Is ISIS Making a Comeback?

""Actually," says Bruce Hoffman, "it never went away." Hoffman is a professor at Georgetown University and senior fellow in counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations. "We defeated the caliphate," he told me on Tuesday, referring to the stretch of land-one-third of Syria and two-fifths of Iraq-that ISIS ruled from 2014-19, until a coalition of 90 nations crushed it militarily. But ISIS itself "reverted to its roots and has emerged as a highly capable international terrorist organization" that "still poses a threat to the security of Western countries.""

"Australia is a different case; ISIS has never mounted a political or military challenge to the existing order. But antisemitic incidents have soared in the two years since Hamas' assault on Israel; the pace of incidents since then is five times as high as in the decade before the war in Gaza got underway. Some of these incidents have been theatrical (anti-Israel graffiti), but some have been deadly-for instance last year's burning of a synagogue in Melbourne, an event that, like this week's mass shooting on Bondi Beach, took place around the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah."

"About 1,000 U.S. troops are still based in Syria, mainly to fight the group's surviving remnants. So it shouldn't be too surprising that ISIS militiamen killed two of them, as well as an American translator, in an ambush over the weekend."

ISIS lost its territorial caliphate—one-third of Syria and two-fifths of Iraq—after a coalition of 90 nations crushed it militarily by 2019. The organization reverted to insurgent and terrorist methods and emerged as a capable international terrorist network that still threatens Western security. About 1,000 U.S. troops remain in Syria to counter surviving ISIS remnants; an ambush killed two U.S. troops and an American translator. In Australia, ISIS never held territorial control, but antisemitic incidents have surged since Hamas' assault on Israel, with some incidents escalating to deadly attacks, including a mass shooting on Bondi Beach.

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