 Osama bin-Laden, Usama (r) 2002 250x179.png "Usama bin Laden") |
 Osama bin-Laden, Usama (r) 2002 634x455.png "Click to enlarge"){kind=small} al-Zawahᵊri, Ayman (l) Osama bin-Laden, Usama (r) 2002 |
2002.12.17 – (Condensed from article by Ina Friedman in The Jerusalem Report, 2002.12.30.) While many remain confused at how terror is a global network of cooperating groups, or even how it includes Iraq, most at least realize that the primary target of America’s war on terror is al Qaeda. Thus, the inextricable tentacles between al Qaeda and the Arab terrorists of the West Bank and Gaza is as significant, and meaningful, as its tentacles to any other terrorist groups in the world.
In early 2002.12, an al Qaeda web site announced the founding of a branch in the West Bank and Gaza. Israeli intelligence has known for some time that al Qaeda has not only infiltrated terrorist groups in the West Bank and Gaza but is very active in Lebanon.
Notes Dr. Reuven Paz, head of the Project for Research on Islamic Movements at the International Policy Institute for CounterTerrorism (ICT) in Herzliya, Israel, ‘The very father of the idea of Al-Qaeda, Dr. Abdallah Azaam, was a Palestinian.’
"Many of Azzam’s leading ideological heirs – other than Al-Qaeda leader Osama [sic] Bin Laden – are likewise Palestinians, including the charismatic Islamist preaher Abu Qatada, who was recently arrested in Britain for allegedly encouraging terrorism, and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdesi, who was detained in Jordan in mid-November after publishing a number of militantly pro-Qaeda [sic] articles on his website."
Dr. Uzi Arad, former director of intelligence for the Mossad who now heads the Institute of Policy and Strategy of ICT: "We’re talking about a global network of groups that view the entire Western world and way of life as inimical to Islam."
It’s not reasonably disputable: Israel’s existential fight with terrorist groups of al Qaeda’s international network is inextricably identical to America’s war on terror groups of the same network. Our mutual war is against the global network of terror and all of its member groups. Making exceptions of some of the groups in the network, by definition renders any war against terrorism to fail from the get-go.
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