THE ARAB AND MUSLIM POINT OF VIEW. What they say, write, publish and argue about.

Pride of suicide attacker's mother

Photo: Naima: "This is the best day of my life"

A video released by Hamas shows a proud mother taking up arms beside her favourite son. First a warm embrace, then a loving kiss. Naima al-Obeid was saying goodbye to her 23-year-old Mahmoud, a college student on his way to carry out a suicide attack. "God willing you will succeed," she says. "May every bullet hit its target, and may God give you martyrdom. This is the best day of my life." Mahmoud says: "Thank you for raising me." Naima got her wish. Mahmoud was shot dead attacking the Jewish settlement of Dugit in the Gaza Strip on Saturday. Deaths celebrated: Two Israeli soldiers were killed in the ambush. Their deaths are being celebrated near Mahmoud's home. We found crowds coming to the mourning tent - and not just because of him.

People here aren't just remembering Mahmoud - they are honouring his mother. She has become a heroine, being talked about on the streets, praised in the local papers. Some Palestinians are taking a great deal of pride in a mother who saw her son go to kill and die without shedding a tear. They are already saying she will inspire other women to do the same. Heaven and hell: In her home, in Gaza, she showed me pictures of the son she calls "my heart". She had no sympathy for the dead Israelis, no regrets over the loss of her own son. "Nobody wants their son to be killed. I always wanted him to have a good life. "But our land is occupied by the Israelis. We're sacrificing our sons to get our freedom," she told me. I asked her if it mattered whether her son killed women and children. "The women and children are also Jews," she said, "They're all the same for me. "And I want to tell Jewish mothers - take your children and run from here because you will never be safe. We believe our sons go to heaven when they are martyred. When your sons die they go to hell." Naima is surrounded by well-wishers, no one asking why she gave her son a licence to kill. She has nine more children, whom, she says, all have a duty to fight the Israeli occupation. By Ourda Gerin.

PALESTINIANS CELEBRATING THE ATTACKS ON NEW YORK

Photo: In the west bank of Nablus, approximately 3.000 Palestinians poured into the streets shortly after the attacks on New York World Trade Center. They celebrated the attacks and hailed the terrorists chanting Allah is Great and death to the Americans.

Photo: An Israeli bulldozer destroys Palestinian olive trees.

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THE ISRAELI/JEWISH POINT OF VIEW. What they say, write, publish and argue about.

THE ISRAELI/JEWISH POINT OF VIEW. What they say, write, publish and argue about.

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Photo: Israeli woman killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber.

Yet, the organizational phase of al-Qa'ida and affiliated groups of Global Jihad was in the hands of leaders who were far more operational than ideological-- Usama bin Ladin, Ayman Zawahiri, Muhammad Atef, or nowadays Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi. Moreover, the second generation of al-Qa'ida members, operatives, supporters, or sympathizers is growing in the fields of other Islamist battlegrounds in areas other than Afghanistan or Bosnia, namely, such as Iraq, Europe, Southeast Asia, and worldwide.

Photo: Israeli mother mourning her killed son.

The modus operandi of al-Qa'ida--to move the battle to enemy soil; martyrdom operations; and the killing of Muslims, legitimized by clerics--is led by the operatives, and affect the imagination of Muslim youth worldwide, giving priority to new strategies over basic ideology. Even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become less important and is no longer a crucial issue, at least relative to the priorities of global Jihad. Ayman Zawahiri wrote several times, adopting the traditional position of Egyptian Jihad, that "the road to the liberation of Jerusalem moves through the liberation of Cairo and Damascus." The present strategy of al-Qa'ida and its global Jihad is mostly the result of processes and developments in the core of the Arab world--oppression by Arab governments; the war in Iraq and the American occupation there; the inability to infiltrate the Palestinian territories because of traditional opposition by Hamas, which has a very different agenda; the relative weakness of the Saudi regime; and rising support in Saudi Arabian society, as well as in other parts of the Arab world, for the insurgency in Iraq. Other processes such as the relative operational freedom in Europe also contributed to its development.

The basic ideology remained the same: To liberate the entire Muslim world from any Western/Zionist/Crusader colonialism, both in its physical presence in the Muslim world and its cultural influence, in order to create a Muslim state or states totally ruled by the Islamic Shari'ah and liberated from any man-made laws. These goals are to be achieved through a long Jihad led by well-indoctrinated avant-garde groups, whose members are more eager to reach the world to come than to live in this "worthless" one. By contrast, the strategy is in accordance with the developments in the field, primarily Iraq and the Arab world. Iraq became one of the most important elements in al-Qa'ida strategy, a kind of the jewel in the Jihadi crown. Iraq and the insurgency there is also a model of global Jihad's ability to mutate itself to become independent groups of Moroccan immigrants in Spain, or Pakistanis in the United Kingdom, Jamaican converts to Islam, Somalian immigrants to Europe, etc., who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the global strategy of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Iraq is not an ideological target, yet it is the most important factor directing the rage of Arab or Muslim youngsters towards terrorism. Jihadi-Salafi ideologues of the first generation of global Jihad might not approve of it, as we saw recently, but the control is in the hands of the strategists, who by their indoctrination and incitement became the heroes of this generation, angry and humiliated in its eyes.

They are a generation of Muslims whose knowledge of Islam is usually poor, but their apocalyptic notions lead them to blindly follow the strategists, believing that this is true religion and faith. One of the problems deriving a different analysis is the social element behind the rage and the sense of humiliation. An Egyptian sociologist, Dr. Huda Husseini, defined it very well in the 1990s: They are youngsters at the age of fruitful creativity but under a lot of pressures that push them towards militancy. It is easy therefore, to use them and organize them like soldiers in a group that serves also as an alternative to the old grouping, such as the family or the society that  surrounds them. The person who carries out the operation is offered to kill or be killed while death is presented as martyrdom that brings him closer to Allah. The person who plants such ideas in the mind of a youngster turns him into a canon, after his personality has been reshaped according to the needs of the his new social group and its destructive interests.

The group programs him in a manner that he could explode any minute as if he is activated by remote control. The new group carries out its indoctrination by totally different means of his natural former social framework. The older plants its values gradually through childhood and youth with the aim of continuance and construction. The new alternative group activates rapid indoctrination by the most sacred means for the soul such as religious belief. Its target is not continuance but to shock the society and the destruction of the existing system. It pours into its instructions and prohibitions a sense of sacred religion so one cannot argue its orders or refrain from carrying them out. That way it achieves maximum discipline and abolishes any self-thinking.[ii] Dr. Ajai Sahni, an Indian scholar, wrote in March 2004, that "The Islamist terrorist agenda is more inflexible than most of us imagine, and its ends are defined, not in terms of the transient political parameters of the discourse of international relations, but by a perspective rooted in religious absolutisms that will endure long after the reverberations of the crises of transition in Afghanistan or in Iraq have come to an end."[iii] His words can very well define the fundamental goals of al-Qa'ida or global Jihad. However, these targets might long remain, not only after "the reverberations of the crises of transition in Afghanistan or in Iraq have come to an end," but also after Bin Laden's or Zarqawi's death or imprisonment. In the meantime, the crises in Afghanistan and especially in Iraq are far from coming to an end, and such crises might last for quite some time, affecting the entire Arab world, the cradle of global Jihad's ideology and strategy.

The operatives do not possess the same endurance of the ideologues, but they are the dominant party.A good example of the tension between the ideologues and the strategists is found in the recent public criticism of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdesi, Zarqawi's mentor, over his disciple saying, "The indiscriminate attacks in Iraq might distort the true Jihad." This was not his first criticism of Zarqawi and his group. In September 2004, Al-Maqdesi sent a long message from Al-Qafqafa prison through Jihadi forums on the Internet.[iv] In both cases this criticism generated a wave of responses by Jihadi scholars, clerics, and youth who were both surprised and confused. Zarqawi was not affected by this criticism, and he did not stop his suicide attacks against Sunni officials, Shi`i civilians, nor the more recent attacks on Sufi crowds of praying Muslims. In May 2005, he sent a very long audiotape in which he justified his policy, including the killing of Muslims. In July, he answered him again, basing his arguments on rulings by a new class of Saudi clerics that supports Global Jihad. To sum up--Zarqawi, unlike Usama bin Ladin, is consolidating a class of Jihadi-Salafi clerics who provide the necessary legitimacy for the insurgence in Iraq as a "proper Jihad." Hence, he is doing what the older generation of Jihadi clerics used to accuse Muslim governments and clerics of--creating the Ulama al-Salatin--the clerics who obey the political rulers.

The U.S. administration is right to claim that Global Jihad attacked Western targets before Iraq and might continue to do so after Iraq. This is the al-Qa'ida ideology. Yet, in the meantime, the ideology is mutating itself according to a strategy totally based upon the developments in the insurgency in Iraq, and the enormous effect of it upon Arab Muslim youth. We should not ignore this effect, which might even grow with the forthcoming open trial of Saddam Hussein. The latter's image is also "mutating" into a more human and sympathetic one, even by young supporters of Global Jihad in their Internet forums. He is moving from being a tyrant "Pharaoh" to a symbol of an Arab and Muslim fighter against the Americans. Who knows if in a year or two's time we shall not witness an Islamic ruling against his trial or the anticipated verdict? *Reuven Paz is founder and director of the Project for the Research of Islamist Movements (PRISM) at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, and a long time researcher of Islam and Islamic movements.


NOTES
[i] Abdallah Azzam, "Al-Qa`idah al-Sulbah," Al-Jihad (Afghanistan) , No. 41 (April 1988), pp. 46-49.
[ii] Al-Ahali, June 28th 1995. [iii] Dr. Ajai Sahni, "The Iraq War and the Deluge of Terror," Intelligence Review (SAIR) Weekly Assessments & Briefings, Volume 1, No. 36, March 24, 2003.
[iv] Munasarah wa-Munasahah li-Abi Mus`ab al-Zarqawi min Abi Muhammad al-Maqdesi fi sijnihi (Support and Advice to Zarqawi by Al-Maqdesi from within his Prison). See on-line at:http://www.ansarnet.ws/vb/showthread.php?t=14593 (the forum is currently closed).

Photo: Young Israeli soldiers bleeding to death.

Photo: More Israeli casualties and dead people on the hands of Palestinians...

Photo: 10 months old Israeli baby was killed.

Photo: 6 months old Israeli baby was killed by Palestinians.

Photo: Funeral of Rabbi Lieberman,
who was gunned down by Palestinians.

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Al-Qaeda Nuclear Threat: A Modest Proposal

By Rachel Neuwirth

This article is satirical and relates to the current expulsion of Israeli Jews from their homes by their own government.  It is written in the manner of Jonathan Swift’s famous satire, A Modest Proposal.

 

America could be facing a potential catastrophe from nuclear weapons that may have already been smuggled inside this country by al-Qaeda. Sleeper cells may already be positioned inside as many as twenty major cities. The danger is real and awareness is increasing. World Net Daily (www.wnd.com) has reported on revelations contained in the upcoming book The al-Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime and the Coming Apocalypse, by former FBI consultant Paul L. Williams.  Edited excerpts from a World Net Daily report of July 18 follow: Osama bin Laden is planning what he calls an "American Hiroshima," the ultimate terrorist attack on U.S. cities, using nuclear weapons already smuggled into the country across the Mexican border along with thousands of sleeper agents.  The series of attacks is designed to kill 4 million, destroy the economy, and fundamentally alter the course of history. Al-Qaeda's prime targets for launching nuclear terrorist attacks are the nine U.S. cities with the highest Jewish populations, according to captured leaders and documents. The cities chosen as optimal targets are New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Boston, and Washington, D.C.  New York and Washington top the preferred target list for al-Qaeda leadership. Our own security officials have also told us repeatedly that it is not a matter of “if” but rather of “when” the next major attack will occur.  An update  on this threat was published by World Net Daily on 8/18/05.

Many American lives could be at stake here, and what is needed is bold thinking on how to avert such an attack, or to at least reduce its likelihood.  In that spirit, this article presents “A Modest Proposal” which advocates a two-part response.  Part I proposes to reduce the attractiveness of the potential targets.  Part II proposes to make the targets additionally undesirable and to also reduce enemy hostility. Part I.  Nine large, American cities are prime targets because of their size, importance, and their concentrations of Jews.  If the presence of Jews in these cities increases their appeal as targets then logically the absence of Jews would decrease that appeal by a comparable amount.  The security of three hundred million Americans must not be kept at risk merely for the sake of not inconveniencing Jews who comprise barely two percent of our population.  Because the potential danger is so immense and so imminent, the relocation of American Jews must be expedited.

Removal of Jews should not be too difficult. Jews want to be seen as loyal Americans.  Most would cooperate, if reluctantly and emotionally, in their removal as their patriotic duty to increase the safety of their fellow Americans.  Jews are accustomed to relocating and have done so repeatedly from biblical times.  In recent times, nearly a million Jews were expelled from Arab countries and more than a million Jews have also left the former Soviet Union.  Even inside America, Jews often move for purely personal reasons.  Relocation is a familiar Jewish experience. Then there is the question of propriety.  Is it proper to compel Jews to relocate--especially after they have become so comfortable in this country?  Fortunately this question has already been answered.  For security reasons, and for the greater good, none other than Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is even now in the process of expelling eight thousand Jews from their homes in Gaza and is using the Israeli army and police to do it.  And more than ten times that number of Jews are likely to face expulsion from the West Bank later on. The number of Israeli Jews targeted for expulsion in both Gaza and the West Bank is proportionally equivalent to America relocating about five million American Jews.  This forced relocation has been ruled to be a perfectly legal action taken by the Israeli government, and President Bush, who is considered to be a great friend of Israel, supports it. Relocating American Jews will be far easier than expelling Jews in Israel.  American Jews tend toward pacifism, are highly law-abiding and non-confrontational--except for the highly vocal Jewish leftists who, in this case, would likely support Jewish expulsion.  Furthermore, the American Jewish leadership has already endorsed the principle of forced expulsion of Jews in Israel as the legal right of that government to act in the interests of security and the greater good. 

Thus American Jews cannot now object to being subjected to the same requirements in the interest of U.S. national security. Necessary expertise in Jewish relocation procedures can be borrowed from Israel. The Sharon government knows how to recruit, screen, and train thousands of men and women from the Jewish community to form police expulsion units and cope with the related logistics and media management.  As in Israel, these expulsion police would be well paid, not be required to identify themselves to the expellees, and the courts will go easy on any charges of police brutality. Any manifestation of Jewish protest will be quickly put down. Protesters, including teenagers, would be placed in administrative detention and held without charges for up to six months.  Unlike in Israel, there are no Palestinian Arab equivalents in America to rain down rockets on the expulsion process and requiring army units to protect the evacuation. 

As in Israel, there will be at most peaceful, completely non-violent protests, perhaps combined with a little civil disobedience of the most harmless and easily suppressed kind.  Since most American Jews will peacefully board the busses and trains carrying them to their new homes, whatever protests may occur will be conducted by evangelical Christians--the most law-abiding segment of the American population, who will easily be dissuaded from violence or seriously disruptive behaviour by their ministers. We cannot deny that 1.3 billion Muslims comprise a formidable world force that is in the ascendancy while Jews are a tiny minority that is in decline, especially in America.  America has suffered politically from the general perception that the interests of Israel and Jews are favoured over the interests of Muslims and Arabs.  This is an opportunity for American policy to become more even-handed and to gain the respect of the Muslim world. As in Israel, U.S. Jews who voluntarily sign up early for expulsion will receive extra benefits while those who object or delay could face fines or even prison.  The American Jewish leaders must demonstrate their national loyalty by signing up early and encouraging their followers to do likewise.

American Jews wield influence far exceeding their numbers which is viewed as a provocation to many in the Muslim world. The expulsion must include all Jews, including elected officials and those of influence. We do not know how much time remains before a possible attack is launched by al-Qaeda.  Therefore, this evacuation must proceed quickly in the interests of national security.  Naturally, it will be necessary to compile lists of Jews and Jewish leaders and Jewish organizations must be required to furnish such information.  Unaffiliated Jews must also be identified and included on these lists. It will not be possible to properly liQaedate all property and assets in a short time, so the Jews will have to select whatever they can transport in limited-size vehicles and forgo the rest.  Their European forebears and Israeli cousins have followed these procedures on numerous occasions in the past.  As a result, few American Jews will be unduly alarmed or angered by this element of the American-Islamic peace and reconciliation process. In the interests of national security and of fairness it should be a crime for any non-Jew to harbor a Jew. 

This procedure must be executed thoroughly and without favouritism so that the Muslim world will see that we Americans are sincere. Jewish institutions, including hospitals (along with their Jewish patients), colleges, schools, synagogues, museums, and the like must be emptied of Jewish personnel and content and prepared for evacuation. Jewish expertise, or as some say dominance, in the film industry could be put to good use in ensuring the successful and smooth operation of the relocation program.  For example, the distinguished Jewish American filmmaker Steven Spielberg could produce and direct a film showing the happy and successful adjustment of a sympathetically portrayed American Jewish family to their new home community in rural Alaska.  The classic film made by a distinguished German Jewish director 62 years ago, documenting the happy and prosperous Jewish community in the relocation center of Thieresienstadt and filmed during the difficult period of Jewish relocation in the Second World War, could serve Speilberg as a useful model. Spielberg (or any number of other justly celebrated Jewish filmmakers) could also be tasked to compile a film record of how Jews lived in America before their relocation, which would serve as a nostalgic memento for the relocatees in their new homes, as well as a useful educational tool for the whole population.  The film could be shown in schools across the country, as well as in Jewish museums and Holocaust centers, in order to encourage ethnic and racial tolerance and multiculturalism.

Jews would be relocated to relatively uninhabited places, away from any potential target area.  Their new homes should be in currently under-populated areas like Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Alaska.The Jews should be assigned specific areas that will be reserved for Jewish occupancy, in the same manner as the reservations for Indian tribes.

 Since Jews are essentially a tribal group, they are sure to appreciate having tribal homelands of their own, outside the strife-torn Middle East. New housing and other facilities should be paid for largely by the Jewish community, in exchange for the value of the land they would receive from the government. Jews should be given the option of digging up their dead and transporting the remains to the Jewish reservations.  Abandoned graves would then be bulldozed. Those few Jews who are unwilling to resettle on the reservations will be encouraged to find new homes in other countries. Part II.  This part is designed to create an active disincentive for al-Qaeda to strike our major cities. To further enhance American security, the vacated homes and properties of America’s five million Jews should be turned over to Muslim immigrants from Arab countries.  They must promise to show respect for the former Jewish homes they are being given and must not dance on the roofs of their new homes in a show of celebration or victory. Muslims should also acquire synagogues and other Jewish facilities but must promise not to burn them down in celebration but to quietly convert them into mosques. Al-Qaeda would then have to think twice before attacking cities with significant Muslim populations and their newly acquired mosques.  Osama Bin Laden may feel grudging respect to America for having outsmarted him--and doing it with style and class.The entire Muslim world would then have to reconsider its anti-American animosity.  We will have demonstrated that e are reasonable and respectful toward our Muslim brothers and sisters.  We will have shown our willingness to be even-handed in redressing the old imbalance where Jews, being but two percent of America, had wielded such disproportionate influence in the culture, in the business sector, and on its policies.  Relocation of Jews would be a very small price to pay for the prospect of avoiding a devastating attack which would consume Jewish lives as well as those of other Americans.  We could then open a new chapter in Muslim-American relations and together strive for a more peaceful and just world.

Bertram Cohen and John Landau contributed to this column.