"Hamas has ability to rebuild if circumstances allow, expert Hans-Jakob Schindler tells DW
Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, has told DW that the ceasefire deal is "a victory" for the hostages and Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

However, Schindler said the Hamas command and control structure, and its tunnel network, had been severely degraded. "

“The house at 88 Legionow Street is imposing and ugly on the outside, but functional and spacious within. With temperatures below freezing and snow thick on the ground, visitors really notice the blast of warm air coming from the radiators when they walk through the door. It is what Nazi mass murderer Rudolf Höss would have felt after a day of 'work' just a few hundred feet away at the most notorious factory of death in history… The property is set to be turned into a weapon for good after being bought by the US-based Counter Extremism Project, who will transform it into a key pillar of their bid to combat radicalisation and violence.”

"Even so, organizations like IS and al-Qaida are not yet at a crisis level of recruiting American soldiers to its cause.

“In a few cases, they have attracted individuals serving in the armed forces,” said Joshua Fisher Birch, a terrorism analyst at the New York-based Counter Extremism Project.

“The perpetrator of the 2009 Fort Hood Shooting, where a US army psychiatrist killed 13 people and wounded 32 others, had communicated with al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki.”

Fisher-Birch also pointed out another example from 2020, when Ethan Melzer, a US soldier and follower of the extremist and satanic group the Order of Nine Angles, passed sensitive information about his unit’s troop movements to an undercover FBI agent he believed to be a member of al-Qaida. Melzer wanted to facilitate an ambush on the unit."

“A hateful white supremacist network with a ‘fight club’ ethos is spreading across the US and around the world, new research shows. Neo-Nazi Active Clubs are said to be one of the fastest-growing extreme-right groups in America and are also present in the UK and Europe. The branches outwardly promote mixed martial arts (MMA) training and ‘brotherhood’ while preparing members for a race war against their perceived enemies, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)… The general ethos for members worldwide is to look and act like ‘regular guys’ and not talk about ‘politics, Jews or history’, according to research by the Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based policy organisation.”

“The American non-governmental organization Counter Extremism Project purchased the house of the commandant of the German Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, Rudolf Höss, in the summer and will open it to visitors on January 27, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, the New York Times reported. Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Director Piotr Cywiński did not rule out cooperation with the new institution. The film "Zone of Interest," which tells the story of the Höss family, has led to strangers entering the property in Oświęcim, interested in the history of the house. This has prompted its resident, Grażyna Jurczak, to sell it. The sale of the house and the adjacent post-war building was finalized in October. The Counter Extremism Project and Ms. Jurczak have not disclosed the amount of the transaction, but - as the "NYT" wrote on Wednesday - it is about more than $120,000.”

“Mr. Schindler, the hostage deal has barely been announced and there is already a dispute between Hamas and Israel. What else could cause the agreement to fail? “Hamas wants to decide alone who will be released from Israeli prisons in return for the release of the hostages. Israel cannot agree to that.” What speaks against it?“ No government would allow itself to be dictated to as to which prisoners it would release and which it would not. If there is no agreement on this issue, an agreement could still fail. But I do not expect that to happen. The outcome of the negotiations is basically a given…” Hans-Jakob Schindler is Senior Director of the international Counter Extremism Project and heads its office in Berlin.”

"After the attack, terrorism expert Hans-Jakob Schindler from the Counter Extremism Project also called platform operators to account for this editorial team. He sharply criticized X because, given the abundance of questionable content posted by Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, hardly anyone on the platform seemed to intervene . Individual posts were reported and deleted by users, but nothing more happened. "Unfortunately, social media is full of hate and violent fantasies and the situation is constantly getting worse. X in particular has reduced its content moderation in recent months, not improved it," said Schindler.”

“The villa of the former commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, Rudolf Höss, has been purchased by the American non-governmental organization Counter Extremism Project and will be open to visitors in a few days. The amount for which the building was purchased from private owners is not known. In an interview with the New York Times, a lawyer for the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) only stated that it was "significantly greater" than the market value of the house, which was estimated at about $120,000, or about PLN 500,000. The building has been undergoing renovation in recent weeks, as the new owners wanted to restore the interiors as much as possible to the condition they had during World War II , when the Höss family lived there from 1941 to 1944. In addition, the interiors were furnished with period items, including German newspapers and a coffee mug with the SS emblem.”

"Last summer, Ms. Jurczak agreed to sell her stake in the home to the Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based group that wants to open the house to visitors. She moved out in August, and in October the New York group completed its acquisition of the home and an adjacent house built after the war...

Mark Wallace, a lawyer and former U.S. diplomat who is the chief executive of the Counter Extremism Project, also declined to give the price, saying only that once other family members were paid for their stakes in the property, the total price was “significantly more” than what Ms. Jurczak had indicated. He also said his organization “wanted to do right” by Ms. Jurczak’s family but “did not want to pay a big premium for a former Nazi property, even if we could.""

"A three-story house overlooking an Auschwitz gas chamber, formerly owned by the camp's commander, Rudolf Hoss, has been purchased by the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) with the aim of opening it up to visitors, the New York Times revealed on Wednesday."