“Steven Sotloff, the kidnapped journalist beheaded by Islamic State, was a dual Israeli-US citizen who had managed to hide his second nationality from his militant Islamist captors even while reportedly managing to fast during the Yom Kippur religious festival………..”

Clearly ISIS did not know of his dual US-Israeli citizenship (also confirmed in the Israeli daily Haaretz). They would have publicized it if they had known and they would have trumpeted the capture of a ‘Mossad agent’. What is surprising is that they apparently did not know of his Jewish faith. Salafi terrorists would not let that pass without at least acknowledging it (or worse). Right now it is a toss-up which makes a better target for the knife from the ISIS viewpoint: a Jew or a Shi’a or a Yazidi. Any of these identities could earn its owner a killing, possibly a beheading. Daniel Pearl was slaughtered by Al-Qaeda in Pakistan at least partly because he did not hide his Jewish identity.

Clearly this first Caliph of the new Hollywood Caliphate of Mosul needs to build up his secret services quickly. He has got enough former Baathist henchmen allied to him to start.

If this Guardian report is correct in claiming that Sotloff in captivity managed to observe Jewish occasions like Yum Kippur, then it was a sort of victory over his killers. You can also bet that they will now be researching the ethnic and religious background of every one of their captives. Such information is anyway important to the tribal and sectarian-minded Wahhabis of ISIS, even if they hail from London and Marseille and Chechnya.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum