The very serious and high-brow American magazine Foreign Policy has a middle-east blog. I didn’t know that, but now I do and I’ll keep an eye on it, because from what I’ve briefly read, it’s very good. And – my God – do the Americans need to see reason here!
In this post Marc Lynch has been to a round table conversation with the Israeli ambassador Sallai Meridor. Here’s the last couple of lines from the post:
In short, Meridor quite literally offered no strategy beyond hitting Gaza hard and hoping for the best. “In terms of creating damage we are certainly on the right path,” noted the Ambassador. Few would disagree with that assessment, at least. But some might hope that the bloody, battered path might actually be leading somewhere.
In the latest post, he tells about the reactions from a person called Ayman al-Zawahiri on behalf of Al-Qaeda to the bombing of Gaza:
He sounds about as happy as I can remember hearing him of late. He probably can’t believe his luck.
That is of course not at all surprising. Why is it that apparently the American, the British, the Israeli, the <fill in the blank> government can’t see that they are playing right into the hands of this world’s religious fanatics, left, right and eh, hopefully not centre, with this so-called War on Terror?
It’s late and I’m heading for bed – just stumbled over this and had to share it with you.
Ayman al-Zawahiri is the supposely the real brain behind Al Qaida – He’s on FBI’s the most wanted list – Believed dead a number of times, but still alive and kicking. He’s a surgeon from Egypt and the leader of ” Egyptian Islamic Jihad” at the tender age of 15 ! now second in command in al Qaeda. (Charmed Bin Laden + loads of Osama’s $ in Pakistan and they formed al-Qaeda together – short version of the story!)
They are now more or less the symbiotic twins of al Qaeda; Ayman being the extrovert spokesman while elusive Osama is in hiding…
(Google his name and you’ll get 488.000 results)