Over the past five weeks, Israel’s role in facilitating the trafficking of illicit Islamic State crude has been exposed for the world to see.
To be sure, those who have followed Islamic State’s meteoric rise are well aware of the fact that Israel has played a rather decisive role in the group’s recruiting efforts by looking the other way as a steady stream of foreign fighters – emboldened by the ISIS propaganda machine – have streamed into Syria.
Tel Aviv, like Riyadh and Doha, is keen on seeing the Assad government fall and has been instrumental in the effort (supported by the West) to funnel money and weapons to the various Sunni extremist groups fighting for control of the country.
As Nafeez Ahmed put it in a recent piece posted first on Medium, “NATO is harbouring the Islamic State and France’s brave new war on ISIS is a sick joke…