The massacre of Jewish worshippers on Saturday by an avowed anti-Semite in Pittsburgh reveals a clear, straight line between Trump’s sustained dog-whistles – against Jews, black people, Muslims, immigrants and members of the LGBTQ community – to the violence carried out by right-wing white nationalists.

Robert Bowers, apprehended after a shooting spree that killed 11 people, explained he wanted “all Jews to die” and described immigrants and asylum-seekers as “invaders” of the United States. Instead of condemning far-right nationalism, Trump reinforced this hysteria, tweeting on Monday that a caravan of asylum-seekers coming from Honduras should be considered as an “invasion” and that the US military “would be waiting” for them. Last week, Trump proudly embraced the “nationalist” term.  

Bowers had consumed and regurgitated the lethal rhetoric of far-right extremists who want to rid the US of non-white, non-Christian people, and of a government which constantly incites hatred and vilification of all marginalized groups.

Three days earlier, a white supremacist in Kentucky set out to kill black people. He eventually murdered Maurice Stallard, 69, and Vickie Lee Jones, 67, in a grocery store.

There is no question that these killers were motivated by the white nationalist extremism the Trump administrations has adopted and encouraged.

After Saturday’s synagogue massacre, curiously, Israeli leaders offered their condolences but refused to address Trump’s responsibility for fuelling such anti-Semitic violence.

Instead, they scrambled to provide cover for the US president while Israel advocates attempted to blame the rise in anti-Semitism on left-wing, anti-racist and anti-fascist activists who campaign for Palestinian rights.

Why would they do this, especially when American Jewish support for Trump is overwhelmingly low, and while Israel claims to be the protector of all Jewish people? To whom – or to what – were they speaking?

The unwillingness by Israeli leaders to confront such modern-day Nazism and the political forces pushing state-sponsored bigotry and hatred exposes that state’s unsettling alliance with Trump and his agenda.

For Israel, Trump has been the ideal partner in its efforts to crush Palestinian resistance and deny rights to African asylum-seekers while entrenching apartheid and systematic, unchecked violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Trump has, in turn, looked to Israel to model his policies of intensified militarisation of the US-Mexico border, his authoritarian threats against asylum-seekers and immigrants, and his open embrace of nationalist figures and right-wing legislators.

Notorious white supremacist Richard Spencer, speaking about his dream to make the US a European ethno-nationalist state, for example, has said he sees Israel as the ideal model.

Spencer has even dubbed his project for an Aryan state “white Zionism.”

Brazil’s president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right extremist who has promised to treat social movements as terrorist organisations and wage a war on poor and indigenous communities, has also embraced Israel and says he will – like Trump – move his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Israeli flags were prominently waved during rallies celebrating Bolsonaro’s win on Sunday, a chilling symbol of Israel’s popularity in fascist political movements.

But there is another reason Israel is embracing today’s white nationalists.

Right-wing extremists openly yearn to push Jewish people out of the US and Europe – a fantasy shared by Israel’s top leadership. The appeal to Jews to leave their homes and settle in Israel – on Palestinian land – is a main tenet of Zionism, Israel’s state ideology.

But only a tiny number of ideologically motivated Jews are prepared to leave the safety, prosperity and comfort they enjoy in their home countries in North America and Europe for a hard life in Israel. Meanwhile, many Israeli Jews, especially the young and most educated, are leaving – a drain Israel is hard pressed to stop.

So unable to attract Jews from abroad, Israeli leaders must convince Jewish people that they are unsafe and unwanted everywhere – everywhere except for Israel. Just like Trump, Israel’s main weapon is fear.

Israeli politicians like opposition leader Avy Gabbay – who on Sunday urged American Jews, in grief and traumatised by the Pittsburgh massacre, to emigrate to Israel – seek to deliberately weaken the safety and diversity of communities in which Jewish people around the world are rooted.

Israel’s education minister Naftali Bennett, an extreme right-wing supporter of Israel’s settler population who has bragged about killing Arabs, used the massacre of Jewish worshippers to dehumanise Palestinians.

The efforts of Bennett and Gabbay did nothing to assuage the Jewish community’s fears, but they did exploit anti-Semitism for Israel’s gain – and they gave Trump yet another tacit endorsement of his policies.

Instead of fighting to make the world a safer place for Jews – for everyone – wherever they live, wherever they make their home, Israel’s leaders and their supporters align openly with Trump’s agenda even when it means siding with white nationalist movements who espouse deep anti-Semitism.

It’s a horrifying and stark reality and one that Israeli leaders can only try to cover up by falsely deflecting the blame for the lethal anti-Semitism that visited the Tree of Life synagogue onto anti-racist activists and even left-wing Jewish groups.

Israel and its lobby have spent millions of dollars in recent years on campaigns to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, especially on US college campuses. They are trying to suppress the nonviolent, anti-racist boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights by smearing it as anti-Semitic, while giving actual cover to anti-Semitism across the US.

Israel’s hardline advocates show deep contempt for American Jews who stand with the marginalised and oppressed, who reject Israel’s unmitigated violence against Palestinians, who remain grounded in our communities fighting against systemic racism and injustice propagated by Trump and his authoritarian allies in Israel.

When Trump announced he would be visiting Pittsburgh, members of the progressive Jewish community there immediately stated that he was not welcome until he denounces white nationalism that targets Jews, migrant families, people of colour, Muslims, people with disabilities and LGBTQ people. He went anyway.

Jewish communities in the US are drawing a line: as we refuse to accept Trump’s right-wing nationalism that fomented the massacre in Pittsburgh, we also refuse to advocate for Israel as it embodies and sharpens that nationalist fantasy.

Instead, we fight for a broad-based, inclusive and just future for us all.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. 

Al Qaim, Iraq – The vast Anbar desert stretches across almost a third of Iraq, 138,000 square-kilometres of no man’s land to the country’s west.

Here, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS) sleeper cells use the remote area’s mountain ranges, valleys and caves to plan and launch their attacks from.

The Iraqi military and US-led coalition are hesitant to give exact numbers but estimate that a few hundred fighters clustered in groups as small as two are all that remains of the group.

In remote parts, ISIL fighters have stopped their aggressive tactics of killing and abducting locals. Instead, a few fighters will show up from time to time to seek food and supplies.

The challenge

This is not an easy area for the authorities to search and monitor. The rugged terrain makes manning checkpoints and surveillance posts extremely challenging, as does the vastness of the area; the Iraq- Syria border alone stretches about 612 kilometres.

Iraqi forces say they are doing all they can to prevent these areas from becoming safe havens for ISIL.

There are plans to invest over $3m in building a border fence equipped with advanced surveillance and watchtowers. 

The US-led coalition is supporting these efforts, pushing to take advantage of ISIL’s shift from an organised force to an unpredictable and weakened insurgency.

US Colonel Sean Ryan, spokesperson for Combined Joint Task Force, told Al Jazeera: “There are pockets of ISIS we knew and we saw where some of them escaped to. The ironic thing is that they planned for their failure four years ago; Anbar was their final destination if this caliphate did not work out, which it didn’t.”

But some Iraqis in remote parts are not feeling as confident, saying that while security forces may control the day, the night still belongs to ISIL.

Iraq’s security forces say that’s changing. Mohammed al-Askari, a senior adviser in Iraq’s defence ministry, told Al Jazeera: “To some extent, I would agree that sometimes ISIL has the night and security forces have the day. But such things are in the past; it used to happen during ISIL reign when it controlled Mosul, Ramadi, Fallujah and Al-Qaim.”

The spokesperson for the Iraqi Combined Operations Command, Brigadier General Yahya Rasoul, is adamant that after the Iraqi army’s victory, ISIL’s presence on the ground has been routed.

“Iraqi forces are continuing military operations to hunt down ISIL militants south of Kirkuk, the Hawijah mountain ranges, Hamrin basin, several areas in Diyalah and the desert areas in Salahuddin and Anbar.

“Near the Iraq-Syria border, these divisions are conducting search ops, raids and arrests backed by intelligence.”

Building trust

People in remote parts of Salahuddin, Anbar and Nineveh – predominantly Sunni areas – have told Al Jazeera that they are afraid to identify themselves because they fear reprisals, both from returning ISIL fighters and from security forces for speaking out about their dissatisfaction.

But Iraqi forces say that too is changing as their efforts to build confidence and gain the trust of the people take root, adding that Iraqis are no longer demanding that security forces leave their neighbourhoods as they used to in the past.

Many of these predominantly Sunni areas are under the control of Iran-backed Shia militias – also known as the Hashd or popular mobilisation units – which were the spearhead in defeating ISIL but have also been accused of human rights violations, arbitrary arrests, torture, and killings. Although they have been brought under the control of the prime minister’s office, its widely believed that they draw their strength and orders from across the border.

Major General Tahseen al-Khafaji, spokesperson for Iraq’s defence ministry, says: “It is very important for people in these remote areas to become better educated to gain awareness and a different culture. Those same people have witnessed ISIL’s havoc and destruction – they lived under ISIL rule in the past three years and witnessed atrocities.

“That is why it is key to have the security apparatuses strengthen their relationship with the people who will, in turn, compare the dark times under ISIL and the current situation that has better security and stability.

“We admit that the security sometimes has flaws… but we are at the same time monitoring as the Ministry of Defence and as an intelligence and military establishment to catch anyone who is trying to do bad things and degrade the relationship between us and the people. Spreading awareness is key, but the most important thing is building trust.”

Pockets of ISIL fighters have escaped to Anbar where fighters are in hiding, the Iraqi army says [Osama Bin Javaid/Al Jazeera]

Boots on the ground

The US-led coalition against ISIL is one of the largest in terms of number of countries united to fight a single enemy. While many Iraqis haven’t forgotten the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, there are many others who are thankful for the US’s help in the fight against ISIL.

These days the coalition’s mission in Iraq is to advise, assist and train. But because of the nature and size of the terrain in Anbar, al-Khafaji says air cover is crucial.

“All we need from the coalition is training, arming and enhancing our air force – we have advanced air force capacity and fighter jets but we need more air force efforts and training. We need at least 4-5 years to establish a strong and independent air force unit. That is why we crucially need air force support.”

Boots on the ground, however, remain a touchy subject: “We do not need foreign ground troops, we have all the troops we need in order to track down the remnants of ISIL, all we need is proper training. We have a plan that was initiated in 2017 when the coalition and NATO took on the responsibility to train our forces,” al-Khafaji says.

“2018 is a year of building and training. In 2019, our own trainers [trained by] by the coalition will begin supervising our troops. By 2020, the Iraqi Ministry of Defence will take care of training our forces and the role of the coalition will become supervisory. By 2021, Iraq’s military establishment will be divided into divisions including north, central and south. All this will be done in cooperation with the coalition,” he added.

Stopping the resurgence

ISIL has been carrying out up to five attacks every month and continues to kill and maim Iraqi soldiers and militia fighters.

The threat of ISIL regrouping in the desert and making a comeback is still a reality because of the difficulty in tracing and identifying their desert hideouts.

Iraqi forces dismiss the criticism that they and their militia counterparts are untrained to hold the peace, that they lack local knowledge or that the trust gap with local communities is a hindrance against ISIL.

Al-Askari says: “ISIL, since its rise and until its eventual fall, in Iraq fully depends on misinformation, brainwashing and falsifying ideologies. ISIL is not giving up easily, it is a relentless enemy and we know that.

“That is why ISIL is in the phase of trying to rebuild its capacity, to try to resurface with a new method and new leaders. We have accurate info that ISIL – despite its efforts to resurface – is still collapsing. We are tracking down how money is reaching ISIL through money laundering.”