Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called for jihad over the Israeli offensive in Gaza in a new audio tape that appeared on Islamist websites on Wednesday (Jan 14). “God has bestowed us with the patience to continue the path of jihad for another seven years, and seven and seven years,” bin Laden said in the tape that was dated in the current Islamic month.
Bin Laden also condemns Arab governments for preventing their people from acting to “liberate Palestine.” The tape was entitled “A Call for Jihad to Stop the Aggression against Gaza”. “The question is, can America continue its war with us for several more decades to come? Reports and evidence would suggest otherwise,” he said.
The authenticity of the tape could not immediately be verified.
The Palestinian death toll from the 19-day-old Israeli offensive against the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza has risen to about 1,000. Israel says 13 Israelis have been killed. The Saudi-born terrorist said the global financial crisis had exposed the waning influence of the United States in world affairs and would in turn weaken its ally Israel.
More than 60 messages have been broadcast by bin Laden, his second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri and their allies since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Last week Zawahri, in an Internet message, called on Muslims to strike Western and Israeli targets around the world over Israel’s Gaza raids.
However, the authenticity of the tape cannot be independently confirmed but the voice resembles bin Laden as heard in previous messages.
Apparent bin Laden tape shows isolation :US
The White House on Wednesday (Jan 14) declined to authenticate a purported audio message from Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden but said it appeared to be an effort to stay relevant and raise money.
“It appears this tape demonstrates his isolation and continued attempts to remain relevant at a time when Al-Qaeda’s ideology, mission, and agenda are being questioned and challenged throughout the world,” said spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
“This also looks to be an effort to raise money as part of their ongoing propaganda campaign,” said Johndroe, who underlined “I won’t speak to the authenticity of the audiotape, that is for others.”
A US counterterrorism official, who requested anonymity, told: “There is no reason to doubt that he (bin Laden) is alive and that he does play a role in directing Al-Qaeda efforts, particularly at a strategic level.”
The recording, highlighted by a US-based monitoring service, came less than one week before US president-elect Barack Obama takes office January 20 and inherits the global war on terrorism that President George W Bush launched after Al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
“The United States promotes an alternative, hopeful ideology while continuing to partner with over 90 countries to pursue terrorists wherever they are,” said Johndroe.
In his first recorded statement in eight months, bin Laden demanded a holy war against Israel in revenge for its deadly Gaza offensive, the IntelCentre service said. In the 22-minute audio recording entitled “A Call for Jihad to Stop Aggression Against Gaza,” Bin Laden called for a holy war to restore “Jerusalem and Palestine,” IntelCentre said.
Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are hiding in Pakistan’s tribal areas, where the US is fighting a war on terror, Vice President Joe Biden said today.
“In the FATA, the western part of Pakistan in the mountains on the Afghan border, that is a war on terror. That’s where al-Qaeda lives. That’s where bin Laden is. That’s where the most radicalised part of the Taliban is,” Biden told Wolf Blitzer of the CNN in an interview.
“The situation we have as it relates to problems that exist in other parts of the world, they aren’t all related to terror,” he said in response to a question if the Obama Administration has stopped use of the phrase “global war on terror”.
Biden asserted there is a war on terror. “Terror is a legitimate threat. It is a threat that comes from al-Qaeda and those organisations that have morphed off of al-Qaeda, but there are other interests we have beyond merely - for example, the situation in the Middle East is not a global war on terror. But it matters to us mightily whether or not we end up with an accommodation between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” he said.