Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, made a dramatic intervention in the Lebanese crisis yesterday with a new videotape calling on Muslims everywhere to rise up against Zionists and "crusaders".
"How can we remain silent while watching bombs raining on our people?" he asked. "O Muslims everywhere, I call on you to fight and become martyrs in the war against the Zionists and the crusaders," he said in the eight-minute tape entitled The Zionist-Crusader War on Lebanon and the Palestinians, parts of which were broadcast by al-Jazeera television yesterday.
Zawahiri also criticised "impotent, treacherous" Arab governments for their feeble response to the Israeli attacks.
"My fellow Muslims, it is obvious that Arab and Islamic governments are not only impotent but also complicit . . . and you are alone on the battlefield. Rely on Allah and fight your enemies . . . make yourselves martyrs."
He added: "All the world is a battlefield open in front of us. The war with Israel does not depend on ceasefires . . . It is a jihad for the sake of Allah and will last until [ our] religion prevails . . . from Spain to Iraq." (Spain was under Muslim rule for several centuries, starting in 711 and ending with the fall of Granada in 1492.)
In the recording, Egyptian-born Zawahiri wore a grey robe and white turban in front of a picture of the burning World Trade Centre.
In the background were photos of two other militants identified as Muhammad Atta, ringleader of the September 11th attacks, and Muhammad Atef (also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri), an aide to Osama bin Laden who was killed by a US air strike in Afghanistan in 2001.
"There are 10,000 prisoners of war in Israel's jails that nobody bothers about, but when it came to three Israeli soldiers, the whole world was turned upside down," Zawahiri said in the message. Palestinian militants from Hamas are holding one Israeli soldier and Hizbullah is holding two.
"As they fight us everywhere, we will fight them everywhere; everyone who has joined in the crime must pay the price; we can't stand by and monitor these rockets spewing their fire on the people of Lebanon and remain quiet," Zawahiri continued.
"The war with Israel is not based on any agreements or any border disputes . . . it is jihad for the sake of Allah, to free all of Palestine from occupation and to rid all the homes of Islam from the crusaders. The whole world is our battlefield."
Zawahiri did not mention Hizbullah - the Lebanese Shia organisation - by name. Al-Qaeda's leaders are Sunni Muslims and in a tape last June Zawahiri referred to the Iraqi Shia as "infidels".
In a message broadcast in 2004, bin Laden claimed that the September 11th attacks had been inspired by "the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon" - especially the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
"I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents . . ." bin Laden said in the tape.
"As I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted."