TEL AVIV – A Jordanian newspaper published an apparent satire piece highlighting Arab “achievements” in 2016, including the perfection of the car bomb, the emergence of lone-wolf terrorism, and the creation of refugees.
The article, published in Al Ghad newspaper and cited by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), comes on the heels of a list of 2016’s scientific achievements published by the BBC. That list included the discovery of the gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein, the discovery of a ninth planet in the solar system, and a brain chip allowing paraplegics to move their limbs.
The Arab list, authored by Muhammad Abu Rumman, a researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, includes stellar accomplishments which, in the author’s words, are both scientific and non-scientific in nature.
Below is the list in full:
1. The car bomb tactic, which the Islamic State and Jabhat Al-Nusra excel at, which transforms basic primary materials into a devastating mechanism of killing, without the need to develop inventions and carry out complex scientific research as is done in the West. It is enough to pack a large amount of explosives into a car, don an explosive vest, and embed yourself in the ranks of the ‘enemy’ in order to injure and kill dozens and cause horrid destruction. IS has announced that, according to a recent study [it conducted], in the recent period there have been 1,112 martyrdom operations, all of whose perpetrators obviously died, and that during that period, they killed a large number of people on the other side.
2. Transforming any device or tool into a tank or lethal bomb, as happened when [IS] supporters in Europe, who are usually of Arab descent, ran over passersby in Nice, France and elsewhere. Thus, knives have become tools for carrying out stabbing [attacks] and axes and butcher knives have [likewise] become deadly weapons.
3. The idea of the “lone wolf:” As opposed to the elaborate planning of operations such as September 11, 2001, and other [complex] operations that require financial expenditure, prolonged preparation, and increased coordination efforts, [terror] has [now] become much easier. It is enough to engage in “brainwashing” – using the virtual world, or even relatives or friends – in order to turn a man into a “lone wolf” who aspires to carry out an attack and kill as many people as possible. Since the lone wolf is usually incapable of targeting military or security installations, IS has granted him religious permission to harm anything that moves, and sometimes things that don’t – whether it is a Shi’ite praying in his mosque, or a group of people at soccer [match] or in a church, nightclub or market.
4. “Barrel bombs” – an amazing achievement or discovery credited to the Syrian regime. If you wish to eliminate an armed uprising, instead of conducting urban combat with precise military planning and directly confronting [the rebels], and instead of using expensive missiles that might miss their targets, all you have to do is use “barrel bombs” dropped from planes that kill hundreds of people, and terrify the others into “willingly emigrating.”
5. Successes in the field of ethnic cleansing.
6. Refugees.
7. Destroying and blowing up antiquities.
8. Our capabilities in the field of destroying our own people and structures. There have been cumulative achievements [in this field] in the past year, and according to the recent [UNDP] Arab Human Development Report, the Arab region’s share of world’s battle-related deaths in 2014 was 68.5%, its share of world’s refugees was 57.5%, and its share of world’s IDP [Internally Displaced People] was 47%.
9. [Recognizing] the importance of tyrannical regimes in preserving stability.
10. Rediscovering the Shi’ite-Sunni conflict.
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