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

“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

“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 
• Counterpoint Brief: US Designates Nordic Resistance Movement As Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organization
• CEP Applauds U.S. Designation Of Nordic Resistance Movement As A Specially Designated Terrorist Organization
• Extremist Content Online: Extreme Right Telegram Channel Promote Homophobia, Transphobia, And Violence In Response To LGBTQ Pride Month 
• Extremist Content Online: TikTok Post Glorifying Christchurch Attacker Receives Over 35,000 Views, Account Links To Telegram Content Celebrating Attacker

United States

The Washington Examiner: Presentation At Army Base Labeled Anti-Abortion Groups As Terrorist Organizations

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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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