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.
Since bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri founded al-Qaeda in the 1990s, their propaganda and recruitment drives have featured the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the premier example of the West's "war against Islam." Images of American-built jets and attack helicopters dropping American-built bombs on refugee camps from Gaza to Beirut feature in the video messages of the al-Qaeda propaganda machine. Bin Laden spoke of how watching Israel's 1982 siege of Beirut radicalized him to target America.
The jihadists put the liberation of Palestine and especially Jerusalem at the center of their messaging. Bin Laden even put "liberating" the holy mosques of Jerusalem ahead of "liberating" Mecca from the Saudi royals. Abu Musab Zarqawi, the founder of what is today IS, always said his goal was Jerusalem ("Al-Quds" in Arabic). Their goal of course is Israel's destruction, not a "peace process."
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