CNN anchor Jake Tapper shared a clip on X on Wednesday showing Hamas beheading Israelis and engaging in other ISIS-like tactics.
Tapper shared a clip from his show The Lead, where Hamas’s tactics were shown to mirror ISIS’s tactics.
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 17, 2024
The clip showed still images from a security camera in Kibbutz Nir Oz, where a Hamas terrorist can be seen wielding a knife and “sawing” at the necks of the victims of the attack.
“Evidence of beheadings, cementing an Israeli view that Hamas is now akin to jihadi groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS,” says Matthew Chance reporting for CNN.
Chance goes on to describe the similarities between Hamas’s tactics and those of ISIS saying “[ISIS] which also used beheadings, torture, and sexual violence against their captives.”
“While the two groups use similar brutal tactics, their goals remain different.”
Hamas-ISIS: key similarities and differences
Peter Neumann, Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, tells CNN that although Hamas and ISIS are both Islamist groups there are key differences.
He highlights that Hamas’s principal enemy is Israel, while ISIS wishes to establish a global transnational caliphate and thus considers every country in the world its enemy.
Another difference is that Hamas doesn’t seek out foreign fighters, instead focusing on recruiting Palestinians.
Chance then asks, “Is Hamas becoming more like ISIS?”
Neumann answers, “Ideologically, it is not becoming more like ISIS, but tactically and strategically, it is.”
He says that Hamas is considering widening its area of operations including committing acts of terror abroad, Chance then notes that Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands all just recently arrested several people suspected of being members of Hamas cells in Europe.
Neumann says that groups such as ISIS are now drawing on Israel’s response to the attacks to recruit people for terrorism in the West.
Chance says that although previously Western governments had been resistant to treating Hamas as they had treated ISIS, there is a shift currently underway.
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