Bin Laden

Binladen bridge could spark war

John R Bradley — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 11:05:11 +0000

It has long been held that during the coming decades, competition for ever-diminishing water supplies would be the main trigger for regional wars in the Middle East. However, a proposed 30 mile-long bridge linking Saudi Arabia and Egypt, is a likely cause for more imminent military confrontation.

First proposed back in the 1980s, the King Abdullah Bridge was quickly shelved by deposed Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. But last week, the Saudi Binladen Group announced it was willing to fund the $3 billion project, in partnership with Egypt’s state-owned construction giant Arab Contractors.

That it now seems like a done deal is ringing alarm bells in Israel, which has long considered the construction of the bridge as tantamount to a declaration of war.

Stretching from the northwestern Saudi garrison city of Tabuk to Egypt’s coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the bridge would pass over the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba. That means it could contravene a clause in the Egypt-Israeli peace treaty, which states that the Strait of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba must remain unimpeded at all times to all international shipping.

The bridge would indeed pose an unprecedented strategic threat to the Jewish state: at the push of a button, navigation could be cut off to the crucial Israeli port of Eilat.

The Bin Ladens, speaking at a pan-Arab economic conference in Riyadh, conceded that the project’s go-ahead remains dependent on the “political will” on the part of both Egypt and Saudi Arabia. A spokesman for Egypt’s Islamist President Mohamed Morsi quickly reassured reporters in Cairo that the bridge was now once again feasible precisely because of such newfound “mutual political will” — while in Riyadh, the House of Saud was proclaiming its “full support” for Egypt’s new Islamist dictatorship.

It is not only Israel that should be concerned.

As with the proposed King Abdullah Bridge, the causeway linking Saudi Arabia and Bahrain was constructed under the guise of facilitating the Haj pilgrimage and boosting bilateral trade. But the real, military reason for its construction was demonstrated in March 2011, when Saudi tanks rolled over it to help its neighbouring minority Sunni rulers put down a Shia-led uprising.

Moreover, the entrenched dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Qatar (the latter is also busy constructing a bridge linking it to Bahrain) are already filling Egypt’s coffers with soft loans. They have hijacked the uprisings in Bahrain, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria in a bid to install their Islamist proxies there, too. They are even pushing for Jordan and Morocco to join their Gulf Co-operation Council.

A nightmare scenario, then, looms on the horizon — a sort of Greater Wahhabi Kingdom stretching from the borders of Israel to the Atlantic. And with that in mind, Washington should bring whatever diplomatic leverage it still has in the region to persuade Egypt and Saudi Arabia to cancel this proposed monstrosity.

Manchester jihadists who recruited police jailed

Jonathan Kalmus — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:09:31 +0100

Jihadists from Manchester who wanted to kill Jews, used anti-Israel films to recruit terrorists and organised support for a Gaza aid convoy have been jailed.

Munir Farooqi, Israr Malik and Matthew Newton, who received sentences of between six years and life imprisonment at Manchester Crown Court last Friday, were snared when they unwittingly recruited policemen for terrorism in Afghanistan.

The three were exposed after undercover officers infiltrated their radicalisation den in Longsight. A basement containing 50,000 extremist DVDs and CDs about Israel and Jihad was used to groom vulnerable men for terror training camps.

During a four-month trial, the court was told how Matthew Newton, 29 and a recent convert to Islam, had a "fixation with Jews".

During the year-long sting operation in 2009, which involved two police officers being converted to Islam and radicalised, Newton was recorded repeatedly asking an imam "can we kill Jewish people?" and calling Jews pigs in antisemitic tirades during Koran lessons at a south Manchester mosque.

Newton, also known as "Hamza", was disseminating lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior al-Qaeda member. He ran radicalisation stalls at two Manchester markets for the group's ring leader Munir Farooqi.

Mr Farooqi, 54, who idolised Osama Bin Laden and had previously fought for the Taliban in 2001, was sentenced to life imprisonment for conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism and three counts of soliciting to murder.

He believed that Jews were "the Shaitan" (devil), "caused the problems in Gaza" and would eventually be killed by Jesus. In 2009 he was part of a Gaza aid convoy from Manchester.

Farooqi also radicalised Israr Malik, 23, who was given an indeterminable sentence with a minimum of five years for his part in recruiting the two police officers for Jihad in Afghanistan. Mr Farooqi's son, Harris, was cleared of a single count of terrorist activity.

He had told police that he supported Hamas following a pro-Palestinian rally in Manchester organised by the Stop the War Coalition.

Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Porter, head of the North West Counter Terrorism Unit, paid tribute to the bravery of his undercover officers to prove that "these men were involved in an organised attempt in Manchester to recruit men to fight, kill and die."

Why jihadism will not die with bin Laden

Jason Burke — Thu, 12 May 2011 12:59:10 +0100

We are now nearly two weeks into the post-bin Laden era of Islamic militancy. It is too early to know for certain what form this new phase will take. But we can already make an educated guess.

The death of bin Laden affects the three main elements - the hardcore leadership, the various affiliated groups and the ideology - that make up the al Qaida phenomenon.

The hardcore leadership comprised bin Laden and his Egyptian associate, Ayman al-Zawahiri, plus a few dozen others. Zawahiri is still alive but is irascible, stubborn, 59 years old and far from popular among his fellow militants. He has none of the charisma of bin Laden and can never be the unifying inspirational figure that bin Laden was to his followers.

Younger contenders for the top spot lack profile and experience. But perhaps al Qaida can do without a single leader. Perhaps a different organisational structure can be put in place. What is certain is that the central leadership of al Qaida has been splintering steadily in recent years. It is now likely to definitively fracture.

Then there are the main regional groups or "affiliates": al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (largely the Yemen), al Qaida in the Maghreb (largely Algeria) and al Qaida in Iraq. For some time, these have largely been independent of the main leadership. Each is rooted in specific local factors and history. Their alliance with al Qaida was usually nominal in any case. It is now likely to simply drift into obsolescence.

Then, of course, there is the ideology, the third and most important part of the al Qaida phenomenon. Here the situation is less clear. Bin Laden's greatest success was to make his particular interpretation of radical Islamism globally known. There were other strands of militant thinking and strategy around in the late 1990s but 20 years of "propaganda by deed" made bin Laden's the dominant one. There was a moment when it looked genuinely capable of attracting a very significant number of followers, and a social movement remains. There is a sub-culture of "jihadism" which is both dangerous and unsavoury. But in recent years, support for bin Laden's ideas, his methods and his project declined dramatically throughout the Middle East and the broader Islamic world, as the events of the Arab Spring have shown.

Now such ideas are marginal and, it is unlikely, particularly given the manner of his passing, that those ideas will suddenly surge back in popularity.

The lack of a central focus makes a difference to "wannabee" militants. Running the Luton Mujahideen is not the same as being head of the Luton branch of bin Laden's organisation. Bin Laden's death fundamentally alters the environment for recruitment - as well, of course, for fundraising and propaganda.

So, where does this leave us?

First, although violent Islamism
may be on the back foot, this may only be temporary. The coming years are likely to see continuing low-level violence and threats shifting around
the periphery of the Islamic and Islamist world, depending on local circumstances and the emergence of new leaders.

Meanwhile, groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah are likely to feel more comfortable with terrorist tactics now that bin Laden is gone. Suicide bombing, for example, will not be inevitably, if wrongly, associated exclusively with the mastermind of 9/11 and al Qaida and may thus regain some legitimacy after losing support in many parts of the Middle East in recent years.

Equally, although Hamas have fiercely repressed any groups linked to or loyal to al Qaida in recent years, its condemnation of bin Laden's killing reveals a marked pragmatism on their part. Now that his views are no longer a political threat to Hamas on their home ground, they can be appropriated and exploited.

Beyond Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood more generally saw, rightly, the violent Salafis of al Qaida as a rival and an enemy. The Brotherhood will thus be strengthened by bin Laden's death. Mainstream Islamism is once more - as it was in the 1970s - the most obvious discourse of dissent in the Middle East. The Arab Spring, by focusing attention on the young, tech-savvy urban middle classes, has disguised the deep religiosity and conservatism of significant numbers of people in the Islamic world, particularly in rural areas or small towns.

It is they who may well determine the political direction of much of the Middle East in the coming years and the expectations raised by the events of recent months are likely to be disappointed to some degree.

Finally, many elements of the extremist worldview have been normalised across the Islamic world. In Pakistan for example, Islamist parties do poorly in formal politics but exert massive informal influence.

Antisemitism is an integral part of the Islamist worldview and can therefore be expected, like the profound anti-Americanism, to remain at high levels for the foreseeable future. Rampant conspiracy theories are both a symptom and a cause of this.

Jason Burke is the Guardian's south Asia correspondent and author of 'Al Qaida: Casting a Shadow of Terror' and 'On the Road to Kandahar: Travels through Conflict in the Islamic World'

After bin Laden, Iran's Khamenei biggest threat

Jennifer Lipman — Thu, 05 May 2011 14:45:24 +0100

With Osama bin Laden dead, Iran's supreme leader is the biggest threat to global security, Binyamin Netanyahu said in an interview today.

The Israeli Prime Minister told CNN that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was more of a threat than Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Speaking on the final day of his visit to London Mr Netanyahu said: "He runs the country and he is infused with fanaticism. If the Iranian regime gets atomic bombs, it will change history.

"The future of the world - the future of the Middle East - is certainly at stake."

However he added that the death of bin Laden was a positive step in the battle against extremism. He said: "When the world's number one terrorist... is brought to justice and eliminated, it tells terrorists everywhere there's a price and you will pay it, and that's good."

Mr Netanyahu's comments follow remarks earlier today by Israel's Defence Minister on Iran's nuclear capabilities.

Ehud Barak told Ha'aretz that should Iran develop a bomb, it would be unlikely to use it on Israel or any of its neighbours. But Mr Barak also warned that Iran's behaviour could not be predicted.

Assassination will not alter our tactics, say Shin Bet

Anshel Pfeffer — Thu, 05 May 2011 11:03:48 +0100

Senior Israeli officials said this week that they do not believe the killing of Osama bin Laden will have a noticeable effect on the security situation in the region.

"The global jihad movement is a diverse group," said Shin Bet Chief, Yuval Diskin, in a media briefing on Wednesday. "Some parts of it regarded Bin Laden as a hero and will try to carry out an attention-grabbing terror attack. We should be prepared, but we have been living with these warnings for quite a while. The benefits of killing terror chieftains are not always immediately clear," said one Israeli intelligence analyst this week, "and there are always arguments against it.

"There is the revenge factor and the fact that it will take time to see who the successor is and learn his modus operandi, but these assassinations have a cumulative effect. It seems that in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Americans have adopted Israeli tactics in their targeting of senior al Qaida and Taliban members."

The consensus within the Israeli defence establishment is that the killings of senior Hamas leaders and operatives, such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004, and dozens of senior and mid-level commanders over the past decade, has significantly eroded the organisation's capability to launch complex attacks against Israeli targets, and has also created a degree of deterrence.

Israeli diplomats have said that in the wake of bin Laden's death they hope that next time Israel launches "targeted assassinations" at terror operatives, there will be "less of a chorus of criticism". Israel also sought to capitalise on the condemnation of the killing by Hamas leaders in Gaza. "How can one reach peace with a government half of which is calling for Israel's destruction and even praises arch-terrorist Bin Laden," said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Tuesday after a meeting with Quartet envoy Tony Blair.

It's not Jewish to celebrate this: just give thanks

Shmuley Boteach — Thu, 05 May 2011 11:03:40 +0100

Just after hearing that the United States military had killed Osama bin Laden, I quickly tweeted congratulations to President Barack Obama, the American military, and the American people for having neutralised this monster.

I added a second tweet that quoted the Bible: "Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles." (Proverbs 24:17)

Judaism stands alone as a world religion in its commandment to hate evil. Exhortations to hate all manner of evil abound in the Bible and God declares His detestation of those who visit cruelty on His children. Hatred is a valid emotion, the appropriate moral response, to inhuman cruelty. Mass murderers most elicit our deepest hatred and contempt.

On the other hand, the Bible also says that we are not to celebrate our enemy's demise. We do not dance over the body of a murderer like Osama bin Laden. Indeed, at the Passover Seder we Jews, upon mentioning the Ten Plagues, poor wine out of our glasses ten separate times to demonstrate that we will not raise a glass to the suffering of the Egyptians, even though they were engaged in genocide.

We wish there never was evil in the world. It would have been far better for there never to have to been a Pharaoh, a Hitler, or an Osama bin Laden. But are we now going to jump for joy that a mass-murderer has been brought to justice? No. This is a time to give thanks to God and show gratitude. But who can celebrate? Families are still bereft. People are still missing. Soldiers continue to die in Iraq and Afghanistan. We do not gloat over the triumph over evil because its very existence must forever be mourned.

I do not believe in revenge, something the Bible explicitly prohibits. The Jewish understanding of the Biblical injunction of "an eye for an eye" was always financial restitution for the lost productivity of an eye rather than the taking of an organ itself. But I do believe in justice, and forgiving murder makes a mockery of human love and a shambles of human justice.

Israel is condemned when it kills terrorists

Robin Shepherd — Thu, 05 May 2011 11:03:29 +0100

So it was "kill", not "capture". Fair enough. If someone openly expresses their aim of destroying your country and proves their point by slaughtering as many of your civilians as possible, they're clearly an enemy combatant.

As surely as if their minions were pointing a gun at your children, you don't wait for them to issue an order - you just blow their head off as soon as the opportunity presents itself. What reasonable person could seriously disagree?

But enough about Israel's targeted assassination policy against Hamas terrorists. Let's talk about last Monday's killing of Osama bin Laden by US special forces.

Let me be clear. I was all in favour and rejoiced like the best of them. But it is surely worth mentioning that the case for Israel's policy of targeted assassination is a good deal stronger than the one for the US operation against Bin Laden in Pakistan.

First, the evidence that has emerged so far suggests the US could, if it had wanted, have had Bin Laden arrested to face trial. Such luxuries rarely present themselves to Israeli forces engaged in Hamastan.

Second, therefore, this was in the strictest sense of the words, an "extra-judicial execution". As I say, I'm all in favour in such circumstances. But let's be clear on what we're talking about.

Third, Bin Laden had enormous symbolic importance but he had not had operational control of his organisation for years. Hamas terror chiefs pose a clear and present danger. Bin Laden did not to quite the same extent.

So, time for a bit of comparing and contrasting.

Here is what the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said on Monday about the killing of Bin Laden: "It is unequivocally a good thing that he is no longer able to pursue terror, murder and mayhem in the world."

And here is what the British Foreign Secretary (then Jack Straw) said in 2004 about the killing of Hamas terror chief Abdelaziz Rantissi: "The British government has made it repeatedly clear that so-called targeted assassinations of this kind are unlawful, unjustified and counter-productive."

And here is what the EU said about Bin Laden: "[This is]a major achievement in our efforts to rid the world of terrorism."

And here is what the EU said in 2004 about Rantissi: "… extra-judicial killings are contrary to international law and … respect for international law should mark an important distinction between democratically elected governments and terrorist groups."

Intellectualise it all you like. But sorry, it's Jew-hatred by any other name.

High priest of Jew-hate is gone, but not his ideas

Winston Pickett — Thu, 05 May 2011 11:03:16 +0100

For all the avalanche of analyses and op-eds since the death of Osama bin Laden, it is essential to remember one thing: antisemitism was at the core of his hatred - and remains the basis of the al Qaida ideology.
Most commentators seek to portray bin Laden as universally hateful - an enemy of Western civilization. But this "universal" also hides a specific truth.

Just as the Holocaust has universal lessons because Nazism threatened humanity, as Lucy Davidowitz's monumental The War Against the Jews demonstrated, a deep, pathological hatred of Jews and Judaism served as its engine. Judeophobia was the driving impulse around which Nazism coalesced.

Similarly, al Qaida is a universal threat, but bin Laden's insatiable hatred for America for having "invaded" Saudi Arabia - allegedly his reason for taking his brand of jihad to the world stage - was driven by an apocalyptic Islamist theory according to which all Muslims would wage war against Jewry at the End of Days.

bin Laden's world-view was also steeped in the ideas of thinkers like Sayyid Qutb, whose writings, including Our Struggle with the Jews, have served as a philosophical grounding for much of radical Islamism.

Similarly, to the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, "Jewish" New York, as much as the Zionist state of Israel, was the incarnation of satanic evil, just as Wall Street had embodied the general headquarters of corporate wickedness and cosmopolitan Jewry for the Nazis and fascists of a previous era.

In fact, it's arguable that because the ideology Bin Laden espoused - and frighteningly demonstrated - inspired jihadists via the global media, both his hatred and his apocalyptic vision will be heightened by his dramatic, highly televised demise.

al Qaida is less a top-down hierarchy and more a constellation of franchises - unified by an ideology that sees the annihilation of Israel as a step toward Islamic world-domination.

While Obama and the Americans may be prepared to say "justice is done", for the enemies of Israel and the Jews it is precisely this "justice" that will need to be avenged - hence Hamas's hailing of Bin Laden as a martyr and a hero or Fatah's military wing calling Bin Laden's killing "catastrophe".

The person may be gone, but the idea may, paradoxically, be more potent than ever.

Fatah armed wing: Bin Laden killing 'treacherous'

Jennifer Lipman — Tue, 03 May 2011 17:18:44 +0100

The military wing of Fatah has denounced the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden as treacherous, a catastrophe and the work of heretics.

In a statement obtained by research institute Palestinian Media Watch, Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades said that if bin Laden had died it was as a martyr on "the path of victory".

They said: "The military wings of the Jihad fighters in Palestine and outside of it, who have in the past lost many of their commanders and their men, will not stop. This has only strengthened their determination, their resolve."

They also vowed revenge on "the American and Israeli occupier" for bin Laden's death.

They said: "The [Islamic] nation which produced leaders who changed the course of history through their Jihad and their endurance, is a nation that is capable of supplying an abundance of new blood into the arteries of the resistance"

The condemnation follows similar statements by several extremist groups, including Hamas, although a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, dominated by the Fatah movement, said yesterday that "getting rid of bin Laden [was] good for the cause of peace worldwide."

Israel: Abbas should 'choose peace' not Hamas

Jennifer Lipman — Tue, 03 May 2011 16:01:45 +0100

Benjamin Netanyahu has appealed to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to call off the reconciliation agreement between Fatah and terrorist organisation Hamas.

The deal is to be celebrated at a Cairo ceremony tomorrow, paving away for a unity government and elections.

Although the terms have already been agreed, the Israeli Prime Minister, reiterating the concern of many Israeli and US officials, implored Mr Abbas "to choose the way of peace".

After a meeting with Quartet envoy Tony Blair, Mr Netanyahu said: "The agreement between Abu Mazen and Hamas deals a tough blow to the peace process.

"How can peace be reached with a government in which half of it calls to destroy Israel and even praises mass-murderer Osama bin Laden?".

His comments followed demonstrations in the Gaza Strip condemning the US for killing Osama bin Laden. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya described the al-Qaida leader as a Muslim warrior.