(Jerusalem Post) Zvi Mazel - The attacks in Benghazi and Cairo did not come out of the blue. There had been warnings. On Sep. 10, the Egyptian daily Al-Fajr published a communique signed by several jihadist organizations announcing that they were going to set fire to the American Embassy in Cairo and to capture whoever remained alive if the U.S. did not release all the jihadists jailed in Guantanamo as well as the blind Sheikh Abdel Rahman, spiritual leader of the Gamaa Islamiya. Abdel Rahman gave his blessing to the Anwar Sadat assassination in 1981 as well as to the first attack on the Twin Towers in 1991, and is serving a life sentence in the U.S. Freedom of expression is enshrined in the American constitution, yet American leaders were apologizing to terrorists who had attacked them, as if they were acknowledging that America itself was guilty of the creation of the film. America's apologies did not help. The fire spread all over the Arab/Muslim world. The writer, a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, is a former Israeli ambassador to Romania, Egypt and Sweden.
2012-09-19 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive