September 1995: New Islamic Terror Network Threatens Western Democracies, Warns Book by Israeli Leader Benjamin Netanyahu

Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel’s right-wing Likud party, publishes a short book calling on Western nations to unite against terrorism, called Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists. [New York Times, 11/5/1995; New York Times, 11/22/1995; Netanyahu, 2001] In the book, Netanyahu describes his long personal involvement in counterterrorism. He served in Israel’s elite commando unit, Sayeret Matkal, and participated in freeing airline hostages in 1972. [New York Times, 4/20/1999] His brother Jonathan was also a member of Sayaret Maktal and was killed during the rescue of hostages at Entebbe in 1976. [BBC News, 7/3/2006] Netanyahu created an institute devoted to counterterrorism research and named it after his brother. The Jonathan Institute organized a major international conference in 1979 attended by, among others, Senator Henry Jackson (D-WA) and George H. W. Bush. [Netanyahu, 2001, pp. 63-65] The new terrorist network, warns Netanyahu, was born at the end of the Afghan War among Arab Mujahedeen veterans. “The Soviet Union completed its withdrawal from Kabul in 1989,” he writes, “and the Islamic resistance forces have since dispersed.… [T]he Islamic resistance won, offering proof of the innate faithful supremacy of Islam over the infidel powers. In many cases these providential warriors have since been in search of the next step on the road to the triumph of Islam. Often they have had to move from country to country, having been denied the right to return to their home countries for fear that their excessive zeal would find an outlet there. Since the end of the war in Afghanistan, an international Sunni terrorist network has thus sprung into being, composed in the main of Islamic veterans and their religious leaders.… It is this group which is associated with bombers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan.” [Netanyahu, 2001, pp. 80-81] Netanyahu also warns of the spread of Jihadist groups among Muslim communities in Western countries. For example, El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian immigrant who murdered an Israeli rabbi in New York in 1990 (see November 5, 1990), was a follower of Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, who immigrated to the United States in the early 1990s. The bombers involved in the 1993 World Trade Center attack were also followers of Abdul-Rahman. After the attack, investigators re-examined files found at Nosair’s home. One document said, “We have to thoroughly demoralize the enemies of God… by means of destroying and blowing up the towers that constitute the pillars of their civilization, such as the tourist attractions and the high buildings of which they are so proud.” [Netanyahu, 2001, pp. 94]