Muslims should wage jihad against the U.S. as a response to America’s decision to move its Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to the capital Jerusalem, Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said on Sunday.
The Egyptian doctor who assumed leadership of the global terror group after its founder Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011 made his call in a video titled “Tel Aviv is Also a Land of Muslims.”
U.S. President Donald Trump “was clear and explicit, and he revealed the true face of the modern Crusade, where standing down and appeasement does not work with them, but only resistance through the call and jihad,” al-Zawahiri said, according to a transcript provided to AFP by the SITE monitoring agency.
He added that Bin Laden had declared the U.S. “the first enemy of the Muslims, and swore that it will not dream of security until it is lived in reality in Palestine, and until all the armies of disbelief leave the land of Muhammad.”
Al-Zawahiri argued that Islamic countries had failed to act in Muslims’ interests by entering into the United Nations, which recognizes Israel, and following Security Council and General Assembly resolutions rather than bending to the will of sharia (Islamic law).
This is not the first time the terrorist leader of Al-Qaeda’s “core” – the group that was responsible for carrying out the terror attacks against America on September 11, 2001 – has called for a bloody revolution against U.S. interests by Muslims.
In 2015 he said the same thing, calling for young Muslims to follow in the footsteps of Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and the Kouachi brothers, who carried out the jihadi attack at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.
The new U.S. embassy opens in Jerusalem on Monday.
Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: Follow @SunSimonKent or e-mail to: skent@breitbart.com
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