Amru Nasif, a columnist for the Egyptian opposition weekly Al-Usbu´, recently published an article that calls for - in the most frank and most chilling terms - suicide attacks against Israel; the writer even volunteers to “join the ranks of martyrs.”

Following are excerpts of his article, published on May 28th, and courtesy of the Middle East Media Research Institute (www.memri.org): “…with every blow struck by the Al-Aqsa Intifada, my conviction grows stronger that I, and all those who are of the same mind, have been right all along and am still right in my belief that the despised racist Jewish entity will be annihilated. Contrary to others, however, I am not ashamed to speak about driving them into the sea, to hell, or to the trash heap they deserve.”

“I maintain, and Allah is my witness, that the annihilation and defeat of the Israelis, after which they will not have resurrection, does not require all these things. All that it requires is to concentrate on acts of martyrdom, or what is known as ´the strategy of the balance of fear.´”

“Let us do some mathematical calculations: 250 Palestinians have signed up for martyrdom operations, and it is not impossible to raise this number to 1,000 throughout the Arab world, i.e., one fedayi (martyr) out of every 250,000 Arabs. The average harvest of each act of martyrdom is 10 dead and 50 wounded. Thus, 1000 acts of martyrdom would leave the Zionists with at least 10,000 dead and 50,000 wounded. This is double the number of Israeli casualties in all their wars with the Arab since 1948. They cannot bear this. There is also the added advantage, not noted by many, of negative Jewish emigration, which, as a consequence of the 1,000 martyrdom operations will come to at least 1,000,000 Jews, followed by the return of every Jew to the place from whence he came…”

“I am signing myself up as the first martyr from Egypt and declare that I am ready to commit an act of martyrdom at any moment. I will place myself under the command of Mr. Hassan Nasrallah, ´Hamas´, the Islamic Jihad, or any other jihad movement.”

“Never in my life have I asked Allah for money, honor or power. All that I have asked, all that I ask, all that I will ask, is that Allah allow me to become a shaheed and grant me the honor of reaping as great a harvest as possible of Israeli lives…”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2001 and is filed under arabpress.