A senior al-Qaeda leader has called for knife and car attacks on Jews in response to US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
A senior leader of al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch has called for knife and car attacks on Jews in response to President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel last month, the SITE monitoring group reported on Tuesday.
In a video by Al Qaeda’s al-Malahem media, Khaled Batarfi, believed to be the number two man in AQAP (Al-Qaeda Arabian Peninsula) after Qassim al-Raymi, warned that no Muslim had the right to cede any part of Jerusalem.
“The Muslims inside the occupied land must kill every Jew, by running him over, or stabbing him, or by using against him any weapon, or by burning their homes,” Batarfi said in the 18-minute-long clip, according to SITE’s report quoted by Reuters.
“Every Muslim must know that the Americans and the disbeliever West, and on top of them Britain and France, are the original reason behind the existence of the Jews in Palestine,” he said.
Batarfi was one of some 150 jailed AQAP members who were freed when the terror group, regarded by the US as one of the deadliest branches of the group founded by Osama bin Laden, captured the Yemeni port city of Mukalla in 2015, where he was held. Batarfi, has since assumed a senior position in the group.
Batarfi said Muslims in Western countries, including the US, were obliged to target the interests of Jews and the Americans.
“They must be eager to prepare themselves as much as possible, and to carry out jihadi operations against them,” he stated.
Palestinians reacted with violence after Trump’s Jerusalem declaration, and there were anti-Semitic protests throughout the Muslim world in the days after the historic announcement.
