The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is taking credit for the current round of Palestinian anti-Israel terror, Marc Shulman wrote an analysis for Newsweek on Monday. Citing Israeli sources calling the violence an “ISIS uprising,” Shulman observed:

[ISIS] issued five videos on this newest round of the conflict, trying to take responsibility for it. The videos called on Palestinians to continue the attacks as the first step in liberating Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque from the Jews. Some Israeli observers are already calling this latest barrage of violence “the ISIS uprising,” not because the attacks are under its direction but because the spirit of ISIS has now seeped into the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The fear in Israel is that since the attacks have not been organized from above (i.e., by any organization), it will be very difficult to bring them to an end. Moreover, ISIS has been very successful in convincing young people that jihad is their destiny, and if the group has an increasing impact on Palestinian youth, the situation may get much worse before it gets better. Not to be outdone, Hamas has ordered its cells in the West Bank to begin suicide bombings, it was reported Monday.

The man who committed a terrorist attack in Beer Sheba on Sunday said that he was a strong believer in ISIS. In an analysis published by the Gatestone Institute on the day of the attack, Middle East scholar Bassam Tawil wrote:

This new “intifada” that some Palestinians are now waging against Israel should be seen in the context of the wider jihad that is being waged by the Islamic State, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda against the “infidels, Zionists, apostates, Crusaders” and against non-extremist Muslims.

The tactics employed by Palestinian youths over the past two weeks show that they are doing their utmost to copy the crimes and atrocities committed by the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, Libya and other Arab countries.

Although the Islamic State is not physically present in the West Bank or Jerusalem (largely thanks to the efforts of the Israel Defense Forces and other Israeli security agencies), there is no denying that its spirit and ideology are hovering over the heads of many of our young men and women.

The current wave of stabbings of Jews in Israel and the West Bank is an attempt to imitate Islamic State terrorists who have been using knives to behead many Muslims and non-Muslims during the past two years.

This past July, an ISIS affiliate operating in the Gaza Strip claimed responsibility for two rockets that struck southern Israel.

In August of 2014, reports surfaced that dozens of Palestinian fighters were joining the ranks of ISIS. Sympathizers of the Islamist group have previously displayed its distinctive black flag on the Temple Mount. In June of 2014, ISIS released a video warning, “God will break all barriers..Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon…all of the them until we reach Jerusalem.” That same month, ISIS flags were carried by mourners during the funeral of a Hamas operatives.

[Photo: PBS NewsHour / YouTube]