"Your only alternative is to pursue the armed struggle until the liberation of Palestine and the building of an Islamic state," Al-Zawahiri said in the latest Al-Qaeda video, addressing the Hamas terror group that now rules the Palestinian Authority (PA). "Reaching power is not a goal by itself," he added, in the statement aired by the Al-Jazeera satellite TV station on Saturday.
Al-Zawahiri expressed satisfaction with the rise to power of the Islamic Hamas, saying, "The secularists in the Palestinian Authority have sold out Palestine for crumbs," and warning Arabs of the PA not to honor any past agreements made with Israel. He expressed reservations, however, with the seeming participation of Hamas in the political process. "We have to be aware of the American game called 'political process,'" he said
Zawahiri called on Muslims to boycott European nations that published cartoons of Islam's founder, Mohammed. "The insults against Prophet Muhammad are not the result of freedom of opinion but because what is sacred has changed in this culture," he said. "Muhammad and Jesus are not sacred any more, while Semites and the Holocaust and homosexuality have become sacred."
In another recent rallying cry to Muslims worldwide, Al-Zawahiri exhorted: "Nothing will do you good, but toting arms and taking revenge against your enemies, the Americans and the Jews… The crusaders and the Jews understand only the language of killing and blood."
Al-Zawahiri, 54, an Egyptian doctor, is believed to have masterminded the September 11th, 2001 terror attacks against America, as well as the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa. He appeared in Saturday's video with a black turban, seated in front of a window.
Hamas official Osama Hamdan, speaking to Al-Jazeera in response to the statement, assured Muslims that Hamas has no intention of recognizing past commitments to the Israelis and, though it appreciates advice from Al-Qaeda, has things under control. "The Hamas movement will not fail the Palestinian people and the [Islamic] nation," Hamdan said. "There is nothing wrong with [offering] advice, but what we want … is support from the nation."
Former Israeli UN Ambassador Dore Gold wrote an op-ed piece Sunday, in which he outlined some of the extensive links that have been found linking Hamas and Al-Qaeda. Examples:
* In 2003, an Israeli ground unit in Gaza, seeking Hamas suspects, went into a school established by the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. Written materials that Israeli soldiers collected revealed the writings of a famous Saudi Wahabi religious authority, Sheikh Sulaiman Al-Ulwan. His ideological entry into the world of Hamas immediately raised eyebrows. After all, his name was featured in a famous Osama bin Laden video clip from December 2001, when the al Qaeda leader entertained his entourage on camera by re-enacting with his hands the hijacked aircraft slamming into the World Trade Center on September 11th. In that video, one Saudi messenger entered the scene at the end, telling bin Laden that he brought with him a "beautiful fatwa" from al-Ulwan, who had justified the mass murder of Americans. Now his ideas have penetrated the Palestinians as well. And his Islamic religious ruling justifying suicide bombing attacks appeared on the Hamas Web site along with those of other al-Qaeda clerics.
* Bin Laden sent emissaries to Hamas in September 2000 and January 2001.
* Israel arrested three Hamas terrorists in 2003 after they had returned from an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda chief Abu Zubaydah entered the world of terrorism through Hamas. And according to a 2004 FBI affidavit, Al Qaeda recruited Hamas members to conduct surveillance against potential targets in the United States.
* In 2003 and 2004, Israeli forces found Hamas posters that were distributed in West Bank cities that extolled the war being waged by Islamic militants in the Balkans, Chechnya and Kashmir. At the top was the portrait of Hamas leader Yassin alongside the portraits of bin Laden and Chechen militant leaders like Shamil Besayev, who took credit for the bloody attack on a Russian school in Beslan.
Gold also writes about Hamas and Al-Qaeda's common source of recruits and grassroots support of the Muslim Brotherhood present in every country in the Arab world.