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Global jihad benefits from Gaza crisis

As Arab states do little to intervene in Gaza, militant jihadism continues to spread throughout the region.
Smoke and flames are seen following what witnesses said was an Israeli air strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip July 11, 2014. Israel pressed on for a fourth day with its Gaza offensive on Friday, striking the Hamas-dominated enclave from air and sea, as Palestinian militants kept up rocket attacks deep into the Jewish state. At least 79 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in the offensive, which Israel says it launched to end persistent rocket attacks on its civilian population, s
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There is one big winner from the latest Gaza war — the global jihad. The televised imagery of war, violence and casualties fuels recruitment for al-Qaeda, the Islamic State (IS, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS) and other jihadist movements.

The Palestinian ideologue of the modern global jihad, Abdallah Azzam, author of "The Defense Of Muslim Lands," argued that all jihads against Islam's enemies, like the 1980s war against Russia in Afghanistan he fought in, were the necessary preliminary for the ultimate battle to destroy Israel. Azzam was Osama bin Laden's first partner in jihad and has aptly been labeled by a former head of the Mossad as "the godfather of jihadism." Azzam put Israel at the center of the jihad's narrative and ideology, where it remains today.

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