Is ISIL/ISIS getting so desperate for Publicity that they now killing their own?

We could all see this day coming, at least those who were not so enamored with ISIL/ISIS.  We all knew that the bombings were going to eventually have the intended affect even if our own media would not admit or report it.  We knew that they day would come when Muslims would finally get tired of being associated with ISIL/ISIS and their way of damaging the religion.  We knew that eventually, those who truly have the power to rid this planet of ISIL/ISIS would finally step up and do so; all we needed to do is show and demonstrate a little faith.  We knew this and I think this article by Jacob Siegel titled “The Real Target of ISIS’s Child-Soldier Execution Video” proves it.

The article reports “The latest ISIS shock tactic—using a young boy to shoot at point-blank range a ‘spy’ for Israel—is aimed at stifling internal dissent amid reported infighting and losses in Iraq.  In ISIS’s ongoing war in Iraq and Syria, the group regularly publicizes its killing of civilians. And as part of its messaging campaign, its highly produced videos have been timed for deliberate effect: to deliver threats, sway public opinion, or attract new recruits.  The timing of ISIS’s latest video, which appears to show a child soldier executing an Arab Israeli man accused of being a spy is “aimed at emphasizing the rigid security apparatus of the Islamic State against spying and potential dissent,” said ISIS analyst Aymenn al Tamimi”.  While this is interesting the following paragraphs are what I would like to direct your attention to as the proof.

“If that is indeed the message ISIS is trying to deliver with the 13-minute clip released Tuesday, it is likely in response to signs of infighting that have reached the media. Last month, The Daily Beast’s Jamie Dettmer reported on fracturing within the group. This week The Washington Post’s Liz Sly had her own account of internal dissension among ISIS members.  At the same time, ISIS is facing a serious challenge to its territorial control. In Iraq the government has launched its largest military operation to date to retake cities that ISIS has held for months. It’s too early to say what the final outcome of that campaign will be, but by most accounts ISIS has already suffered significant setbacks”.  So now the splintered group under separate but not equal command is facing dwindling ranks and stalled recruiting but even this is not the real news.

The real news is what I found at the end of this article which may present my point clearer.  The article states that “Tuesday’s video shows a prisoner identified as Said Ismail Musallam, a 19-year-old Arab Israeli from East Jerusalem, confessing to spying for Israel before a child soldier shoots him at point-blank range.  The victim, Musallam, appeared in the February issue of ISIS’s magazine, Dabiq. A purported interview in the magazine has him admitting to being a spy for Israel’s covert intelligence agency, the Mossad.  In his forced confession, Musallam blames his father and brother for drawing him into his work for Israel. “I tell my father and my son: Repent to God. I say to the spies who spy on Islamic State: You will not be successful, they will expose you,” Musallam says in Arabic. After learning of his brother’s death Tuesday, Ahamd Musallam told the Israeli news site Ynet, “My brother was a little boy who did not care for religion or politics. [ISIS] used him and tricked him.”  Both Haaretz and Agence France-Presse have reported that family members said Musallam went to Syria to join ISIS.  Ynet cites “an Israeli security official” saying that Musallam “went to Syria to fight for Islamic State in October last year.”

ISIL/ISIS well of kidnapped victims, sold back to their countries have just ran dry and the money that secretly flowed to them through other means are beginning to as well.  They must remain relevant though and is now looking for new ways to remain so.  Are they so desperate now that they are willing to take those who left their homes and families to fight with them and place them under their guns, knives and cameras to continue to show a strength that they may have had once but do not have now?