[size=18]Bin Laden on Palestine[/size]

[i]From a review of 'Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden', edited by Bruce Lawrence, Verso, 2005.[/i]

Take Palestine. It is widely assumed that al-Qaeda's violence is primarily motivated by Israel's oppression of the Palestinians and will continue until that issue is resolved. Yet bin Laden's nods to Palestine over the past 10 years tell a different story.

In 1994 bin Laden only mentions Palestine as a way of having a pop at the rulers of Saudi Arabia, whom he really despises for 'betraying' Islam and for having the nerve to expel him from Saudi territory (his birthplace) in 1991 and revoke his citizenship in 1994. Bruce Lawrence, editor of this collection, has given bin Laden's first major public pronouncement - made on 29 December 1994 - the heading 'The betrayal of Palestine'; but when you read it, Palestine is cynically mentioned as part of bin Laden's spat with Saudi rulers. The statement is in fact a letter to Chief Mufti bin Baz, the Head of the Council of the ulema in Saudi Arabia, issued by the Advice and Reform Committee set up by bin Laden to 'promote peaceful and constructive reform with regard to the way Arabia is governed' and whose offices were in Dollis Hill, north London (!).

That the editor has headlined the statement 'The betrayal of Palestine' points to a political agenda on his and the publisher's part - even suggesting that their aim is to give consistency and coherence to bin Laden's rants where neither exists. This early statement would have been better headlined 'The betrayal of Osama bin Laden….by those Saudi bastards!' It is an obscurantist screed about how Saudi rulers have put big business before pure Islam, such as by allowing 'the practice of usury, which is now widespread in the country thanks to the usurious state institutions and banks whose towers are competing with the minarets of the two Holy Sanctuaries'. The stuff about Palestine comes a poor second to bin Laden's boring complaints about usury, some Saudi royal wearing a crucifix (sacrilege!), and Saudi support for 'the leaders of apostasy, the Communist Socialists in Yemen'.

Bin Laden sounds like a spoilt middle-class brat sticking two fingers up at his family and former friends (he was once close to various Saudi rulers) for getting all money-obsessed, dude. In fact, that's exactly what he is: the son of a Saudi billionaire who in the 1970s made a fortune from running one of daddy's construction firms and drove a white Chrysler, but then went all religious and decided that capitalism is not very nice. If he'd been born in the Home Counties instead of Riyadh, he would probably have been one of those Eton-educated types who turn their backs on privilege and piss off their parents by becoming smelly hippies who smash up McDonald's.

Fast forward 10 years to 15 April 2004, and bin Laden is describing Palestine as the 'real' issue. If his big issue in 1994 was that backward Saudi Arabia wasn't quite backward enough for his tastes, then in 2004 it is 'the destruction and murder of our people' in Palestine and elsewhere. What changed? It wasn't that bin Laden suddenly became a selfless warrior fighting for Palestinian freedom but rather that many in the West presumed that 9/11 and other attacks must have been motivated by Palestine and bin Laden took such views on board. Look at how he talks about Palestine in 2004: 'As for your leaders and their followers, who persistently ignore the real problem, which is the occupation of Palestine….' That could have come, verbatim, from any number of editorials, comment pieces or blog entries of the post-9/11 period which claimed that Bush and Blair should resolve the 'real' issue of the Middle East if they want to do something about al-Qaeda. And what exactly is bin Laden calling for when he accuses Western leaders of 'ignoring' the real problem of Palestine? More Western intervention? A better peace process? What?

Even when bin Laden's statements are liberally peppered with references to Palestine (as often they are), he only mentions it opportunistically and symbolically; there is no real or practical input into Palestinian politics. In 2001, his second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri said: 'The fact that must be acknowledged is that the issue of Palestine is the cause that has been firing up the feelings of the Muslim nation from Morocco to Indonesia for the past 50 years.' (3) By 2004, bin Laden has recognised that it also fires up feelings in the West. Indeed, he rather bizarrely calls 'upon just men [in Europe], especially scholars, media and businessmen, to form a permanent commission to raise awareness among Europeans of the justice of our causes, primarily Palestine, making use of the enormous potential of the media'. That sentence sums up how cynical is bin Laden's focus on Palestine: it's an attempt to make an impact on the Western consciousness rather than on the ground in Ramallah. It also shows how much he's driven by Western-style lingo and politics: he wants a 'commission' to 'raise awareness' about Palestine through the 'media'….just what kind of warrior for God is he?

[url=http://www.spiked-online.co.uk/Articles/0000000CAECC.htm]Bin Laden's script: ghost-written in the West[/url]
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