Ayman al-Zawahiri: "Charge towards your targets… Let us hit their interests everywhere.”
By Evan Kohlmann
The NEFA Foundation has obtained a copy of a new audio recording from Al-Qaida’s Deputy Commander Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, titled “A Call to Help Our People in Gaza.” During his speech, Zawahiri called upon Muslims everywhere to “attack the interests of the Jews and the Americans… Select your targets, collect the appropriate funds, assemble your equipment, plan [your attacks] accurately, and then charge towards your targets… There is no place today for those who claim that the battlefield with the Jews is limited to Palestine… Let us hit their interests everywhere.” A complete English transcript of the recording is now available on the NEFA website.
Zawahiri's choice of words was unusual, and even his typically fiery rhetoric is rarely this specific. In recent months, there has similarly been an increasing Al-Qaida focus on the plight of the Palestinians, capped off by Al-Qaida's "amir al-mumineen" in Iraq Abu Omar al-Baghdadi bestowing public recognition on the Fatah al-Islam movement as Al-Qaida's official delegation in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. There seems to be a belief among Al-Qaida's leaders that it can restore the image of the flagging jihad movement in Iraq by shoring up its connections to the sacrosanct cause of jihad in Palestine. With the latest threats from Dr. al-Zawahiri, one is left only to wonder how far Al-Qaida intends to go in order to prove its ideological and practical commitment to besieged Palestinian Islamists holed up in Nahr al-Bared and the Gaza Strip.