Why is Israel concocting ties between Hamas and ISIS?

By dreaming up an association between Hamas and
Islamic State, Netanyahu hopes Israel will have it easy the next time it
goes to war against Gaza.

The head of Israel’s military government in the territories,
Maj.-Gen. Yoav “Polly” Mordechai, spearheaded the latest round of
Israel’s fantastical, anti-intellectual conflation between Hamas and
ISIS this past week. Taking advantage of the horrendous attacks by an ISIS affiliate in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Mordechai told Al Jazeera Arabic
that Hamas is aiding the world’s most terrifying terrorist
organization—by bringing its wounded fighters into Gaza for medical
treatment.

The attempt to make a connection between the two groups is nothing
new. In fact, facts be damned, Israel—and the Netanyahu government in
particular—has a rich history of conflating Hamas with whichever
evildoers it deems most expedient at the time. Making the ISIS,
connection, as Larry Derfner reported in great depth last year, has been Netanyahu’s primary strategy for de-legitimizing Hamas since last summer’s war in Gaza.

Maj.-Gen. Mordechai’s accusations are expedient for many reasons.
Firstly, Hamas’s relationship with the Egyptian government has gone from
bad to worse since the overthrow of former president Muhammad Morsi. In
recent weeks, however, a détente of sorts has begun to take shape, most
recently evidenced when Cairo reversed an earlier decision
that had declared Hamas a terrorist organization. It is no secret that
the current Israeli government believes it is in its interest to ensure
that Egypt remains adversarial toward Hamas, and what better way to
advance that goal than to tie the latter to ISIS.

Secondly, Netanyahu hopes that the more he can concoct an association
between Hamas and ISIS, against which there is an international
consensus that any force is justified, then Israel will have an easier
time the next time it goes to war against Gaza. Never mind the absurdity
of actually comparing the ideology, goals, tactics and identity of the
two groups. The only thing more absurd would be to compare ISIS to Iran. In addition to the fact that ISIS is a fanatical Sunni group and the Iranian regime is Shia, Ishaan Tharoor wrote in The Washington Post
earlier this year, “Iran’s theocratic rulers are hardly champions of
religious pluralism and tolerance, but they are not crazed
fundamentalist jihadists, bent on smashing idols and butchering
religious minorities.”

ISIS conducting a mass execution in the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria.