New Ayman al-Zawahri Tape Urges Terrorist Attacks, "Cartoon Jihad" Strikes, & Contributions (updated)

In new audio and video tapes released yesterday, Al Qaeda's #2, Ayman al-Zawahri, urges followers to attack the West, supports the "cartoon jihad" economic strikes aganist Danish and other Western countries, supports Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel, and asks for contributions for his and other Islamic terrorists. You can see clips of the video from BBC. Other segments are on the English Aljazeera site. Quote from CNN: "I would like to tell my brothers in Hamas to fight on and not to accept agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel." Dore Gold, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., writes today about the long-standing ties between Al Qaeda and Hamas, ideologically and logistically: "Bin Laden sent emissaries to Hamas in September 2000 and January 2001; Israel arrested three Hamas militants in 2003 after they had returned from an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda operations chief Abu Zubaydah entered the world of terrorism through Hamas. And according to a 2004 FBI affidavit, al Qaeda recruited Hamas members to conduct surveillance against potential targets in the United States." Hamas officials were not impressed with al-Zawahri's support. "Hamas believes that Islam is completely different to the ideology of Mr. al-Zawahri...We have no links with any group or element outside Palestine," U.S. General John Abizaid predicted new Al Qaeda attacks against mosques in Iraq in order to spark a civil war. Longtime terrorism expert Brian Jenkins wrote on March 3 that the real danger to oil supplies is not a single attack but a regional war in the Persian Gulf. Here are pertinent posts by our Continuing Experts:

Evan Kohlmann: "The State of Al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia, Connections to Zarqawi in Iraq" and "Al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia Issues Rules on Attacking Oil Facilities"

Douglas Farah: "Why Bin Laden is Still At Large, and Why it Matters"

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross: "Al-Zawahiri Calls for Attacks on Gulf Oil Facilities" and "The Cartoon Riots: The Price of Freedom" and "Al-Qaeda's Hurricane Lesson: Target the Oil Supply" (last September)

Olivier Guitta: "Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria's holy partnership in the Cartoon Jihad"

Lorenzo Vidino: "Danish cartoons: new political tool" and "Fabricated cartoons worsened Danish controversy" (the post which exposed the fraud behind the "cartoon Jihad")

Ayman al-Zawahri in video tape (click to enlarge):