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Fifth Column

With the West excusing terrorism, who needs Islamists?

2025-01-03

[IsraelNationalNews] Europe and America gave many terrorists everything: educational and job opportunities, entertainment and sexual freedom, salaries and social assistance and religious freedom. The terrorists below have never seen a day of poverty in their lives.

With Westerners excusing terrorism, who needs Islamists?

July 14, 2016, Nice. During the fireworks festival, an Islamic terrorist kills 87 people, adults and children, under a truck that claimed to be carrying ice cream to the celebration of the French Revolution.

Four days later, the famous philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, disciple and friend of Jacques Derrida, publishes an article in Libération entitled "A truck launched". Despite having gone almost unnoticed, the article has lost none of its interest:

"A truck launched to run over children - among others - gives an unbearable image of nihilism. Nihilism itself names an end: that of our history and our civilization (...) It is not enough to declare war on it. We must attack ourselves, climb aboard and dismantle the mad trucks of our supposed progress, our fantasies of domination and our commercial obesity".

Clear? Terrorists and Westerners are the same, for our little masters of thought.

The terrorist who killed 15 people with a pickup truck in New Orleans on New Year’s Day (what better way to start the year than with another Islamic massacre?) was named Shamsud-Din Jabbar.

The Wall Street Journal has a pretty good portrait: a native Texan, an Army veteran (he also served in Afghanistan), a state university graduate, and a father of three, he had worked his way up the corporate ladder. Jabbar was an attentive neighbor who regularly asked a retiree if she needed anything and had given her a vacuum cleaner, washer, and dryer when he moved in. A model citizen. The New York Times reveals that he had converted to Islam.

This time, no taqiya, like there was in the case of the attacker who drove the car into the Christmas market in Magdeburg (by the way, the security of the German market was contracted to a company called "Mecca Security" !! some stories are so absurd that they can’t be invented).

But according to the official media, a "vehicle" killed 15 people in New Orleans.

Worse than the media is the legion of Western idiots who say that Islamic terrorism is a consequence of capitalism, colonialism, Israel, white and Jewish supremacy, in short, it is our fault, the West.

The Islamic terrorist who killed the British MP David Amess in the church is the son of a former advisor to the prime minister of Somalia.

Poverty and deprivation are not, as the fatuous John Kerry said, "the main cause of terrorism." Islam is.

Syed Rizwan Farook, a thirty-year-old Muslim of Pakistani origin, and his Saudi wife Tashfeen Malik, unloaded their semi-automatic rifles on the employees of a center for the disabled in California, killing 14 people during a Christmas party, the favorite season for massacres. Farook was an American citizen and worked as an inspector at the county health department. He earned seventy thousand dollars a year.

A graduate in engineering, his father a public works employee, his sister an elementary school teacher, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez killed four marines in a recruitment center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Michael Adebowale, the terrorist who slaughtered British soldier Lee Regby in the heart of London, had a bright future ahead of him. At school, his teachers had chosen him as a "model student".

Take Aafia Siddiqui, one of Al Qaeda’s Amazons, she is a neurologist who graduated from MIT and was sentenced to 86 years in prison.

And don't forget the psychiatrist who, shouting "Allahu Akbar", massacred his comrades at Fort Hood. Thirteen dead. Dr. Nidal Hassan.

The son of a wealthy banker who studied at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, University College London (in terms of academic results, it is the fourth university in the world) and lived in the chic heart of the English capital - that was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the attacker of the Christmas flight Amsterdam-Detroit. He lived on the fifth floor of a building on Mansfield Street. Neoclassical columns, an Art Nouveau door with a large basket of wrought iron roses, a few blocks from Oxford Street, where an apartment costs around two million euro.

And there is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, one of the terrorists who killed Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal journalist beheaded because he was Jewish. Sheikh is the son of a wealthy carpet merchant and had graduated from the London School of Economics.

Aqsa Mahmood, one of the most high-profile women in ISIS, lived in Pollokshields, one of the rich neighborhoods of Glasgow. Her father is the first Pakistani cricketer in Scotland. All their children went to private school.

Omar Khan Sharif, who blew himself up in a Tel Aviv cafe, attended one of the UK’s most elite schools, Foremarke Hall in Repton, founded in 1557 and whose alumni included writers such as Roald Dahl, Christopher Isherwood and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Ramsey.

Yet, from the intellectual left to Pope Francis, it is repeated that these Islamic fanatics are being recruited from among the world’s oppressed, from those who, in the words of Karl Marx, have "only their chains to lose." No, my friends, they are religious fanatics intent on overthrowing the Western society that spawned them.

Faisal Shahzad, the terrorist behind the failed Times Square attack, had a $273,000 house and a father who is a high-ranking officer in the Pakistani army. And what about Abdelkarim Mejjati, the mastermind behind the Madrid massacres, who grew up in the exclusive Gauthier neighborhood of Casablanca to a very rich father and a mother who ran a chain of beauty salons?

Europe and America gave these terrorists everything: educational and job opportunities, entertainment and sexual freedom, salaries and social assistance and religious freedom. These terrorists have never seen a day of poverty in their lives.

The Paris terrorists rejected liberté, egalité and fraternité; the British jihadists rejected the sweet British multicultural lullabies; the Islamist who killed Theo van Gogh repudiated Dutch relativism and Palestinian Arab terrorists want to cleanse the earth of the Jewish presence.

But for those who think that the West deserves it in part and are now in the top echelons of politics, the media, and universities, it is much easier and more seductive to embrace the common belief that we are the guilty ones. Self-hatred, oikophobia, will end up killing us.

With Westerners like that, who needs Islamic terrorism?

Link

Britain

British universities: Breeding grounds for radical Islam?

2010-01-01

The case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused in the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner, has reinvigorated a debate about whether British universities are being used as breeding grounds for radical Islam.

For three years, Abdulmutallab made the short journey from his apartment in central London to an 11-story brown brick building at University College London (UCL), where he was enrolled as a mechanical engineering student. Before him, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was convicted in connection with the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, attended the London School of Economics. British citizens Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif were enrolled at King's College London before launching a suicide attack in Tel Aviv in 2003.

While those cases -- and others -- hardly suggest that extremists have infiltrated Britain's campuses, experts say there is evidence that Muslims who adopt radical ideologies frequently do so during their formative years in college.

Abdulmutallab, now 23, was president of UCL's Islamic society. And according to Anthony Glees, a professor of security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, he is the fourth president of a university Islamic society to be linked to terrorism-related offenses in recent years. One of the former presidents, Waheed Zaman, is being retried for his alleged connection with a plot to bomb transatlantic airliners in 2006.

Like many university organizations, Islamic student societies fill an important social role for students, said Usama Hasan, a former Islamic society president at three British universities and now a university lecturer. But he said that they can also foment fundamentalist ideas and can be aided by guest speakers who "are very narrow-minded and extreme."

Hasan said that Islamic societies have scratched off many of the most radical Islamic preachers from their speaking rosters. The voice of Anwar al-Aulaqi, for example, the Yemen-based cleric who has come under scrutiny in the Christmas Day plot, is banned from Britain. Even so, he can still be heard frequently on some British campuses via video link during conferences and other events. "It's worrying," Hasan said. "He is charismatic, and some students listen to him."

Abdulmutallab graduated with an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and business finance in June 2008. Less than a year later, he sought a second visa to study in Britain -- a course in "life coaching," according to British media reports -- but was turned down for applying to a nonexistent institution. During his time at UCL, he organized a conference called "War on Terror Week" at the university. One event at the conference was billed as "a lecture on the Islamic position with respect to jihad and other issues."

It remains unclear when Abdulmutallab underwent an ideological transformation. He was far from being described as a firebrand radical, and his former teachers, classmates and acquaintances in London have expressed surprise about the allegations against him.

Some Britons have used Abdulmutallab's case to call for universities to take a closer look at their student bodies.

UCL, the first university in Britain to be founded solely on a secular basis, is known for its liberalism and championing of free speech. But in the past week, some people have urged that the school's Islamic society be closed. Grant, UCL's provost, said such a step is unnecessary.

"To shut it down, that implies the society is a hotbed of radicalization," he said. "It isn't. It's a student society, and as far as I am concerned we have a responsibility to the community not to interfere with freedom of speech."

Grant said he is not sure what, if anything, UCL could have done differently in its handling of Abdulmutallab. "At the moment, we see no evidence to suggest any wider involvement of radicalization," he said. The university will conduct an internal investigation if necessary, he said, "but first you need something to inquire into."

Link

Britain

UK-Pakistani radicals posing greatest threat

2006-08-29

The biggest threat to US security emanates not from Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan, but rather from Great Britain, Americas closest ally because of Pakistan-oriented young Islamists in that country, according to two noted terrorism experts. Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank write in the current issue of New Republic that for terrorist organisations like Al Qaeda, which has reconstituted itself in Pakistan, ethnic Pakistanis living in the United Kingdom make perfect recruits, since they speak English and can travel on British passports.

There is anecdotal evidence for the influence of Muslim extremism on British Pakistani communities. The two authors found strong jihadi sentiments at a fitness centre in East London, frequented by Muslims, five of whose regulars are included among those arrested this month in England and Pakistan on terrorism charges. The authors point out that many of Britains young Pakistanis are filled with contempt both for the moderation of their parents and for a British society that wont quite accept them. For many, this leaves a vacuum in their identities that radical Islamist preachers have been all too glad to fill. Young British Pakistanis are also unemployed and thus especially vulnerable to the temptations of radicalism.

Bergen and Cruickshank write that it is primarily in Pakistan - not the United Kingdom - where British citizens are being recruited into Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. About 400,000 British Pakistanis per year travel back to their homeland, where a small percentage embark on learning the skills necessary to become effective terrorists. According to a government report released this year, British officials believe that the lead perpetrators of the 2005 attacks in London - Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer - met Al Qaeda members in Pakistan. Several individuals allegedly involved in a 2004 plot to explode a fertiliser bomb in Great Britain also spent significant time in Pakistan. In April 2003, Omar Khan Sharif, whose family immigrated to Great Britain from Kashmir, attempted to carry out a suicide attack in a bar in Tel Aviv after visiting Pakistan.

The two authors believe that what motivates many of these young men is Kashmir since a disproportionate number of Pakistanis living in Great Britain trace their lineage back to Kashmir. For the small number of British Pakistanis who want terrorist training, the facilities of Kashmiri militant groups have become an obvious first choice - as well as a gateway to Al Qaeda itself. Al Qaedas ties with Kashmiri militant groups date to the Afghan war against the Soviets, when bin Ladens forces fought alongside Pakistani groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Since September 11, the relationship between Al Qaeda and Kashmiri groups has only deepened.

Bergen and Cruickshank believe that the danger to the United States of the nexus between British Pakistanis, Al Qaeda and Kashmir is becoming clear. One of the alleged ringleaders of the plot to blow up transatlantic flights is Rashid Rauf, a Pakistan-born British citizen whose family immigrated to Great Britain from Kashmir. This should raise two concerns for American officials. The first is that American Pakistanis could pose a similar threat. They add, Yet it seems unlikely that radicalism in the American Pakistani community could pose as large a threat as radicalism in the British Pakistani community. American Muslims are, on average, more politically moderate than their British counterparts.

The two authors maintain that of more concern is the likelihood that British Pakistanis will continue to target Americans - both in the United States and abroad. To address this problem, the Bush administration should encourage the British government to monitor more closely the activities of UK-based extremist groups. Simply banning these organisations is not enough. In addition, Great Britain must step up efforts to identify its own citizens who attend Kashmiri or Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan. The British government will need help from moderate Muslims, some of whom are waking up to the threat posed by the radicals in their midst. According to London imam Ghulam Rabbani, These people are ill. I say very categorically and very clearly that they are misguided and they dont know the basics of Islam.

Link

Britain

UK plotter linked to Tel Aviv blasts

2006-07-09

THE suspected ringleader of the July 7 attacks in London last year was linked to two other British suicide bombers, one of whom blew himself up outside an Israeli bar in 2003, The Sunday Times has reported. The newspaper quoted Kursheed Fiaz, a businessman who runs an information technology company in Manchester, northwest England, as saying he had four or five meetings with Mohammed Sidique Khan from 2001. He said Khan was initially accompanied by Omar Khan Sharif and later by Asif Mohammed Hanif and the men wanted to indoctrinate young Muslims and take them to Pakistan, Syria and Afghanistan for training. Hanif, 21, blew himself up and killed three other people at a busy seafront pub in Tel Aviv in 2003. The body of Sharif, 27, was later found in the sea. He is believed to have fled after failing to set off his own device.

Whereupon Hamas bumped him off. Failure wasn't an option.

Fiaz's account features in a BBC television programme "Britain's First Suicide Bombers" to be broacast on Tuesday, according to The Sunday Times, which said he had not been interviewed by police. In the programme, Fiaz, 46, is said to recount how Khan came to his office seeking to spread "Dawa", a form of evangelical preaching of Islam. Khan, who had secured a position as a primary school teaching assistant in his home town of Leeds, northern England, reportedly asked whether any of Fiaz's staff wanted to learn about Islam. "We need to teach them certain things," Khan is alleged to have said, without elaborating.

"What sort of things?"
"Certain things."

Fiaz reportedly told the programme that his nephews and some other young men who took up the offer became suspicious when Khan and his friends talked about taking them abroad "to enhance the training".

"Really, you gotta see Pakistan. It's an Islamic wonderland!"
"They got training camps there?"
"No, no! Certainly not!"

"We got the impression they were looking for some gullible people. Youngsters... that would fall for whatever they were trying to preach or practise," he was quoted as saying.

"So, tell me: You got anybody stupid working here?"

The Sunday Times said Fiaz's account raises questions not only about the links between the three men, who all left video messages justifying their actions, but whether Khan was a co-conspirator in the Tel Aviv bombing.

Ummm... Lemme think. Yes.

It cited confirmation from Israeli police that he visited the country briefly two months before the attack. Fiaz said he did not contact police after the Tel Aviv bombings because both Sharif and Hanif were dead while he did not link Khan to them until after the July 7 attacks.

Link

Britain

âLondon, Tel Aviv blasts connectedâ

2005-07-12

Contradictory with yesterday's report that explosives came from the Balkans.
German newspaper: Explosive material used by British terrorist who blew himself up on Tel Aviv beachfront in 2003 very likely the same as that used by terrorists who staged London attacks last week, Mossad tells Brits
By Roee Nahmias and Ronen Bodoni

TEL AVIV â The terror attack in London last week may be tied to a suicide bombing on Tel Avivâs beachfront in April 2003, German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported Monday.

According to the paper, Mossad officials informed British security authorities that the explosive material used in the Tel Aviv attack on Mikeâs Place pub was apparently also utilized to stage the series of bombings in London on Thursday.

Moreover, the Mossad office in London received advance notice about the attacks, but only six minutes before the first blast, the paper reports. As a result, it was impossible to take any action to prevent the blasts.

âThey reached us too late for us to do something about it,â a Mossad source is quoted as saying.

âVery powerful explosiveâ

According to the German report, the Mossad relayed an analysis of the explosives used in the Mikeâs Place attack to British security officials. Mossad sources are quoted as saying there is âhigh likelihoodâ the explosives used in Tel Aviv were the same ones used in London.

However, the story makes it unclear whether the Mossad is involved in any way in the investigation into the London bombings.

After analyzing the explosive material used in the Mikeâs Place attack, the Mossad concluded it was produced in China and later smuggled into Britain, the paper reports. The explosives were apparently stashed by terrorists connected to al-Qaeda who were able to evade raids by British security forces.

According to the newspaper, Mossad Chief Meir Dagan said the explosive in question is very powerful, and âmuch more lethal than plastic explosives and can be smuggled undetected due to its composition.

The Mossad was also able to determine the substance was developed and produced at the Chinese ZDF arms factory, located about 65 kilometers (about 40 miles) from Beijing, the paper reports.

3 people murdered at Mikeâs Place

The Mikeâs Place attack claimed the lives of three people, Yanai Weiss, 46, Ran Baron, 24, and Caroline Dominique Hess, 29. The bombing was carried out by two terrorists, Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, who were recruited by Hamas in Britain.

The two managed to enter Israel using their British passports.

Hanif blew himself up at the pub, but Sharif failed to detonate his explosive belt and fled the scene. A few weeks later, his body was washed ashore in Tel Aviv.

The terroristsâ relatives were detained in Britain in the wake of the attack on suspicion they knew of the plot and did nothing to prevent the attacks. The relativesâ trial ended in July of last year, with the court ordering a retrial for Sharifâs sister and brother.

Meanwhile, Sharifâs wife was cleared of the charges against her.

Link

Britain

SUICIDE BOMBER VERDICTS

2004-07-09

The brother and sister of British suicide bomber Omar Khan Sharif are to be retried on allegations they failed to stop his attempted Israeli bomb attack. Three people died when Sharif and his accomplice Asif Hanif launched an attack on a busy Tel Aviv bar in April last year. Sharifâs explosives failed to go off but his body was found offshore the following month. His brother, Zahid, and sister, Parveen, were ordered to be retried at the Old Bailey in November on charges of failing to report information which could have prevented an act of terrorism. Jurors had failed to reach a verdict on the pair. Parveen, a 36-year-old teacher, was also ordered to be retried on a charge of inciting her brother to commit an act of terrorism after a jury failed to agree verdicts.

Link

Home Front: WoT

Pipes: European Muslims Pose Major Threat to America

2004-05-19

EFL from Human Events - To me Pipes makes this material crystal clear although some might say that this material is obvious. If that is true, we need more people willing to trumpet the obvious - loudly and repeatedly.
Whence comes the main danger to homeland security in North America and Western Europe? With the single exception of the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, notes Al-Qaeda authority Rohan Gunaratna, all major terrorist attacks of the past decade in the West have been carried out by immigrants. A closer look finds that these were not just any immigrants but invariably from a specific background: of the 212 suspected and convicted terrorist perpetrators during 1993-2003, 86 percent were Muslim immigrants and the remainder mainly converts to Islam. "In Western countries jihad has grown mainly via Muslim immigration," concludes Robert S. Leiken, a specialist on immigration and national security issues, in an important new monograph, Bearers of Global Jihad: Immigration and National Security after 9/11 (published by the Washington-based Nixon Center, where Leiken is employed). Leikenâs research offers valuable insights. Violence acts against the West, he finds, "have been carried out largely through two methods of terrorist attack: the sleeper cell and the hit squad."

Hit squads -- foreign nationals who enter the country with a specific mission (such as the 9/11 hijackers) -- threaten from without. Sleeper cells consist of elements quietly embedded in immigrant communities; Pierre de Bousquet, head of Franceâs counterintelligence service, says "they do not seem suspicious. They work. They have kids. They have fixed addresses. They pay the rent." Sleepers either run terrorism support networks of "Muslim charities, foundations, conferences, academic groups, NGOs and private corporations" (prime example: Sami Al-Arian of the University of South Florida) or initiate violence on a signal (like the Moroccans who killed 191 persons in Madrid this March).

That said, Muslim life in Western Europe and North America are strikingly different. The former has seen the emergence of a culturally alienated, socially marginalized, and economically unemployed Muslim second generation whose pathologies have led to "a surge of gang rapes, anti-Semitic attacks and anti-American violence," not to speak of raging radical ideologies and terrorism. North American Muslims are not as alienated, marginalized, and economically stressed. Accordingly, Leiken finds, they show less inclination to anti-social behavior, including Islamist violence. Those of them supporting jihad usually fund terrorism rather than personally engage in it. Therefore, most jihadist violence in North America is carried out by hit squads from abroad. And, contrary to expectation, these come predominantly not from countries like Iran or Syria, or even Saudi Arabia and Egypt, for the simple reason that their nationals undergo extra scrutiny. Islamist terrorists are not dumb; they note this special attention and now recruit intensively from citizens of the 27 countries -- mostly European -- who, thanks to the Visa Waiver Program, can enter the United States for 90 days without a visa.

But even so, there are Frenchmen and there are Frenchmen. One named Zacarias Moussaoui, an Algerian immigrant, attracts more attention than one named Michael Christian Ganczarski, a Polish immigrant of German extraction -- making a convert like Ganczarski the more potent jihadist. Indeed, he is now sitting in a French jail, charged with a major role in the April 2002 bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia that killed 19 people. To a lesser extent, the same pattern applies to Israel. Hezbullah has made a concerted effort to recruit Europeans like German convert Steven Smyrek, caught before he could strap on a bomb. Hamas deployed Britons Asif Muhammad Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, who murdered three people at a Tel Aviv bar. The same pattern also applies to Australia -- such as the case of French convert and would-be jihadist Willie Brigitte.

Leikenâs insights lead to important conclusions for counterterrorism. Assimilating indigenous Muslim populations is critical to the Westâs long-term security. Given that the Islamist threat in the West "emanates principally from Europe," European and North American security services should recognize they face basically different problems: one primarily internal, the other mainly external. Constructing immigration systems that keep out sleepers and hit squads while allowing normal business and pleasure travel should be a priority for Washington and Ottawa. For Americans, adjusting the Visa Waiver Program and controlling land borders with Canada and Mexico are higher priorities than worrying about Iranians and Syrians. Leikenâs research guides Westerners to real homeland security. But achieving this will be a challenge, for acknowledging the European Islamist source of violence means giving up todayâs easy reliance on euphemisms.

Link

Britain

Relatives of would-be bar bomber deny terrorism charges

2004-04-26

Three relatives of an alleged would-be suicide bomber pleaded innocent Monday to charges in connection with a terrorist attack in Israel. Tahira Tabassum, 28, Zahid Sharif, 37, and Parveen Sharif, 36 - the wife, brother and sister of Omar Khan Sharif, 27, who reportedly fled after a bomb he allegedly carried failed to detonate near a Tel Aviv bar - were all charged with failing to disclose information about terrorism. Parveen Sharif, a teacher, is also charged with inciting Sharif to commit an act of terrorism. She denied that charge also.

"Nope. Nope. Wudn't me."

Omar Sharifâs body was found floating in the sea off the coast of Israel 12 days after an April 30 suicide bomb attack at a bar in Tel Aviv...
This is a good start - I hope the family/associates of Asif Hanif are receiving similar scrutiny

Link

Middle East

Hamas Plots Knockout Blow with 800 Suicide Bombers

2004-03-27

This is Debka so salt to taste, but it doesnât take a genius to figure out that coordinated bombing get the attention and the results as in Madrid. EFL
No sooner had the tens of thousands of mourners dispersed after the ceremonies and demonstrations of strength marking the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin last Tuesday, March 22, in an Israeli missile attack, when a thousand Hamas top and middle-ranking activists dived underground. Since then, known Hamas operatives have maintained perfect telephone silence, their relatives are in the dark about their whereabouts and contacts are maintained only through trusted couriers. This situation presented the Hamas command center in Damascus with the problem of communicating urgent instructions to the men on the ground in the Gaza Strip â urgent for two reasons:

1. Although Abdel Aziz Rantissi made a show of bending the knee to Khaled Mashaal, head of the Hamas Damascus command center, Mashaal knows he must assert his authority without delay and set the pace of coming in events in the Gaza Strip before the local leadership grabs the initiative.

2. Hamas, Hizballah and al Qaeda agents maintain day-to-day exchanges based on a delicately balanced intelligence and logistical give and take. Mashaal and company will not allow anyone in the Hamas Gaza command to upset the balance of this relationship.

A way therefore had to be found for Hamas, Damascus, to impose its will on Hamas, Gaza. The method finally hit on was to take to the airwaves. Friday, March 26, therefore, the Hamas liaison man in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, who managed the Mishaal-Rantisi compromise, was interviewed on Hizballah Radio Nur. On the assumption that the Gaza contingent in hiding were listening in case of coded messages, Hamdan addressed the Hamas âmilitaryâ wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qasseem Brigades, directly â not in code but in plain language. DEBKAfile monitored his statement, as follows:

âThe lone suicide martyr method has scored great achievements, but now, as we stand at the threshold of a decisive stage, we must resort to a tactic that brings us the desired results. Ideally, we would round up 70,000 to 80,000 martyrs and have them blow themselves up simultaneously in the enemyâs urban centers and so finally vanquish him. But that is not realistic. One tenth or even one hundredth part of that number should suffice to inflict a shock on a strategic scale. I therefore tell you not to hurry to exact revenge. We have to be sure our assault is concerted and perfectly orchestrated. Donât waste resources and manpower on small operations. No one is pushing you. Take all the time you need and then pick a date and hour that are most advantageous to our project.â

The good news is the fence around Gaza has been extremely effective at keeping boomers out. So Hamas need to solve the how to get people acroos the fence problem first.
Hamdanâs words freely translated are a directive from Damascus HQ to Muhammed Deif, commander of the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, to muster an army of several hundred suicide killers to reach the hubs of Israeli cities and blow themselves up at the same moment. The Damascus Hamas command reckons that, even if not all the massacres come off, Israel will not be able to withstand a shock and casualties of the magnitude projected

They think Israel's Spain. My guess is that the effect would be the opposite, with the Paleos being expelled from both West Bank and Gaza. And the magnitude of the attacks would kill — for a couple weeks, anyway — world support for the Paleos. They'd be committing mass suicide.

This escalation fits in well with the intelligence gathered by Americans and Israelis on the spreading base of anti-Israeli terror from the double suicide attack carried out in Ashdod shortly before the assassination of Sheikh Yassin which caused the deaths of 10 Israeli port workers. Their experts conclude the attack was the work of Hizballah aided and abetted by al Qaeda.

Mass casualties invites massive retaliation. You ~~heard~~ read it here first.

A senior US intelligence official is quoted as saying: âThe soldiers were members of Hamas. But the overall planning, the way the shipâs container was prepared, the weapons used and the level of advance intelligence invested in the attack all bear the marks of the two Islamic terrorist groups. We can expect many more combined terrorist assaults of this kind in the future.â Al Qaeda shoe bomber Richard Reid who failed to blow up an American airliner on December 22, 2001, learned how to pack explosives in his shoes while visiting Hamas activist Nabil Aqal at his home in the Jebaliya refugee camp of the Gaza Strip. This fact was not brought out in the US court that sentenced him to life imprisonment. Israel too kept quiet about this connection, mainly so as not to embarrass Mohammed Dahlan, then head of the Palestinian Gaza Strip preventive security apparatus, who could not have avoided knowing about the al Qaeda visitor. He was not the last, the two British Muslim bombers, Assif Muhammad Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, who bombed Mikeâs Place on the Tel Aviv promenade on April 30, 2003, also spent time with Hamas hosts in the Gaza Strip prior to their hit. Their real assignment was to bomb the US embassy a few doors away from the bar but they found it too well protected. American, British and Israeli security forces have conspired to keep this quiet.
I think Debka is right about Hamasâ intention, but I doubt they have the capability to match it.

Link

Israel-Palestine

Bomb Britonsâ Hamas terror video

2004-03-08

Palestinian militant group Hamas has said it carried out a suicide bombing a year ago as it releases a video of two Britons it used for the attack. Londoner Asif Hanif, 21, killed three people and injured 55 by blowing himself up in Tel Aviv, last April. Omar Khan Sharif, 27, of Derby, is thought to have fled after explosives strapped to his body failed.
Slacker.
Hamas released the video on Monday to mark the first anniversary of the killing of leader Ibrahim al-Maqadma. One of the Islamist organisationâs military leaders and founders, Mr al-Maqadma died in an Israeli helicopter missile attack on a car in Gaza city.
Damm, I forgot to send a card. Maybe next year.
Mr Hanif blew himself up in a beachfront pub called Mikeâs Place. Mr Sharifâs body was later found washed up on an Israeli beach.
Swimming "accident"?
In the video, released on Monday, the pair are shown brandishing assault rifles and calling on God to punish Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush. In a statement released with the video, Hamasâs military wing said the bombing had been a message to Israel that the group "has many options to fight against you as long as you are occupying your land and committing massacres against our people". And it called Mr al-Maqadma an international figure whose death merited an international response.
Well, weâre celebrating, is that international enough for you?
In the video, Mr Sharif delivers a tirade in English against Israel and the Muslim world. He says: "Muslims are being killed everyday. It is an honour to kill one of those people [Jews]." Mr Hanif, from Hounslow, west London, calls on Muslims everywhere to be "people of action". Mr Sharif, who was married, says he visited a farm destroyed during an Israeli incursion in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahia. "You spend the whole day in fields, and then some dude comes with his truck and runs over it. How would you feel? You feel like standing him up, shooting him... because you have worked for a whole day like that."
Dude, there wouldnât be a truck in the field if guys like you were not boarding buses wearing bombs.
Mr Hanif delivers a traditional speech of Koranic verses, and the men pray in a Gaza flat. The videoâs release comes a day after Israeli troops killed 14 Palestinians in a raid of a Gaza Strip refugee camp.
Now thatâs something to celebrate.

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Fifth Column

On rescuing Private Lynch and forgetting Rachel Corrie

2003-05-22

All we need is violins in the background. Get out your tissues. The lefty deification of Saint Rachel continues...
The Israeli army got away with murder - and now all activists are at risk
So tell them to take the friggin' hint...
By Naomi Klein
Jessica Lynch and Rachel Corrie could have passed for sisters. Two all-American blondes, two destinies for ever changed in a Middle East war zone. Private Jessica Lynch, the soldier, was born in Palestine, West Virginia. Rachel Corrie, the activist, died in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Corrie was four years older than 19-year-old Lynch. Her body was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza seven days before Lynch was taken into Iraqi custody on March 23. Before she went to Iraq, Lynch organised a pen-pal programme with a local kindergarten. Before Corrie left for Gaza, she organised a pen-pal programme between kids in her hometown of Olympia, Washington, and children in Rafah.
Maybe the kids in Olympia sent flags to the kids in Rafah and Rachel taught them how to burn them...
Lynch went to Iraq as a soldier loyal to her government. Corrie went to Gaza to oppose the actions of her government. As a US citizen, she believed she had a special responsibility to defend Palestinians against US-built weapons, purchased with US aid to Israel. In letters home, she described how fresh water was being diverted from Gaza to Israeli settlements, how death was more normal than life. "This is what we pay for here," she wrote. Unlike Lynch, Corrie did not go to Gaza to engage in combat: she went to try to thwart it. Along with her fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), she believed that the Israeli military's incursions could be slowed by the presence of highly visible "internationals". The killing of Palestinian civilians may have become commonplace, the thinking went, but Israel doesn't want the diplomatic or media scandals that would come if it killed a US student.
In retrospect, I would say... she was... WRONG!
In a way, Corrie was harnessing the very thing that she disliked most about her country: the belief that American lives are worth more than any others — and trying to use it to save a few Palestinian homes from demolition. Believing her fluorescent orange jacket would serve as armour, Corrie stood in front of bulldozers, slept beside wells and escorted children to school. If suicide bombers turn their bodies into weapons of death, Corrie turned hers into the opposite — a weapon of life, a "human shield".
Oh... please... my tissues... where are my tissues...
When that Israeli bulldozer driver looked at Corrie's orange jacket and pressed the accelerator, her strategy failed.
OOOOOOPS!
It turns out that the lives of some US citizens — even beautiful, young, white women — are valued more than others. And nothing demonstrates this more starkly than the opposing responses to Rachel Corrie and Pte Jessica Lynch. When the Pentagon announced Lynch's successful rescue, she became a hero, complete with "America loves Jessica" fridge magnets, stickers, T-shirts, mugs, country songs and an NBC made-for-TV movie. According to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, President George Bush was "full of joy for Jessica Lynch". Her rescue, we were told, was a testament to a core American value: as West Virginia senator Jay Rockefeller said to the Senate: "We take care of our people."

Do they? Corrie's death, which made the papers for two days and then virtually disappeared, has met with almost total official silence, despite the fact that eyewitnesses claim it was a deliberate act. President Bush has said nothing about a US citizen killed by a US-made bulldozer bought with US tax dollars. A US congressional resolution demanding an independent inquiry has been buried in committee, leaving the Israeli military's investigation — which cleared itself of any wrongdoing — as the only official investigation.
And you know why, Naomi? Because she was some lunatic leftwing whack job who put herself in the position of getting run over by a bulldozer. She wanted to be a human shield? She GOT to be a human shield! Bigtime!
The ISM says that this non-response has sent a clear, and dangerous, signal. According to Olivia Jackson, a 25-year-old British citizen in Rafah: "After Rachel was killed, [the Israeli military] waited for the response from the American government and the response was pathetic. They know they can get away with it, and it has encouraged them to keep on going."
Yeah, it was all part of that evil Zionist plan.
First there was Brian Avery, a 24-year-old US citizen shot in the face on April 5. Then Tom Hurndall, a British ISM activist shot in the head and left brain dead on April 11. Next was James Miller, the British cameraman shot dead while wearing a vest that said "TV". In all of these cases, eyewitnesses say the shooters were Israeli soldiers.
Remember, folks. It's "Human SHIELD", not "Human Dilletante". And your opponent plays for keeps.And uses real bullets.
There is something else that Jessica Lynch and Rachel Corrie have in common: both of their stories have been distorted by the military for its own purposes. According to the official story, Lynch was captured in a bloody gun battle, mistreated by sadistic Iraqi doctors, then rescued in another storm of bullets by heroic Navy Seals. In the past weeks, another version has emerged. The doctors who treated Lynch found no evidence of battle wounds, and donated their own blood to save her life. Most embarrassing of all, witnesses have told the BBC that those daring Navy Seals already knew there were no Iraqi fighters left in the area when they stormed the hospital.
Naomi might want to do a little more research on this story. The BBC has been ripped to shreds on it.
But while Lynch's story has been distorted to make its protagonists appear more heroic, Corrie's story has been posthumously twisted to make her, and her fellow ISM activists, appear sinister. For months, the Israeli military had been looking for an excuse to get rid of the ISM "troublemakers". It found it in Assif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, the two British suicide bombers. It turns out that they had attended a memorial service for Corrie in Rafah, a fact the Israeli military has seized on to link the ISM to terrorism. Members of ISM point out that the event was open to the public, and that they knew nothing of the British visitors' intentions.
We know nothing! NOTHING!!Who? Assif? Omar? Who? Bombing? What? Doesn't anybody realize we've been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize?
In the past two weeks, half a dozen ISM activists have been arrested, several deported, and the organisation's offices raided. The crackdown is spreading to all "internationals", meaning there are fewer people in the occupied territories to either witness the abuses or assist the victims. On Monday, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process told the security council that dozens of UN aid workers had been prevented from getting in and out of Gaza, calling it a violation of "Israel's international humanitarian law obligations".
The UN comes down on Israel. That's original.
On June 5 there will be a international day of action for Palestinian rights. I'll mark it down on my calendar.
One of the demands is for the UN to send a monitoring force into the occupied territories. Until that happens, many are determined to continue Corrie's work. More than 40 students at her former college, Evergreen State, Olympia, have signed up to go to Gaza with the ISM this summer.
Evergreen State? What kinda crap is the faculty peddling there?
So who is a hero? During the attack on Iraq, some of Corrie's friends emailed her picture to MSNBC asking that it be included on the station's "wall of heroes", along with Jessica Lynch.
Words fail me here...
The network didn't comply, but Corrie is being honoured in other ways. Her family has received more than 10,000 letters of support, communities across the country have organised memorial services, and children from the occupied territories are being named Rachel. It's not a made-for-TV kind of tribute, but maybe that's for the best.
Yep, cry me a river, Naomi. Poor dumb, deluded, dead Rachel.

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Middle East

Omar Khan Sharif sleeps widda fishes

2003-05-19

The Israeli Institute of Forensic Medicine confirmed on Monday a body discovered on the shore of Tel Aviv last week was British suicide bombing suspect Omar Khan Sharif. Sharif, 27, was thought to have been the accomplice of fellow Briton Assif Mohammed Hanif, 21, who died after setting off explosives during the attack in Tel Aviv, which killed three Israelis. Israeli authorities have been hunting Sharif since he vanished from the scene of the bombing on April 30. According to the Israeli media, two British detectives provided DNA samples, used to identify the body as that of Sharif, a British citizen of Pakistani extraction. The cause of his death was recorded as drowning.

Y'see, if you set off on a suicide mission, and you come back alive, that ain't healthy...

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