OPINION.JPOST.COM
May 21, 2008 19:57 | Updated May 21, 2008 20:18
“Suicide, the path to national salvation”
By AMNON RUBINSTEIN
ARTICLE SNIPPET: “THIS MAY sound like an extreme conclusion but, as Ari Bar Yossef, retired lieutenant-colonel and administrator of the Knesset’s Security Committee, writes in the army journal Ma’arachot, such cases of Islamist national suicide are not uncommon. He cites three such examples of Arab-Muslim regimes irrationally sacrificing their very existence, overriding their instinct of self-preservation, to fight the perceived enemy to the bitter end.
• The first case is that of Saddam Hussein, who in 2003 could have avoided war and conquest by allowing UN inspectors to search for (the apparently non-existent) weapons of mass destruction wherever they wanted. Yet Iraq’s ruler opted for war, knowing full well that he would have to face the might of the US.
• The second case is that of Yasser Arafat in 2000, who after the failure of the Camp David and Taba talks had two options: continue talking to Israel - under the leadership of Ehud Barak, this country’s most moderate and flexible government ever - or resort to violence. He chose the latter, with the result that all progress toward Palestinian independence was blocked. The ensuing loss of life, on both sides, testified to Arafat’s preference for suicide over compromise.
• The third case is that of the Taliban. Post-9/11, their leadership had two options: to enter into negotiations with the US, with a view to extraditing Osama bin Laden, or to risk war and destruction. The choice they made was obvious: Better to die fighting than to give up an inch.
IN ALL three cases, the conclusion is plain: prolonged war, death, destruction and national suicide are preferable to peaceful solutions of conflicts: Dying is preferable to negotiating with infidels. The same conclusion, of course, is applicable to the Palestinians voting for Hamas and its suicidal path, and to Iran’s decision to confront the Security Council in its insistence on acquiring nuclear weapons.
These cases, while unprecedented in the annals of history, should not be that surprising. If you glorify individual suicide, if death is the key to a happy afterlife, if war itself is sanctified, why not extend these ideas from the individual to the collective? To the regime itself ? Suicide is the path to both individual and national salvation.
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http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2374182
TERRORISM FOCUS
Volume 5, Issue 20 (May 20, 2008)
“Jihadi Website Interviews New Leader of Somalia’s Shabaab al-Mujahideen
By Abdul Hameed Bakier
ARTICLE SNIPPET: “On the eve of the fatal U.S. strike against Aden Hashi Ayro, leader of the Shabaab al-Mujahideen movement in Somalia, the electronic monthly magazine Echo of Jihad conducted an interview with Mukhtar Ali Robow, the ex-deputy minister of defense of Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Better known as Abu Mansur, the veteran militant is the spokesman for Shabaab al-Mujahideen as well as Ayro’s successor (alsomal.com, May 9). The interview was published as a special edition by the Global Islamic Media Front and posted in different pro-jihadist websites (shmo5alislam.net, May 8).”
ARTICLE SNIPPET: “In his interview with Echo of Jihad, Abu Mansur said that the “gates of jihad” are wide open in the Horn of Africa, which he describes as the third- or fourth-most important jihadist front defending Islam. Abu Mansur also declares the adherence of Somali jihadis to the Salafi-jihadist confession of Islam. Somali jihadis acquired two decades of jihadi experience in different types of jihad, describing their efforts as “the jihad against the apostates” and “jihad against regimes aiding the Crusaders’ proxy war against Muslims.” Abu Mansur enumerates the achievements of the Somali jihadis as follows:”