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Al Qaeda urges attacks in US, Britain to avenge Gaza war | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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DUBAI (AFP) — A prominent Al-Qaeda figure, Abu Yahya al-Libi, on Thursday urged Islamist militants to launch attacks in the West, naming the United States and Britain, to avenge Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.

“Sacrifice what you can to deliver to the capitals of the infidel West, the criminal America, and the agent tyrants a taste of what they deliver to our brothers and our oppressed brothers and people in Palestine,” Libi said in a videotape posted on the Internet, according a translation by SITE monitoring group.

“Deliver to them the bitter taste of war, tragedies of displacement, and the bitterness of terror,” he said.

“It is time for this criminal state, and I mean Britain, to pay the price for its historic crime, which we have not and will not forget,” added Libi, blaming Palestinian suffering on Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917 which promised a homeland for Jewish people.

Libi, who is a Sharia committee official within al-Qaeda, said that alleviating the suffering of Palestinians will not come through protest or demonstrations, but through physical action against the enemy, US-based SITE reported.

The videotaped message, titled “Palestine… Now the Fighting is Fierce” is the third message by a member of al-Qaeda leadership within three weeks, calling to avenge the Israel’s devastating offensive against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden on January 14 called in an audiotaped message for Jihad, or holy war, to stop Israel’s “aggression” on Gaza, while al-Qaeda number-two, Ayman al-Zawhari, explicitly called on January 6 for attacks everywhere on the interests of the “Zionist crusader campaign” on Gaza.