debkafile: Bin Laden uses Nazi Holocaust to slam Western culture
In his first videotaped speech in three years, Osama bin Laden on Sept 7 addresses the Holocaust at length for the first time, branding “the Holocaust of the Jews as “your [American] culture, not our culture.” He says: “In fact, burning living beings is forbidden in our religion (sic!), even if they be small like the ant, so what of man!” [And what of New York?]
In another cynical distortion of the facts, al Qaeda’s leader praises on high the Muslim role in the Holocaust period.
“The holocaust of the Jews was carried out by your brethren in the middle of Europe. Had it been closer to our countries, most of the Jews would have been saved by taking refuge with us,” he said.
He expands further on his ideal of the Jews’ status in Muslim lands: “And my proof for that is in what your brothers, the Spanish, did when they set up the horrible courts of the Inquisition to try Muslims and Jews, when the Jews only found safe shelter by taking refuge in our countries.”
In fact, for thousands of years, the Jews of most Muslim countries were tolerated at best as second-class citizens who lived under the protection of sovereign.
As further proof of his contention, bin Laden declares: “…that is why the Jewish community in Morocco today is one of the largest communities in the world. They are alive with us and we have not incinerated them.”
Another fact: Only a few thousand Jews remain in Morocco from a vibrant community of 265,000 prior to 1948. In that year, entire Jewish communities were dispossessed and thrown out of Morocco and most other Arab Muslim countries. They found refuge in the fledgling State of Israel. And in 2003, he sent his suicide bombers to attack… Casablanca’s Jewish Quarter.
Al Qaeda’s leader opens his 30-minute tape marking the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, with: “Praise to Allah” and his “law of retaliation” – “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and the killer is killed.” He says the US is vulnerable despite its economic strength and military might. Bin Laden urges Americans to convert to Islam to end the Iraq war.