A new video issued by ISIS contradicts the oft-repeated claim that the Islamic movement now controlling large portions of Iraq and Syria has no interest in the Palestinian jihad against Israel.
ISIS, which now calls itself the Islamic State after declaring the creation of a new caliphate, vows in the video: "Allah willing, we will continue to fight against the Israelis and their allies."
Islam researcher Robert Spencer, editor of Jihad Watch, notes, for example, Jay Michaelson claimed in the Jewish Daily Forward that "the Islamic State is a Salafist jihadist/fundamentalist movement that regards Hamas as impure and the Israel/Palestinian conflict as largely irrelevant."
In the video, however, Spencer writes, ISIS "makes it abundantly clear" that it regards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as extremely important.
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"And as always, the jihadis ground and justify their actions in Islam, boasting that they will destroy kufr (unbelief) and the unbelievers (kuffar)," Spencer writes.
ISIS states further in the video: "And we will not give up one span of Palestine, Allah willing."
As WND reported earlier this month, recent pledges of allegiance to ISIS from Sunni jihadi groups in the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula have ISIS poised to attack Israel from the north and south in an effort to bait the Jewish state into a war that would stimulate the recruiting of Arab fighters.
In June, WND reported ISIS claimed it had access to nuclear weapons and would use to use them to "liberate" Palestine from Israel, citing a source in the region who has contact with ISIS fighters and sympathizers
Franklin Lamb, an international lawyer based in Beirut and Damascus, said the move is part of the ISIS aim of creating a caliphate under strict Islamic law, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to Iraq.