AQAP seeks to capitalize on anti-Israeli sentiment in new English-language magazine, Long War Journal, Thomas Joscelyn, August 17, 2014

AQAP provides a list of potential targets in the US and Britain where a car bomb could be deployed. The list includes specific locations such as Times Square, the Georgia Military College in Milledgeville, Georgia, the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the headquarters for General Atomics in San Diego, California. General Atomics is a defense contractor that develops unmanned aircraft systems and sensors, among other products.

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Al Malahem Media, the official propaganda arm of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has released a new English-language magazine titled, “Palestine, betrayal of the guilty conscience.” The slickly-produced publication was released online on Aug. 16 and, as a piece of propaganda, seeks to capitalize on anti-Israeli sentiment.

The magazine is similar to AQAP’s Inspire magazine, which has encouraged jihadist recruits to carry out individual acts of terrorism. The authors of the 24-page production portray their message as being part of the same “school” of thought that has led to a long line of terrorist attacks against American and Israeli interests, including those planned by al Qaeda’s senior leadership.

AQAP encourages jihadists to commit a new terrorist attack against American and Israeli interests, portraying the possible new attack as being consistent with a long line of other operations, including those planned by al Qaeda’s senior leadership.

“The statements, views and strategies expressed herein are those in line with September 11, [the] Muhammad Merah Operation, the Brussels Museum Shooting and [the] Boston Bombings,” the magazine reads. “This booklet is a collection of statements regarding this school plus a couple of ways to arm yourselves,” it continues. “This work is prepared to help the reader find a way to support his Muslim brothers in Palestine and Gaza.”

As in past AQAP publications, aspiring jihadists are given do-it-yourself instructions on how to build bombs. A section by the “AQ Chef” adapted from the first issue of Inspire shows how to build pressure cooker bombs like those used in the Apr. 15, 2013 Boston bombings. A photo glorifying the Tsarnaev brothers, the perpetrators of the attack, is included.

Another section, adapted from the 12th issue of Inspire, shows readers how to build a car bomb like the one used in the failed May 1, 2010 Times Square attack. That operation was carried out by Faisal Shahzad, who was trained by the Pakistani Taliban, and a photo of Shahzad accompanies the instructions.

AQAP provides a list of potential targets in the US and Britain where a car bomb could be deployed. The list includes specific locations such as Times Square, the Georgia Military College in Milledgeville, Georgia, the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the headquarters for General Atomics in San Diego, California. General Atomics is a defense contractor that develops unmanned aircraft systems and sensors, among other products.

Confronting the imagined Zionist-Crusader conspiracy

AQAP’s newest online magazine features the writings of prominent al Qaeda leaders and operatives, both deceased and alive, including Osama bin Laden and Abu Yahya al Libi. A piece by Samir Khan, an American who helped produce Inspire magazine before he was killed in a US drone strike, is also included.

One page includes quotes from Nasir al Wuhayshi, the head of AQAP and general manager of al Qaeda’s operations. Wuhayshi’s words are excerpted from the AQAP film, “Here We Start, And At Al-Aqsa We Will Meet.”

Wuhayshi says that demonstrations are not enough to counter the Zionist-Crusader alliance, a conspiratorial motif that is often included in al Qaeda’s propaganda. “No, demonstrations must be followed by explosions, and civil disobedience by military rage, and we must cut aid to the Zio-Crusader and kill those of the Crusaders whom we find on our land, and destroy Western interests until Europe and America stop their support of the Jews and stop the killing there and order their agents, the treasonous rulers, to open the border-crossings to Gaza and Palestine,” Wuhayshi says.

Another AQAP leader, Harith bin Ghazi al Nadhari, also stresses the importance of confronting the imagined Zionist-Crusader conspiracy. Nadhari’s statement first appeared in an audio message released earlier this year. The “cursed state of Jews is nothing without the American aid and support,” Nadhari says. “The Jews and the Americans are sharing the same trench in fighting the Muslim ummah [community]. So it is incumbent upon all Muslims to fight this Zio-Crusader enemy who has allied against the Muslim ummah.”

“The same way Muslims are obliged to fight and repel the Zionist Jews, they are obliged to fight America and their allies, the allies of the Jews in the killing of Muslims,” Nadhari argues.

Nadhari is a prominent AQAP ideologue whose writings have also been featured in al Qaeda publications focusing on the jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Netanyahu-Sisi-Abbas lineup tells Hamas: Accept an extra month’s truce – or Ramallah will, DEBKAfile, August 17, 2014

Binyamin Netanyahu talks tough at cabinet session

The Egyptian and Palestinian Authority delegations slapped down an ultimatum for Hamas when negotiations for a durable Gaza truce resumed in Cairo, Sunday, Aug. 17. DEBKAfile’s intelligence report that Hamas was given the option of declaring a one-month extension of the five-day ceasefire which runs out Monday midnight, or else the announcement would be made from Ramallah Monday in the name of the Palestinian national unity government. This was the first joint action taken by the triple bloc formed by Egyptian President Abdel Fatteh El-Sisi, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for pushing the Islamist Hamas-Islamic Jihad duo up against a wall.

Their lineup, backed from the wings by Saudi King Abdullah and Russian President Vladimir Putin, set itself five objectives:

1.  To confront Hamas with a solid political-security front which is beyond its power to break.

2.  To corner Hamas into accepting the Egyptian ceasefire proposion unchanged and unconditionally.

3.  To compel Hamas to disarm, i.e. dismantle its rockets and tunnels, so pulling the teeth of its military wing, Ezz e-Din al-Qassam.

4.  To distance the Obama administration from the triple bloc’s dealings with the Palestinian Islamist factions.

5.  To keep the Europeans from interfering in those dealings.

The foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany and Italy meeting in Brussels offered Friday to take charge of Gaza’s border crossings and work to prevent illegal arms flows.

Saturday, Cairo, Jerusalem and Ramallah politely informed Brussels that they preferred to handle this situation on their own and no European diplomatic or security assistance was needed.

The quiet shaping of this three-way alliance for resolving the Gaza conflict, by means of a sustainable cessation of hostilities, kept most of Israel’s and world media guessing, says DEBKAfile. In the interests of tight secrecy, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon chose to keep the rest of the cabinet in the dark as well, incurring loud complaints from ministers.

The proposition the three partners have formulated puts Hamas and Jihad on the spot. The Arab world has abandoned them and their only source of funding is Tehran. So their choices are grim: Face an escalated war that Israel will fight until the bitter end, or swallow hard and accept the only proposition on the table which is tantamount to disarmament and capitulation.

Their isolation is complete. The Egyptian, Israeli and Palestinian leaders have managed to cut Hamas away from any backing in Washington, Qatar and Turkey as well as blocking its path to Moscow.

To encourage Hamas to choose the right path, the Israel Air Force is cruising around-the-clock over Hamas bases and command centers in the Gaza Strip, ready at a signal to switch to the offensive if the Palestinian fundamentalists make the wrong choice in Cairo.

Mahmoud Abbas, who appeared to be sitting on the sidelines of the Gaza conflict during Israel’s month-long military operation, finally threw in his lot with Sisi and Netanyahu when it came to the crunch.

The tone of address adopted by Netanyahu at Sunday’s cabinet session was a pointer to the tough new mood prevailing in Jerusalem: “Hamas is mistaken if it thinks it can come out of a military defeat with a diplomatic victory… or that we lack the resolve and endurance for a drawn-out conflict,” he said..

Even in this troubled times we need a laugh !

Funniest BMW Auto complaint you’ll ever hear

On Cyprus, the World Is Silent, National Review, Victor Davis Hanson, August 14, 2014

A U.N. peacekeeper in the buffer zone in Anatolia, Cyprus. (Andrew-Caballero-Reynolds)

Thousands of settlers from Anatolia were shipped in by the Turkish government to occupy former Greek villages and to change Cypriot demography — in the same manner the occupying Ottoman Empire once did in the 16th century. Not a single nation recognizes the legitimacy of the Turkish Cypriot state. In contrast, Greek Cyprus is a member of the European Union.

Why, then, is the world not outraged at an occupied Cyprus the way it is at, say, Israel?

Only when a Westernized country like Israel inflicts far less injury to Muslims does the West become irate. The same paradox seems to hold true for victims. Apparently, Western Christian Greeks are not the romantic victims that Palestinian Muslims are.

[T]he Middle East is not just about a dispute over land. Israel is inordinately damned for what it supposedly does because its friends are few, its population is tiny, and its adversaries beyond Gaza numerous, dangerous, and often powerful.

And, of course, because it is Jewish.

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Limassol, Cyprus — Cyprus is a beautiful island. But it has never recovered from the Turkish invasion of 1974. Turkish troops still control nearly 40 percent of the island — the most fertile and formerly the richest portion.

Some 200,000 Greek refugees never returned home after being expelled from their homes and farms in Northern Cyprus.

The capital of Nicosia remains divided. A 112-mile demilitarized “green line” runs right through the city across the entire island.

Thousands of settlers from Anatolia were shipped in by the Turkish government to occupy former Greek villages and to change Cypriot demography — in the same manner the occupying Ottoman Empire once did in the 16th century. Not a single nation recognizes the legitimacy of the Turkish Cypriot state. In contrast, Greek Cyprus is a member of the European Union.

Why, then, is the world not outraged at an occupied Cyprus the way it is at, say, Israel?

Nicosia is certainly more divided than is Jerusalem. Thousands of Greek refugees lost their homes more recently, in 1974, than did the Palestinians in 1947.

Turkey has far more troops in Northern Cyprus than Israel has in the West Bank. Greek Cypriots, unlike Palestinians, vastly outnumbered their adversaries. Indeed, a minority comprising about a quarter of the island’s population controls close to 40 percent of the landmass. Whereas Israel is a member of the U.N., Turkish Cyprus is an unrecognized outlaw nation.

Any Greek Cypriot attempt to reunify the island would be crushed by the formidable Turkish army, in the brutal manner of the brief war of 1974. Turkish generals would most likely not phone Greek homeowners warning them to evacuate their homes ahead of incoming Turkish artillery shells.

The island remains conquered not because the Greeks have given up, but because their resistance is futile against a NATO power of some 70 million people. Greeks know that Turkey worries little about what the world thinks of its occupation.

Greeks in Cyprus and mainland Greece together number less than 13 million people. That is far less than the roughly 300 million Arabic speakers, many from homelands that export oil, who support the Palestinians.

No European journalist fears that Greek terrorists will track him down should he write something critical of the Greek Cypriot cause. Greek Cypriots would not bully a journalist in their midst for broadcasting a critical report, the way Hamas surely would do to any candid reporter in Gaza.

In other words, there is not much practical advantage or interest in promoting the Greek Cypriot cause.

Unlike Israel, Turkey is in NATO — and is currently becoming more Islamic and anti-Western under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. If it is easy for the United States to jawbone tiny Israel, it is geostrategically unwise to do so to Turkey over the island of Cyprus.

Turkey is also less emblematic of the West than is Israel. In the racist habit of assuming low expectations for non-Westerners, European elites do not hold Turkey to the same standards that they do Israel.

We see such hypocrisy when the West stays silent while Muslims butcher each other by the thousands in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, and Syria. Only when a Westernized country like Israel inflicts far less injury to Muslims does the West become irate. The same paradox seems to hold true for victims. Apparently, Western Christian Greeks are not the romantic victims that Palestinian Muslims are.

In the 40 years since they lost their land, Greek Cypriots have turned the once impoverished south into a far more prosperous land than the once-affluent but now stagnant Turkish-occupied north — unlike the Palestinians, who have not used their know-how to turn Gaza or Ramallah into a city like Limassol.

Resurgent anti-Semitism both in the Middle East and in Europe translates into inordinate criticism of Israel. Few connect Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus with some larger racist commentary about the supposed brutal past of the Turks.

The next time anti-Israeli demonstrators shout about divided cities, refugees, walls, settlers, and occupied land, let us understand that those are not necessarily the issues in the Middle East. If they were, the Cyprus tragedy would also be center-stage. Likewise, crowds would be damning China for occupying Tibet, or still sympathizing with millions of Germans who fled a now-nonexistent Prussia, or deploring religious castes in India, or harboring anger over the tough Russian responses to Georgia, Crimea, and Ukraine, or deploring beheadings in northern Iraq.

Instead, accept that the Middle East is not just about a dispute over land. Israel is inordinately damned for what it supposedly does because its friends are few, its population is tiny, and its adversaries beyond Gaza numerous, dangerous, and often powerful.

And, of course, because it is Jewish.