This doesn’t mean that this group actually did set the fires in Israel, but it wants the world to believe it did. After all, those who have made this claim have a responsibility before their god to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (Qur’an 8:60).

“Israel fires: Al-Qaeda linked Palestinian militant group ‘claims responsibility’ for devastating Haifa blaze,” by Lizzie Dearden, Independent, November 25, 2016:

An al-Qaeda linked militant group has claimed responsibility for starting a devastating fire in the Israeli city of Haifa that forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.

Ma’sadat al-Mujahideen, a Palestinian Salafist group, has claimed to be behind several previous blazes in Israel, including the Mount Carmel forest fire that killed more than 40 people near Haifa in 2010.

There is no proof of the group’s involvement in the blaze, or others they claimed near Jerusalem in 2011 and in the American state of Nevada in the following year.

A previous statement from Ma’sadat al-Mujahideen demanded that Jewish people “return from whence they came since they have no place among us”, threatening to continue arson attacks in Israel and among the country’s allies.

Terrorism monitors at the Jamestown Foundation said the group’s claims were “questionable” but that it was fixated on the use of fire as a weapon of jihad.

Ma’sadat al-Mujahideen has no known links to Hamas and has positioned itself in opposition to the Islamist group, criticising it for failing to fully implement Sharia law in Gaza, and for alleged “apostasy”.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, has already joined politicians in categorising the devastating fires as an act of terrorism.

“Those who try to burn the state of Israel will be punished to the fullest extent,” he said during a visit to an air base where he met pilots putting out the fires. …