Posted on 10/06/2001 10:02:00 AM PDT by Masada
Disaster doesn't always bring out the best in us.
Sometimes, tragically, it brings out the worst. A case in point: the finger-pointing in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, seeking to blame the atrocities on America's supposedly misguided support for Israel and on Jewish Americans who supposedly manipulate the system to tilt our policy the wrong way.
No, it's not a national groundswell. You hear it mainly on the margins, and if past experience is a guide, it will stay there. Still, the variety and persistence of the finger-pointers is startling: left-wing professors in California, right-wing fanatics in Idaho, Arab-American activists in Michigan, smart-alec journalists in New York. There's enough of it to be worrying.
In reply, important voices are being raised from within the Jewish community, declaring that the attacks and the hatred behind them have nothing to do with America's support for Israel. Osama bin Laden and his ilk are motivated, we are reminded, by larger, more global issues: suspicion of modernity, secularism, democracy and the Western civilization that champions them. On the policy plane, his passion is driving American troops off the holy soil of Arabia. Israel isn't on his screen, except perhaps tangentially, as one more example of the West's corrupting influence.
The fact is, things are a bit more complicated than that. Bin Laden and his allies are driven, above all, by an extremist version of fundamentalist Islam. And Islam, as many of those same defenders of Israel have noted countless times, regards the mere existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East as a cardinal theological challenge. Indeed, pessimists in the pro-Israel community have been pointing for decades to the power of Islam's territorial imperative as a reason to dismiss Israel-Arab peacemaking as impossibly naïve. It's hard to see how that reading squares with the notion that the world's most dangerously fanatical Islamist just isn't interested in Israel.
But we needn't search the theology texts to divine bin Laden's motives. He's spelled them out repeatedly in various public statements. He's on a self-declared holy war against "Crusaders and Jews," with a three-fold goal: "liberating" Mecca and the rest of Arabia from American "occupation," "liberating" Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem from Jewish "occupation" and lifting the Western embargo on Iraq. They're always stated in that three-fold form, and usually in that order.
The fact is, Israel is one of the issues, though not the only one, driving bin Laden and his cohorts. It is foolish to deny it; that merely undermines the credibility of Israel's defenders at a time when Israel sorely needs defending. The best defense is always the truth.
And the truth is that America and Israel are allies, not because of some cabal of Jewish lobbyists, but because their two peoples demand it. America's support for Israel is not misguided, but profoundly moral. America and Israel share a deep community of values. They are partners in the democratic enterprise, cities on a hill devoted to something larger than themselves. Both are imperfect, at times painfully so. Both become impatient when their imperfections are pointed out. Still, both are societies striving to represent the better nature of humankind, and for that reason they deserve defending.
If America's defense of her values sometimes puts her on the firing line, then that's the right place to be. That's not a hard case to make. Most Americans, like most Israelis, understand it instinctively.
The present state of Israel was created by the United Nations in 1948 partly as an emotional reaction to the treatment of the Jews by the NAZIs. The United States was hesitant in its support of that until Harry Truman finally relented, some say as a favor to a close Jewish friend, and gave it his support. This was also at a time when Joseph Stalin was exploiting the Allies victory in WWII, a war in which Russia would have surely been defeated by Germany and Japan without strong U.S. assistance, by occupying Eastern Europe and stepping up its interference in other governments around the world. They immediately seized the opportunity in the Middle East to exploit the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews by fomenting and supporting Arab opposition to the creation of Israel. They encouraged the Arabs to destroy Israel, knowing we would resist that both morally and because of the dependence of the free world upon the oil in the area, and they armed all the countries surrounding Israel. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and others bristled with Russian planes, tanks, artillery, and arms. In 1967 they attacked Israel from all directions and were left in a bloody heap. They were saved from further destruction by U.S. pressure on Israel to stop the slaughter, a mistake we repeated in the Gulf War. Otherwise, Israel would have been in control of the entire region which may have brought Russia into the conflict. Because we lost our nerve and brought Israel up short, the area was still fertile for exploitation by the Communists and that is what led to the present situation.
Communists have always known that in order to survive they had to control the world and stamp out freedom and dissent anywhere it existed. They have used direct military intervention where possible and have resorted to terrorism where direct intervention was deemed too dangerous, too dangerous because of the U.S.A. They taught terrorists techniques to the Arabs for their use against Israel. Ironically, some Arab militants also became obsessed with visions of power and used the Islamic religion as their front, much as leaders in the Middle Ages used Christianity to gain territory and increase their power.
Soon these Arabs, in their expansionist mode, began to threaten their former benefactors, the USSR. Partly because the USSR was imploding, they attacked Afghanistan to stem this expansion into their territory. They may have been successful until we came to the assistance of the Afghanis. Now the these so called militant Islamic extremists have turned on us.
To summarize: The Arab war on Israel was fomented and abetted by the Communists. The Arab "Palestinians" don't want a homeland they want Israel destroyed. These Arabs who want to take over the world are using Islam and the existence of Israel as a pretext and disguise for their plans. Control of the oil in their area would be a big step toward world domination. They cannot gain control by direct military intervention because the free world is too strong and Russia and China have competing ambitions. Another of life's sweet ironies is that as Russia and China are seemingly seeing the shortcomings of Communism and modifying their plans for world domination, they are now facing a foe with an equally evil and ambitious plan as themselves. Perhaps now they will stop using us as their whipping boy and turn to the real evil on their borders, the Arabs.
As an aside, in my continuing effort to determine the real reason for our involvement in the former Yugoslavia, I am now suspicious that Slick Willie tried to use that situation to build a legacy for himself, as he used everything else for that purpose. As the non-Muslims in that area began to become aware and experience the Islamic expansionists' goals they attempted to repel them and then expel them from their area. The longtime Muslims of the area were being infiltrated by militants and became victims in that underground war. Slick expoited the effort to expel them and built it into "genocide" in order to intervene on behalf of the Muslims. Why? To gain favor with the "Palestinians" to encourage them to go along with his "peace plan" and to become a hero for bringing peace to the Middle East. He convinced Barak to give the Palestinians everythng they said they wanted, offered billions to both sides, and Hillary publically kissed Mrs. Arafat immediately after she called Israelis terrorists. Slick expected at least a Nobel Peace Prize, and even lobbied for it despite his failure, and world adulation.
Although our presence in Ugoslavia was a Clinton fraud we are still there to help stem the Islamic tide, the same thing Melosovic was trying to do.
Then obviously we should listen to Bin Laden right? You would beholden yourself to a satanic voice would you?
Which "international agreement" was this?
Don't get me wrong (although you will probably choose to do so anyway): Israel has a right to exist and live in peace.
But for a democracy to enjoy the principled support of the U.S. and its taxpayers, don't you think it would be nice if everyone born there -- not just Jews -- had a right to vote?
Name one other country where citizenship and full access to rights is determined by religion/culture.
Seems to me, after we deal with Osama et al., it might not be a bad idea to insist on a little democracy in that "democratic" ally that Masada believes the U.S. was created by God to establish, fund, and support unconditionally.
Sharon's comparison between Bush and Chamberlain has really got up my nose. This from an ally in time of war! Otherwise I wouldn't bother posting because these threads always end up with one side saying "remember the Liberty!" etc., and the other responding with "You anti-semite so-and-so."
People are trying to guess what bin Laden's motives are. I am just suggesting that bin Laden has already given his reasons in this interview. Do you believe he lied about his reasons?
Why rest on the situation under the Ottoman Empire? Go back even further or move foward to nearer, it doesn't matter. Almost all lands were controlled and occupied by others at one time. Almost all peoples were slaves to others at one time. Throughout history wars have changed bounderies, created and eliminated nations and empires, and generally changed the societies of the world. Though some like to ignore it for their particular purposes, this has always been.
Israel was created in the aftermath of a worldwide war. Other countries were eliminated by the war, other boundries changed. Someone is always dispossed when this happens. The present situation is another attempt to gain control and change boundries, eliminate countries, and create others.
Perhaps we can now come to grips with what President Bush said - we are engaged in a fight between good and evil, no matter the mask evil wears. Communism was evil. It attempted to take over the world and forcefully impose the will of the few upon the many. The militant Islamic extremists are no different. The U.S.A stands for freedom and self-determination for all, no matter our warts and shortcomings. We are the good guys and we must unite in this world struggle between good and evil and stop second guessing ourselves. As Bush said, you are either with us or you are with the terrorists. There is no middle ground, no safe haven of cowardness and indecision, you are on one side or the other. Each must decide for themselves, but rest assured, when anyone opposes us they support the terrorists. "By their deeds ye shall know them." And once you know them don't forget them. As the enemies of good reveal themselves, whether they be peaceniks, passivists, concientious objectors, environmentalists, Greens, college professors, preachers, politicians, our outright leftists and anarchists, remember who they are and put everything they do or say from now on under the filter of "They are for evil and opposed to good!" Our enemies must now reveal themselves.
August 22, 2000
Yoram Schweitzer
ICT Research Fellow
Preface
The Sunni Islamist terror organizations led by the Afghan Alumni have since the early 1990s been a dominant factor in the international arena. Yet their impact on Israel has so far been minimal. In spite of their radical approach to what they see as the active part played by Israel and the Jews in the Wests assault on the Muslim world, these Sunni terror organizations have seldom attacked Israeli and Jewish targets. This is all the more conspicuous against the background of terrorist activity perpetrated by the Palestinian and Shiite terror organizations that were so prominent in the international terrorist arena during the 1970s and 1980s.
In recent years, the Saudi millionaire, Osama bin Laden has headed the Afghan Alumni camp, after he founded an Islamic Front in order to counter-balance what he saw as a Jewish-Christian coalition, which he perceived to be a threat to Islam.
This article will outline the characteristics of the Afghan Alumni phenomenon, their ideology and the scope of their activities against Israeli and Jewish targets, and will examine whether there is a tendency to expand their activities into the State of Israel.
Who are the Afghan Alumni?
The term Afghan Alumni relates to thousands of Muslims, particularly from the Arab world, who hastened to Afghanistan from all over the world, to fight at the side of the local Mujahideen against the former Soviet Union (19791989). It refers also to the second generation, which included hundreds of volunteersmostly members of Arab Islamist terror organizationswho were sent to Afghanistan, after the war, to train in guerilla and terror warfare. It should be pointed out that although the Afghan Alumni have been called the Arab Afghans and the Afghans(1), particularly those of the Second Generation, there are many who were not Arabs at all. These include the terrorists from Kenya, Tanzania, and the Comoro islands, who were involved in the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998.
The Afghan Veteransthose who fought in the war against the Soviet Unioncomprise the backbone of the leadership of many radical terror organizations active in the Middle East. Their status in their organizations was built on the myth of their heroism and their success in defeating the Christian Soviet Union in Afghanistan. They saw their victory as the main factor in the downfall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Their battle experience and readiness for personal sacrifice gave them the professional and moral authority to lead their followers in an assault against the heretic regimes in their own countries and against their allies, particularly the U.S.A. and Israel.
The end of the war in Afghanistan left a large reservoir of violent, well-trained fighters experienced in guerilla and terror warfare, and motivated by their radical religious ideology. These fighters searched for a way to vent their Islamist and revolutionary energy, particularly in the period after the war. The Afghan Alumni channeled this Islamic passion and battle experience into various central channels:
The ideology of the Afghan Alumni
The worldview of the Afghan Alumni has been shaped by living and fighting in Afghanistan alongside the local Mujahideen. The process of absorbing the volunteers in Pakistan and Afghanistan was accompanied by intensive religious courses and indoctrination. Their long stay in a extremely homogenous religious societya society fighting a war of Jihad against a Christian enemygreatly influenced their thought and activity.
A central element in their worldview was that their Jihad was a war of self-defense against the cultural assault of the West, led by the Americans and the Jews, who were seen as running it and dictating its policy. Bin Laden, one of the central adherents of this worldview, cited in his militant statements the religious-cultural-historical struggle of Islam with the Judeo-Crusader conspiratorial alliance, which aims at defeating Islam and conquering its sacred lands.(3) His views are amply illustrated in interviews given to the press, as well as in his publications, such as the Declaration of war in June 1996 (4) and his religious ruling (Fatwah) of February 1998 (5). In his eyes, Islam is besieged on all sides by foreign secular forces and by Western modernization.(6) In his mind, the whole world in general, and the Middle East in particular, is an arena of a determinist battle for survival between the three monotheistic religions. The enemy in this battle is seen as the Christian-Jewish coalition of the US, Israel and World Jewry. This enemy has occupied the most sacred lands of Islam, in Mecca, Medinah, and Jerusalem, and seeks to defeat Islam and the Muslims. According to bin Laden this unholy alliance is carrying out a systematic and deliberate massacre of Muslims. His example is the massacre of the Muslim Iraqi population by American forces in the Gulf War in 1991 and their bombings in Iraq in December 1998, as well as the massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila by Christian Phalangists allied with Israel and the killing of Palestinians by Israel.(7)
In order to recruit and motivate Muslim believers, bin Laden has need of historical terms with Islamic connotations, such as Crusaders and Jihad. He explains the need for violent activity in terms of the defense of Islamic sacred elements, and presents the Muslims as victims. His use of terrorism and violence is meant to prove to his adherents that the so-called undefeatable enemies of Islam, such as the US, the Soviet Union, and Israel, were vulnerable due to the weakness of their faith. Terrorism is part of a struggle whose goals are twofold: the purification of the sacred places in Mecca and Medinah currently under American occupation, and the moral and psychological victory of the Muslim warriors. Bin Laden has foreseen a similar fate to the occupation of al-Aqsa and Jerusalem by Israel.(8)
At the beginning of 1998, Bin Laden gathered around him an Islamist coalition to assist him in consolidating a front against the Judeo-Crusader alliance. On February 23rd 1998, he brought together the leaders of several Islamist organizations in Afghanistan and declared the establishment of The Islamic International Front for the Struggle against the Crusades and the Jews (The Front). An Islamic Fatwah was published signed by five leaders of Islamist groups: Osama Bin Laden as head of Al-Qa`idah, Ayman al-Zawahiri head of one of the factions of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Ahmad Rifa`I Taha the leader of the Egyptian Al-Gamaah al-Islamiyyah, Sheikh Mir Hamzah the Amir of Jamiat-ul-Ulama-e-Pakistan, and the leader of the Jihad movement of Bangladesh. This Fatwah declared the killing of Americans and their alliescivilians and military personnel alikeas a religious duty. Such a duty is incumbent on Muslims all over the world in order to liberate the occupied holy mosque in Mecca, meaning Saudi Arabia, and Al-Aqsa Mosque, meaning Palestine in general and Jerusalem in .(9)
Operations carried out against Jewish and Israeli targets abroad
Despite the poisonous rhetoric of the Afghan Alumni, particularly bin Laden, which is reminiscent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, these declarations have so far not given rise to a wave of terrorist operations against Israeli or Jewish targets in the international arena.
However, in the second half of the 1990s there were several attacks or attempted attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad by these organizations. The first such operation was carried out by an Islamist who assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane in November 1990 in New York. In June 1993, a plot to carry out several operations in New York was thwarted. The attacks were to have been carried out by an Islamist terror network acting under the religious guidance and authorization of the blind Egyptian Sheikh Omar `Abd al-Rahman. The group had planned to kill an American Jewish senator, in addition to the bombing of the UN building and the FBI Headquarters. Sa`id Nusair, the killer of Rabbi Kahane, was linked to Sheikh `Abd al-Rahman and to the network involved in the planning of the operations thwarted in June 1993.
On April 19th 1996, the Egyptian Al-Gama'ah al-Islamiyyah carried out a terrorist attack on tourists in the Europe hotel in Cairo, in which 17 Greek tourists were killed. This was during the Israeli Grapes of Wrath Operation. In its statement following the attack, the organization claimed the attack was meant to target Israeli tourist that residing at the hotel.
The Egyptian Jihad group, led by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, which is part of bin Laden's terrorist network, planned to carry out terrorist operations against Israeli targets all over the world. This is according to a senior member of the group, who was tried in Egypt on April 1999 in the case of The returnees from Albania.(10)
The Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) has carried out three attacks against Jewish targets in France in the framework of its terrorist activity in that country in the mid- 1990s. These attacks included two car bombs. One of these was near a synagogue in Lyon in 1994; the bomb was safely defused. The second occurred near a Jewish school in Villerbane in 1995. In this case the car was blown up and only a delay in the bell that ended the schools study period prevented the death of many pupils. The third attack involved the sending of a letter bomb in 1996, to the editor of a Jewish paper in France.
In 1995 a group called Bai`at al-Imam, led by Sheikh Issam Muhammad Tahir, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, was arrested in Jordan. Among the members of the group were several of the Afghan Alumni. They planned to attack Israeli targets in Jordan. More members of this group were arrested in July 1997, after they planned to cross the border to Israel to carry out attacks.(11)
The relatively small number of attacks and attempted attacks by Afghan Alumni against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad thus far, is the consequence of several factors. Among them the following:
The increase of the activity against Israel
In the past year, there has arisen the possibility that the Afghan Alumni led by bin Laden have decided to focus part of their terrorism on Israeli targets, both inside and outside of Israel. This new trend was reflected in the arrest of an Islamist terrorist group in Jordan in December 1999. This case illustrates a change in the activity against Israel on the part of central activists of Al-Qa`idah.
The Jordanian terror network was composed mostly of Jordanians of Palestinian origin, as well as an Iraqi, an Algerian and Palestinians with American passports. The detainees admitted in their interrogations that they had been trained in Afghanistan in a training camp financed by Bin Ladin, and were assisted by contact members of Al-Qa`idah in Afghanistan and Pakistan.(12) Some of the them were trained in Lebanon with the help of Hizballah and anti-Arafat Palestinians.
The group planned to carry out mass attacks against Jewish and American tourists and Christian pilgrims at the Radison hotel in Amman, at Mount Nevo, at the check-points on the Israeli-Jordanian borders, and at the place where Jesus was baptized.(13)
One of the prominent characteristics in this case was the central part of Palestinian Afghan Alumni among the members of the group and its collaborators abroad. The central activists responsible for the logistics and religious authorization for the attacks were three Palestinians who operated from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the UK. These were Zein al-`Abedin alias Abu Zubaidah originally from Gaza; Omar Abu Omar alias Abu Qutadah who lives in London under political asylum; and Khalil Deek, a Palestinian with an American passport who was arrested in Pakistan and extradited to Jordan.
During the past year there have been several arrests that should warn of the possibility of a change in bin Ladens activities. In February 2000, Said Hindawi, a Palestinian Afghan Alumnus who lived for many years in Lebanon was arrested in Israel. Hindawis family is originally from Halhul. Following the establishment of the Palestinian Authority his family returned to the Palestinian Autonomy, where his father is the commander of Hebron police. In his interrogation, Hindawi admitted that in 1998 he was trained in guerrilla warfare and terrorism in Durante camp, one of bin Ladens main training camps in Afghanistan. In his possession were found illustrations of explosives. Although he denied it, he was suspected of planning terrorist attacks in Israel, possibly with the assistance of local Palestinians.(14)
On August 21st 2000, Israel confirmed the arrest of an Islamist terrorist network in June of this year. The commander of this network, Nabeel `Uqal, a Palestinian from Jibalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, admitted to having undergone training in1997 one of bin Ladens camps in Afghanistan. There he learned the use of firearms and explosives. After he returned to the occupied territories he recruited several activists from Gaza, Judea and Samaria, as well as Israeli Arab citizens, members of the Islamic movement in Israel. These he planned to send for training in Afghanistan.
`Uqal admitted to contacts with Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. `Uqal told Yassin about his training in Afghanistan, and received from him money to finance his group. The network planned to carry out large-scale operations in Israel, including suicide operations, kidnapping IDF soldiers, and bombing of Jewish settlements using anti-tank missiles.(15)
It is unclear yet what brought bin Laden and the Afghan Alumni supported by him to shift their policy towards an increase in terrorist attacks against Israeli targets, not to mention to operate within the state of Israel. Bin Laden has been criticized by other Islamist for concentrating on American targets and neglecting the struggle for the liberation of the holy places in Palestine. This could be the primary reason for this change, along with the increasing involvement of Palestinians in the Islamist Front.
Conclusion
Whatever the reason is, Israel must prepare for the possible need to counter another radical Islamist terrorist adversary in the future. The Afghan Alumni enjoy the support of Muslim states supporting terrorism such as Afghanistan, Sudan, the Yemen, and even Iran. From these states, they receive shelter, the sanction to train on their soil and occasionally even active assistance in their training. They also benefit from the fortune of Osamah Bin Laden, which is dedicated to the promotion of world Jihad against the enemies of Islam.
In the past few years, against the background of a complicated and sensitive political processbetween Israel and the Palestinians, terrorism against Israel has changed, in the eyes of the Israeli decision-makers, from a tactical issue to a strategic one. The addition of the radical Afghan Alumni to this delicate equation could increase the attempts by the rejectionist factions to harm the peace process and to destabilize the region.
Notes
>>>On the 5th of Iyar--May 14, 1948-- the British left Palestine, officially ending the Mandate. Just before sundown, David Ben Gurion read the new Declaration of the State of Israel. HaTikvah, the national anthem, was played. Eleven minutes later, President Truman officially recognized the state of Israel and was followed almost immediately by the USSR. For the first time since Bar Kochba, Jews had their own country.<<<
As was the U.S. When Stalin and the Soviets saw that Israel wouldn't be a puppet of the Communists the latter turned on them.
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