"Jerusalem will not be Jewish" - this is the title that al-Qaeda chose for a new video of the leader, Ayman a-Zawahiri, released today, 20 years after the organization carried out the largest offensive in history within the United States.
Although al-Qaeda supporters used the symbolic date to miraculously elevate the attacks with videos, posters and words of praise on social media, the hour-long video, distributed by al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda's media arm, barely touched on the unprecedented terrorist attack. On the other hand, he has been heavily involved in the struggle for the Palestinians and in other jihadist struggles around the world.
In one of the few references to the 2001 attack, Zawahiri linked the attack to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. "Let us not forget the 19 Mujahideen, the fighters of Islam, who stabbed America in the heart, an injury like America has never tasted before," he said. "And today she is leaving Afghanistan, broken, defeated, after 20 years of war."
The new video does not completely dispel the fog about the fate of Zawahiri, the organization's leader since the assassination of Osama bin Laden a decade ago. In recent months it has been claimed that he died under natural circumstances around October-November last year, however in the new video he referred to two events that occurred afterwards.
The first event was the announcement of the normalization of relations between Israel and Morocco from December 2020. The second event was an attack by the Huras a-Din organization, which is considered al-Qaeda's arm in Syria, against a position of the Russian army last January. However, Zawahiri did not talk about the completion of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the renewed takeover of the Taliban and therefore estimates are that the video has not been recorded recently.