This is depressing. In an analysis of Zarqawi in the Washington Post, the author says the bombings in Jordan were an indirect hit on Israel:
Triple suicide bombings in Jordan this week marked a breakthrough for Islamic guerrilla leader Abu Musab Zarqawi in his efforts to expand the Iraqi insurgency into a regional conflict and demonstrated his growing independence from the founders of al Qaeda, according to Arab and European intelligence officials.
[…] While bin Laden has been on the run for the past four years, largely cut off from the outside world, Zarqawi has attracted hundreds if not thousands of fighters to Iraq and has avoided capture despite the presence of as many as 150,000 U.S. troops. He also has raised his profile by embracing merciless tactics, including videotaped beheadings and suicide attacks on civilian targets, such as the bombings in Amman that killed nearly 60 people at three hotels Wednesday night.
[…] Unlike bin Laden, Zarqawi has also placed a high priority on fighting Israel and has tried — unsuccessfully — to organize bombings and suicide attacks there, according to Arab intelligence sources.
[…] “The real goal of Zarqawi is to banish Israel from the region, or even annihilate Israel,” Ernst Uhrlau, intelligence coordinator for German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, said at a security conference in Berlin on Thursday. Uhrlau characterized the Amman attacks as an attempt by Zarqawi “to demonstrate the ability to act against Israel from inside Jordan.”
Read it in full.
“This is depressing.”
Nah – just another spot of bother.
There is a song by late Meir Ariel, beloved by all of us, its refrain is:
“But we have managed with Pharaoh, we’ll manage with this as well”.
Cheers.
Zarqawi tries to attack Israel by blowing up hotels in Jordan, killing a wedding party and the head of Pali intel? This is a strike at Israel? Maybe in the fevered fantasies of the jihadis, but there is no reason for anybody with two brain cells to clink together to take that argument seriously.
Now there is no doubt that Al Qaeda in Iraq wants to strike at Israel, as well as beaucoup others that offend their tiny, rat-like brains. But the idea that blowing up Arabs is the way to do it is so risible that only an Islamofascist or somebody like George Galloway could hold it.