“Israel’s military blamed itself for failing to defend against Hamas militants’
rampage through a community on the Gaza border where scores were killed or
taken hostage on Oct. 7, in the first released findings of a large military
investigation into the nation’s worst intelligence failure and terrorist
attack. The probe focused on the events in Kibbutz Be’eri, a small community on
the Gaza border that was the site of one of the worst massacres of the day.
Hundreds of militants stormed through the border fence with Israel in the early
morning and attacked the village for hours, with barely any response by Israeli
security forces. The investigation released Thursday found that the Israeli
military failed in its mission to protect civilians, failed to understand what
was happening in the kibbutz even hours after the attack had begun, and that
forces gathered outside the kibbutz but due to a lack of chain of command
waited outside its entrance as residents fought for their lives.”











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Eye on Extremism



July 12, 2024



The Wall Street Journal: Hamas Captured A Kibbutz On Oct. 7. A Probe Finds
Israel’s Military Fell Short
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“Israel’s military blamed itself for failing to defend against Hamas
militants’ rampage through a community on the Gaza border where scores were
killed or taken hostage on Oct. 7, in the first released findings of a large
military investigation into the nation’s worst intelligence failure and
terrorist attack. The probe focused on the events in Kibbutz Be’eri, a small
community on the Gaza border that was the site of one of the worst massacres of
the day. Hundreds of militants stormed through the border fence with Israel in
the early morning and attacked the village for hours, with barely any response
by Israeli security forces. The investigation released Thursday found that the
Israeli military failed in its mission to protect civilians, failed to
understand what was happening in the kibbutz even hours after the attack had
begun, and that forces gathered outside the kibbutz but due to a lack of chain
of command waited outside its entrance as residents fought for their lives.”



The New York Times: Russia Places Navalny’s Widow On Extremist List
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“Russia has placed the widow of the late opposition campaigner Aleksei A.
Navalny on its official terrorist and extremist list, days after charging her
in a Moscow court with “participating in an extremist community.”
Rosfinmonitoring, the Russian government body assigned to combat money
laundering and terrorism financing, added Yulia Navalnaya to the list as an
extremist, according to a search on Thursday of its online database. Inclusion
on the list allows the Russian authorities to block bank accounts of the
designated individual and restrict other financial activity. Ms. Navalnaya, who
left Russia in 2021, pledged to continue the work of her husband after his
death February in a Russian prison colony north of the Arctic Circle. She has
accused Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, of the murder of her husband and
rallied Western officials to come up with new ways to fight Mr. Putin’s regime.”




Recent CEP Press Releases

* Extremist Content Online: Nordic Resistance Movement Telegram Channel Still
Has Advertisements Enabled Following State Department SDGT Listing
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* Counterpoint Brief: US Designates Nordic Resistance Movement As Specially
Designated Global Terrorist Organization
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* CEP Applauds U.S. Designation Of Nordic Resistance Movement As A Specially
Designated Terrorist Organization
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* Extremist Content Online: Extreme Right Telegram Channel Promote
Homophobia, Transphobia, And Violence In Response To LGBTQ Pride Month
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* Extremist Content Online: TikTok Post Glorifying Christchurch Attacker
Receives Over 35,000 Views, Account Links To Telegram Content Celebrating
Attacker
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United States



The Washington Examiner: Presentation At Army Base Labeled Anti-Abortion
Groups As Terrorist Organizations
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“U.S. Army personnel at Fort Liberty in North Carolina were given a training
seminar in which certain prominent anti-abortion groups were labeled as
“terrorist groups,” according to information leaked from within the base.
Images circulating on social media and confirmed by the Fort Liberty Garrison
Public Affairs Office for the Washington Examiner showed a presentation to
soldiers manning access control points at the base that characterized National
Right to Life and Operation Rescue as terrorist groups. The presentation slide,
photographed by an anonymous person in the briefing room on Wednesday and
published on social media by a pseudonymous account, highlights common tactics
used by anti-abortion activists as possibly dangerous, including
“demonstrations and protest,” “truth display,” “picketing,” and sidewalk
counseling.”



Afghanistan



The National: Terror Groups Operating Out Of Afghanistan Pose Significant
Threat, UN Report Says
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“A UN report has warned that despite the Taliban consolidating their grip on
Afghanistan, terrorist groups still pose a “serious threat” within the country,
the surrounding regions and beyond. The report compiled by the UN's sanctions
monitoring team said there is concern that Afghanistan will remain a source of
insecurity for Central Asia and the region. It also questioned whether the
Taliban can “address the many significant and continuing challenges”. “The
country continues to be perceived as a permissive or friendly territory by
terrorist groups, which also aspire to project threats globally,” it read.
ISIS-Khorasan Province, the regional affiliate of the ISIS terrorist group, is
the “greatest internal threat” within Afghanistan, the report said.”



Voice Of America: UN: Afghan Taliban Increase Support For Anti-Pakistan TTP
Terrorists
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“A new United Nations report says the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an
alliance of extremist groups, is “the largest terrorist group” in Afghanistan
and receives growing support from that country’s Taliban rulers to conduct
cross-border attacks in Pakistan. The U.N. sanctions monitoring team released
the assessment late Wednesday amid a dramatic surge in TTP-led terror attacks
against Pakistani security forces and civilians, killing hundreds of them in
recent weeks. “TTP continues to operate at a significant scale in Afghanistan
and to conduct terrorist operations into Pakistan from there, often utilizing
Afghans,” the report read. It noted that the globally designated terrorist
group, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, is operating in Afghanistan with an
estimated strength of 6,000-6,500 fighters.”



Pakistan



Associated Press: Pakistan Will Consider Expelling Hundreds Of Thousands More
Afghans In A Continued Clampdown
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“Pakistan will consider a plan to expel hundreds of thousands more Afghans
who have been living in the country for years, the foreign ministry said
Thursday, the latest in a monthslong government clampdown on undocumented
migrants. The plan is still in the works, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz
Zahra Baloch told reporters — and the government may ultimately reject it. It
would mark the “second phase” of the “Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan” and
it would involve persons who had been given identification documents known as
“Afghan citizen cards” to legalize their stay in Pakistan for a limited time.
“At this stage, I do not have a date to share with you,” she said at a weekly
news briefing in the capital, Islamabad, adding that an announcement about the
action would be made “at an appropriate time.” Pakistan’s crackdown on
undocumented migrants has drawn sweeping criticism from the United Nations, aid
agencies and human rights groups.”



Middle East



Reuters: Israel Bombards Gaza City In One Of The Fiercest Weeks Of War,
Killing 26
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“Israel rained bombs on Gaza City during a week that residents described as
comparable to the fiercest battle of the war, while a Palestinian Islamic Jihad
official on Thursday said a new round of peace talks ended with no agreements
yet. Israel has been bombarding the Gaza Strip for 10 months in a war that has
laid waste to the territory and killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, according
to medical authorities in Gaza. On Thursday, Israeli airstrikes killed at least
six people in Gaza City and 19 in the rest of the Gaza Strip, according to
Palestinian authorities. The civil emergency service said the bodies of at
least 30 Palestinians killed in the previous three days also laid scattered on
unreachable roads in Gaza City. The latest round of peace talks ended with no
agreements, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian
militant group Hamas of making demands that contradicted a framework deal
brokered by Washington.”



Associated Press: Head Of US Aid Agency Says Israel Has Pledged To Improve
Safety For Humanitarian Workers In Gaza
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“The head of the U.S. agency overseeing American humanitarian assistance
worldwide on Thursday said she has received Israeli pledges to allow aid
workers to move more quickly and safely throughout the war-battered Gaza Strip.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Samantha Power, administrator of the
U.S. Agency for International Development, said that Israel has also taken new
steps to increase the flow of aid through its port of Ashdod, just north of
Gaza. The move could give donors a new option for delivering aid as the U.S.
shutters its troubled maritime pier off Gaza’s coast. Nine months into the war
in Gaza, the announcement marked a small victory for international efforts to
increase aid deliveries to the territory’s desperate civilians. The Israeli
offensive launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack has plunged Gaza into a
humanitarian crisis.



Associated Press: ‘We Have Nothing': Palestinians Return To Utter Destruction
In Gaza City After Israeli Withdrawal
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“Palestinians returned to breathtaking scenes of destruction in the Gaza City
district of Shijaiyah after Israeli troops withdrew, ending a two-week
offensive there. Civil defense workers said Thursday that so far, they had
found the bodies of 60 people in the rubble. Families who fled the assault
ventured back into Shijaiyah to see the condition of their homes or salvage
whatever they could. Nearly every building was flattened to rubble for block
after block, leaving giant piles of concrete and twisted rebar. Here and there,
grey gutted concrete frames still stood a few stories high. The ever-present
buzzing sound of Israeli military drones hung in the hot summer air as people
on bicycles or horse-drawn carts made their way over dirt paths where the
streets had apparently been bulldozed away. Sharif Abu Shanab found his
family’s four-story building collapsed.”



Somalia



Bloomberg: Somali Piracy Revives Sharply After Years Of Quiet
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“Somali piracy — the scourge of merchant shipping more than a decade ago —
has had a resurgence this year, the industry’s main observer of the crime said.
There were eight acts of piracy and hijackings in the first half of this year
near the east African country, the International Maritime Bureau, a Kuala
Lumpur- and London-based monitoring organization, said in a report. Acts of
piracy off Somalia first seriously blighted the industry in 2008 and peaked
three years later. The use of armed guards, improved on-board practices, and an
increased naval presence all helped to quell the attacks. The IMB report didn’t
say why there’s been a revival this year. However, the incidents resumed in
December, not long after Houthi militants began blowing up commercial vessels
nearby. The rebels’ campaign drew the attention of naval protection forces
trying to protect the ships."



Africa



Voice Of America: Inmates Escape Niger Prison That Holds Militants
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“Niger's interior ministry said it had ordered search units to be on alert
after inmates escaped Thursday from the high-security Koutoukale prison, whose
inmates include Islamist militants. The ministry statement did not say how many
prisoners had escaped Koutoukale, which lies 50 kilometers northwest of the
capital, Niamey, or how they had done so. In 2016 and 2019, attempted jail
breaks at the facility were repelled. The prison's inmates include detainees
from the West African country's conflict with armed groups linked to al-Qaida
and Islamic State and suspected Boko Haram insurgents. Local authorities
imposed an overnight curfew in the urban commune of Tillaberi, which is in the
same region as the prison, but did not give further details. Niger and its
neighbors in the central Sahel region are on the front lines of the battle to
contain a jihadist threat that has steadily grown since 2012, when
al-Qaida-linked fighters first seized parts of Mali.”



Germany



The Guardian: Germany’s AfD And Extremist Allies Set Up Second EU Parliament
Far-Right Group
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“Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland has joined forces with extremist
parties from France and central and eastern Europe to create a second far-right
group in the European parliament. The Europe of Sovereign Nations group will be
the smallest in the European parliament, with only 25 MEPs from eight
countries, just above the threshold to form a group. It could prove more
extreme than Patriots for Europe, the larger far-right group formed on Monday
that unites Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz MEPs and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. The
new group is dominated by the AfD with 14 MEPs, with members from Poland’s
Confederation party, Bulgaria’s pro-Kremlin Revival party and the Czech Freedom
and Direct Democracy party , which once urged voters to walk pigs near mosques
and not eat kebabs. It includes France’s Reconqûete, the party founded by the
TV pundit Éric Zemmour, who has convictions for inciting racial hatred."



Russia



Reuters: Russia's FSB Says It Foiled Terror Attack On Church In North Caucasus
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“Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday that it had foiled
what it called an attempted terrorist attack on an Orthodox Christian church in
the south of the country, state news agency TASS reported. According to TASS,
the FSB said a citizen of an unnamed Central Asian country had plotted the
attack in Maykop, the capital of the Adygea region in the North Caucasus. It
quoted the FSB as saying: "The terrorist was preparing to attack a religious
institution (Orthodox church) in the city of Maykop and murder its clergy and
guards, then set fire to the building." Islamist violence has flared up again
in recent months in the North Caucasus, which in the 1990s and 2000s was riven
by wars and insurgencies emanating from Chechnya. Last month, 22 people were
killed in simultaneous attacks on churches, synagogues and police checkpoints
in two cities. In March, an attack claimed by Islamic State killed 145 people
at a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow.”



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