Islamic Jihad stronghold of Jenin. Shin Bet said it arrested a total of 40 Hamas militants in the raids.
The Shin Bet related that Hamas members under interrogation revealed the creation of a Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank, including the founding of a central command center in Nablus and the appointments of a command hierarchy, replete with a series of local chiefs in several villages.
Israel said funding for the Hamas cell came from Husam Badran, a Hamas member based in Qatar.
Another primary director, security sources said, is the Turkey-based Salah al-Arouri, whom Israel believes may have been behind the most recent spate of terrorist attacks here.
In December 2014, the Shin Bet disclosed that in September of that year it had dismantled a Hamas terror ring of 30 West Bank gunmen who were being directed by al-Arouri.
The Shin Bet said al-Arouri’s ring was preparing to carry out major terrorist attacks, including the bombing of Jerusalem’s main soccer stadium and the city’s light rail train line. The ring also sought to kidnap Israelis domestically and abroad, carry out roadside attacks, storm Jewish villages, and plant car bombs in Israeli cities.
Hamas’s Turkish leadership, directed by al-Arouri, was said to have also been behind the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in June 2014.
Gazan Salafists To Pledge Allegiance To ISIS
Marking a significant development in Mideast affairs, Salafists in the Gaza Strip plan to officially pledge allegiance to ISIS and openly fight under its banner, a senior Salafist militant in Gaza told WorldNetDaily in a phone interview.
In a recently released video, ISIS insurgents in Syria threaten to turn the Gaza Strip into another one of their Middle East territories and accuse Gaza’s Hamas rulers of selling out Islamic values.
Abu Mousub, an aide to Abu Al-Ayna al-Ansari, a leader of a Salafi group in the Gaza Strip, told this reporter that Al-Ansari’s group will officially announce it is representing ISIS in Gaza.
Until now, Al-Ansari’s jihadi group and other Gaza-based Salafist organizations have hesitated to officially declare themselves part of ISIS, instead preferring to say they were allied with ISIS ideology. This even though their written statements and videos brandished the ISIS flag.
Abu Mousub said if Hamas does not stop its crackdown on Salafists and dedicate itself to ISIS’s Islamic jihadist values, Al-Ansari’s new ISIS group plans to continue attacking Hamas installations with the aim of taking over Gaza from Hamas and incorporating the coastal enclave within ISIS’s self-declared caliphate.
Who’s Behind The ‘Dump Trump’ Campaign?
A closer look at the leaders of the anti-Donald Trump campaign – which resulted in Macy’s recently severing its ties to the billionaire – reveals it is not the grassroots protest movement it claims to be. Rather, the “Dump Trump” operation is organized by professional progressive agitators with a history of dubious anti-conservative campaigning.
Trump was a Macy’s merchandizing partner and occasional spokesman. Trump’s menswear line sells cologne, shirts, ties, and other clothing and apparel while Trump himself has been featured in Macy’s television commercials. Macy’s has held major Trump-themed events at its flagship story at Herald Square in New York.
MoveOn.org, financed by billionaire George Soros, posted an online petition directed at Terry J. Lundgren, chairman of the Board, CEO, director, and president of Macy’s Inc. The petition, which boasts more than 709,000 online signatures, complains, “Donald Trump does not reflect ‘the magic of Macy’s.’ We urge you to sever ties with him.”
That petition was written by Angelo Carusone, executive vice president of the heavily Soros-financed progressive activist group Media Matters.
Carusone has been identified in establishment media reports as the man behind the campaign targeting Trump’s relationship with Macy’s.
Indeed, Carusone first drafted his anti-Trump petition back in 2012, when the complaint was also sponsored by MoveOn.org. The petition accused Trump of repeatedly making “sexist” and “racially charged” remarks.
The activism led to Trump’s attorneys sending Carusone a cease-and-desist letter and threatening to sue him for “not less than” $25 million if the online campaign continued.
The letter charged that Carusone had spread misinformation about the size and success of his protest, and it accused the activist and Media Matters of being “an ultra left political group aimed at suppressing free speech by targeting conservative activists and their business partners through baseless threats and intimidation.”
Carusone is a professional anti-conservative social media crusader. He previously led a successful Twitter-based “StopBeck” effort targeting then-Fox News host Glenn Beck.
And he attempted to get businesses to boycott Rush Limbaugh regarding the radio host’s comments about contraceptives and “reproductive rights” advocate Sandra Fluke.
Carusone and Media Matters also ran “StopFox, StopPalin, StopLevin, StopOReilly and StopHannity” movements.
A report by NewsBusters charged that Carusone’s anti-Limbaugh Twitter movement consisted of a “small number of Stop Rush extremists” who launched most of the messages and that “Stop Rush activists are full time extremists, not customers.”
NewsBusters further reported, “Stop Rush tweets often originate from automated software, not people.”
“Media Matters and all these Stop Rush nuts are today’s political version of this scene from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ where the ‘great and powerful Oz’ was revealed to be a fraud – just a guy behind a curtain pulling levers that belched fearsome images and sounds when in fact the whole thing was a fantasy,” NewsBusters continued. “‘The Wizard of Oz’ in fact did not exist – and neither does the reality of the Stop Rush effort.”