NEFA Foundation: New Audio From Zawahiri on "Sacrifices of Gaza and the Plotting Against It"
By Evan Kohlmann
The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated a new audio recording from Al-Qaida Deputy Commander Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri released on February 3 and titled, "Sacrifices of Gaza and the Plotting Against It". During his address, Dr. al-Zawahiri expressed his solidarity with embattled Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip: "we are standing with them, and we are avenging them in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Algeria by confronting the ongoing crusader campaign stretching from Chechnya to Somalia, and from Afghanistan to the Islamic Maghreb. I give them the good news that while Israel was bombing resolute Gaza, the treacherous Pakistani Government was forced to cut-off the NATO supply route between Karachi and Jalalabad under the pressure of your brothers, the mujahideen in Pakistan." Once again, al-Zawahiri was sharply critical of U.S. President Barack Obama, mocking his professed "concern" for the "the killing of civilians in Gaza." Dr. al-Zawahiri taunted, "Concerned! We are very thankful for your concern, Mr. Obama. Your concern has reached us, accompanied by thousands of bombs and tons of white phosphorus, mixed with the blood, corpses, and tears of Muslims in Gaza... In his inauguration speech, he failed to mention a single word about what happened in Gaza." Al-Zawahiri once again called upon faithful Muslims to volunteer service with mujahideen organizations or else contribute the necessary financing for mujahideen operations. He implored, "if the Zionist-Crusader campaign confronts us everywhere, and attacks Islam and Muslims across the entire world in the so-called ‘war on terrorism’—but in reality, it is the ‘war on Islam’—why would we not attack them everywhere? Why wait for the enemy to choose for us the battlefield, the time, the place, and the method with which we shall fight him?"
An English transcript of al-Zawahiri's recording can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.
