ISIS, or as it is known in the Middle East: Daesh, is an Islamic revival movement that has swept across large swatches of Syria and Iraq, two failed states that did not and do not assert control over much of their official territory. They preach and practice a very crude, untempered religion, that asserts Islam's basic principles and lives directly by them, even when they jar modern sensibilities.
In recent months their progress has been stopped and important locations have been taken away from their control. Nonetheless they are still a powerful force in the Middle East of today.
They preach and practice the worst fates for those they regard as kafir, heretics. These include worldwide Christianity as well as large numbers of Moslems, including the Shiite Moslems who control Iran. They are against idol worship and they accordingly destroy all idols, even those thousands of years old, no longer worshipped by anyone and regarded as cultural treasures by the West.
Their attitudes towards Jews and Judaism are not well known. Most of the West is more concerned with their intolerance of Christianity, which is therefore better known. However analysts have talked with their ideological leaders, and have pieced together their approach to Jews and Judaism. It follows pure Islamic principles, but the result is not so bad for the Jews.
According to the guiding principles of the cruelest, most sadistic movment in the world, there is no truth to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious anti-Semitic document disseminated in the past century which claimed that Jews were ruling the world. ISIS maintains that whoever believes this is an idiot and that Jews do not rule the world as this forgery claims they do.
ISIS also believes that Jews are not to be considered as worse heretics than other heretics, including Shiite Moslems. They also believe that the Hizbollah Shiites are worse than Jews who live in Israel, and they feel it is more important to fight the former than the latter. In fact, their main overall thrust is war against Arab dictatorships and not against Israel per se.
ISIS spokesmen have in the past said, "The State of Israel is a religious problem but it does not constitute an immediate target."
They also stated that from their religious viewpoint, it is improper to focus on a war only against Israel. This is why they say that the terrorist organizations in the area like Hamas and Hizbollah are mistaken in their focus on fighting only the Jewish State.
ISIS also believes that the Palestinian problem is not the central Moslem issue and should not be given top priority today, as many countries are doing.
All this has concrete repercussions in the fighting going on in the southern Golan Heights. Groups affiliated with ISIS operate there against the rule of Assad through the members of the Hallali Yarmoch division which serves as an arm of ISIS in Syria. These fighters could operate, based on their location, against Israe. But instead they only target other rebel groups and the Assed government and army. Their fire is aimed internally eastward to Syria and not westward in the direction of the Golan.
