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Al-Qaeda avoiding Israel - for now
Israeli intelligence officials believe that al Qaeda has largely spared the Jewish state from terrorist attacks as part of a global plan to first destroy the United States and establish an Islamic empire before targeting Israel.
| I think it's more a division of labor thing. Hamas and IJ target Israel, Qaeda gets everybody else... |
This consensus is based on constant and intensive monitoring of al Qaedaâs operations, and statements and analysis of its leadershipâs beliefs, Israeli intelligence officials said.
| When they tried to muscle in last year, Yasser told them to butt out... |
Osama bin Laden and his followers have been under scrutiny here since the late 1990s â at least two years before September 11. Al Qaedaâs presence in the Palestinian territories today is limited to rank-and-file operatives, usually Palestinians or Jordanians, who are closely monitored by Israeli intelligence.
| Just across the northern border, though, there's Ein el-Hellhole, chock full of every kind of Islamist loon that can be imagined... |
The operatives maintain close links with Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, two groups responsible for most of the suicide bombings targeting the Jewish state.
| So who needs Ansar al-Islam? |
The Israelis believe the United States is al Qaedaâs primary objective and that Israel will be dealt with in the final stage of its global plan.
| If the AQ global plan works, Israel will be long gone... |
According to Jonathan D. Halevi, a reserve lieutenant colonel in Israelâs armed forces and a foreign ministry adviser, al Qaeda is waging jihad, or holy war, against the United States as "retaliation" for what it considers "the terrorist war waged by the U.S. against the nation of Islam." Reuven Paz, a veteran of Israelâs intelligence apparatus, said the goal set for al Qaeda 20 years ago by its main ideologist, the late Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian, is to create a single Islamic state that would encompass the world.
| That's the eventual goal of all the Islamist nutcases, to include Hezb ut-Tahrir... |
Azzam was killed 14 years ago in Afghanistan by a bomb planted in his automobile. "No one knows who was responsible," said Mr. Paz, director of the Tel Aviv-based Project for the Research of Intelligence Movements, an outfit known in this countryâs intelligence community by the acronym PRISM.
| Speculation I've seen is that it was Ayman who dunnit... |
A recent recording made in Iraq by Abu Musaab Zarqawi, one of al Qaedaâs most influential leaders, affirms the Israelisâ contention that it not only seeks the downfall of the West, but also a purge of Islamâs own "clerical establishment."
| Those who aren't religiously pure... |
"You abandoned us in the most difficult of circumstances and you handed us over to our enemy," Zarqawi said.
| "So now it's time for Dire Revenge™... |
This bitter critique referred to the circumstances in which the regime of Saddam Hussein collapsed and Iraq came under the control of American and allied forces.
| That's 'cuz brutal dictatorships are so... so... Islamic. |
Zarqawiâs original name, according to the Middle East Research Institute, was Ahmad Al-Khalayla. A citizen of Jordan, he is believed to have planned a series of attacks there while the millennium was being celebrated, but was thwarted by Jordanian authorities. His seething hatred of the United States was expressed in this passage from a newly released recording: "Oh, Allah, rend the kingdom of Bush as you rend the kingdom of Caesar; Oh, Allah, curse the Arab tyrants and the foreign tyrants; Oh, Allah, strike the apostate rulers," he said.
| Nobody does seething hatred better than an Arab. Good thing they're not too good at maintenance... |
A key short-term objective, according to Ronen Bergman, a prominent Israeli writer who also has an extensive background in his countryâs intelligence apparatus, is "to destabilize" the various Arab and other Muslim states.
| Most of which are inherently unstable... |
Al Qaedaâs ideology contradicts Islamâs traditionally conciliatory attitude toward "the protected religions," Judaism and Christianity, according to Col. Halevi.
| It contradicts most of the traditionally rational principles of logic and reason, too... |
This changed largely because of "radical Islamâs hatred of the U.S. and other Western countries as leaders of the Christian world," he said. "The U.S. is viewed as a global infidel force menacing Islam with its ideology, social and economic values, and hostile policy seen in terms of a modern Crusader war against Islam." He attributed the idea of indiscriminate mass murder of Christians to Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a prominent al Qaeda leader, who contends that Muslims "have the right to kill 4 million Americans, including a million children, to displace 8 million Americans and to cripple hundreds of thousands more."
Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-02-02 |
