From Florida with Jihad in Syria .... the story of just one of several American jihadis

And, with the stuff going on currently in Gaza,  you can take what I have to say, deposit it in the nearest bank and make a damn good profit in the near future:  

There will be plenty more like him .... and not all of them will blow up outside America.  Wait and see.  

Crimes as seen being committed in Gaza by the might of the Israeli army are bound to turn even the most mildest of Palestinians into hate machines.  

I see many tweets from Israeli hawks on Twitter  trying to compare Gazans dead to the bigger numbers dead in Syria in just so many days, and stating that only anti-Semitism is the cause for the outcry against Israel. It's comparing apples to oranges, but when have Israel's supporters stopped to think twice? Do they ever look in the mirror and wonder why there are just as many critics of  Israeli policies as there are of Islam's disgusting norms and deeds?  

The thing to remember is that the Syrian govt is battling jihadis who place car bombs in crowded places and drive trucks laden with bombs into not only military bases but also market areas. The civilian deaths in Syria are more to do with jihadis battling it out with each other than to do only with Assad.  Moreover, in Gaza, the blasted Israeli govt. is blasting away at Gazans who are restricted to a tiny little area and not to areas like in Syria which are a 100 times larger than Gaza ... the most tiniest battlegrounds of Syria would be at least 50 times the size of Gaza.  To learn more about the Syrian situation, which is far more complex than the genocidal massacre going on in Gaza, Joshua Landis blog often has good coverage. 



Peter Bergen writing at CNN:
The all-American al Qaeda suicide bomber  

Seconds before he detonated the massive truck bomb that killed him and a number of Syrian soldiers two months ago, Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha radioed other fighters in al Qaeda to say, "I see paradise and I can smell paradise."
That in itself may not be unusual. But what should focus our attention is the identity of the bomber -- he was an American.

The son of a Palestinian father and an Italian-American mother, Abu-Salha grew up in Vero Beach, Florida, where he played high school football.
Abu-Salha, who was 22, is the first American suicide bomber known to have died in Syria.
On Monday, an al Qaeda-affiliated group in Syria released a half-hour videotape in which Abu-Salha explained his rationale for the impending suicide mission.
The video is an important window into the worldview of a Western recruit to al Qaeda drawn to the Syrian civil war, which is now in it fourth year. And the video also helps illuminate the recruitment techniques that the group has used to draw Westerners to the conflict, estimated to now number around 2,000.

n the video, Abu-Salha is shown tearing up his American passport and then the passport is set on fire. Next he is shown wearing a green camouflage vest and holding an AK-47 rifle delivering a diatribe to the camera directly.
Speaking in a strong American accent, Abu-Salha explicitly appeals to fellow militants in the States and the United Kingdom, saying that coming to fight with al Qaeda was so simple that he arrived in Syria "with only $20 in my pocket." Abu-Salha explained that "Allah made it easy for me" as he traveled from the States to Turkey and from there crossed over into neighboring Syria.............