After Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers, some Middle East experts rushed to illuminate and enumerate all the differences between Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, emphasizing that the two groups had little in common and almost no chance of working together. According to today’s NYT, al Qaeda doesn’t listen to Middle East experts:
Perhaps nothing underscored Hezbollah’s rising stock more than the sudden appearance of a tape from the Qaeda leadership attempting to grab some of the limelight.
Al Jazeera satellite television broadcast a tape from Mr. Zawahri (za-WAH-ri). Large panels behind him showed a picture of the exploding World Trade Center as well as portraits of two Egyptian Qaeda members, Muhammad Atef, a Qaeda commander who was killed by an American airstrike in Afghanistan, and Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker on Sept. 11, 2001. He described the two as fighters for the Palestinians.
Mr. Zawahri tried to argue that the fight against American forces in Iraq paralleled what Hezbollah was doing, though he did not mention the organization by name.
“It is an advantage that Iraq is near Palestine,” he said. “Muslims should support its holy warriors until an Islamic emirate dedicated to jihad is established there, which could then transfer the jihad to the borders of Palestine.”
Such rising support for Hezbollah from our enemies makes the media’s reluctance to connect the dots all the more alarming.
P.S. Sorry for the light posting lately. I’ve been traveling with family in Germany and internet access has been hard to come by. I’ll be back in the U.S. on Monday.