Following are excerpts from a video address delivered by Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, which appeared on www.alhesbah.org on September 11, 2006

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Ayman Al-Zawahiri: The targets that the mujahideen should aim at are: Any target which, when hit, would help to weaken the Crusader Zionist aggression on Islamic lands. The division of people into military and civilian does not exist in Islamic law. Islamic divided people into combatants and non-combatants. A combatant, according to Islamic law, is anyone who fights, or supports the fighting with his money or views.

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The people of the Crusader West, according to Islamic law, are combatant people that fight the Muslims, because they elected their rulers and parliaments of their own free will. In other words, they elected the executive authority, which carries out the aggression against Islam and the Muslims, and they elected the legislative authority, which monitors the executive authority, holds it accountable, and approves or rejects its policies as it pleases. These peoples also pay the taxes that finance the aggression against Muslims, and supply the armies that invade Islamic countries with men, money, advice, and knowledge. They supply men and expertise to the Crusader security agencies, which try to harm the Muslims. Even those among them who oppose the policies of the Crusader governments consider these governments to be legitimate governments, which have the right to order them to participate in the fighting against us. They believe it is their duty to listen to these governments and obey.

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The Jews and the Crusaders everywhere should pay the price for killing our Muslim brothers in Lebanon, Palestine, and other Islamic countries.

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Our fighting should be Jihad for the sake of Allah, until religion is all for the sake of Allah. This Jihad should strive to liberate Palestine in its entirety, and to liberate any land that was once Islamic - from Andalusia to Iraq.

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Our Emir, the sheik, the mujahid, the lion of Islam, Osama Bin Laden, may Allah protect him, has assigned me to bring the good tidings to all Muslims, and to my brothers, the mujahideen, wherever they are: The Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat has joined the Al-Qaeda organization.

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You have given us all the Islamic legal and logical reasons to fight and punish you, because you have committed heinous crimes, and violated all the treaties you forced upon others. For our part, we repeatedly warned you and offered you a truce, and now, we have all the Islamic legal and logical justifications to continue to fight you until your power is destroyed, or until you are forced to surrender. I say to them: You should not be concerned now about defending your forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. These forces are doomed to defeat. They are as good as defeated, fighting their final battles. But you should reinforce your defense in two regions: The first is the Gulf, from where you will be expelled, Allah willing, after your defeat in Iraq. Then, you will be economically destroyed. The second region is Israel, to which the Jihadi reinforcements are nearing, with the help of Allah.