Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, took aim at US President Barack Obama in a new video, accusing him of continuing to spill the blood of Muslims and saying Israel was a “crime” that must be wiped out, a US monitoring group said.
He also dismissed Obama’s Middle East peace push as a “deception” and accused Obama of seeking to create a “Palestinian state that works as a branch of the Israeli intelligence,” said a transcript of an interview published by the SITE Intelligence Group on Monday.
“Israel is a crime that must be eliminated,” declared the Egyptian-born surgeon considered the brains behind al-Qaeda, adding that Muslims have a duty to expel Israel from Palestine.
Zawahiri, whose whereabouts remain a mystery, also rejected Obama’s overtures to the Muslim world as an illusion, pointing to raids in Pakistan’s tribal regions and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Zawahiri, who dismissed Obama as a “house Negro” after his election in November, branded the US president a “criminal” and a “liar.”
“I say to him and to the Americans, plant hatred in the hearts of Muslims to reap [the harvest] from your blood,” Zawahiri said in his latest interview with al-Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab.
Obama, who made a landmark speech in Cairo in June calling for improved ties between the West and Islam, “tries to sell an illusion to the wrong and oppressed,” said Zawahiri, who has a US$25 million bounty on his head.
He charged that Muslims were being “massacred” because of Obama’s policies in Pakistan and Afghanistan and insisted that Islamist fighters would continue to battle “infidel” troops until they withdraw from Muslim land.
In a video that SITE said was posted on jihadists Web forums last month, Zawahiri urged Pakistanis to support insurgents in their battle against a US-led “crusade,” which he said threatened the country’s existence,.
Zawahiri also blasted Obama’s Middle East policies, saying the US president was not sincere in his declared quest to reach a solution to decades of conflict and set up a Palestinian state.
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