Columbus Day (October 12) and Terrorism.

Picture credit 10-12-02 Bombing of Bali nightclubs and information about that event

Picture credit and link to Library of Congress information about Christopher Columbus and about the history of America's Columbus Day

"Let the whole world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of Andalusia be repeated in Palestine," Osama bin Laden said in his taped cave-side address. "We cannot accept that Palestine will become Jewish."--Osama Bin Laden

As I noted earlier, Osama Bin Laden is allergic to Columbus Day because it is a symbol of the decline of Islam and the rise of the West.

Bin Laden is still nursing a historical grudge because Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain captured the Alhambra in 1492.

According to Reuven Koret, the seizure of the Alhambra "was a turning point in the drive to expel the Moors from the European continent." 1492 is also the date of the European discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.

These events are what Bin Laden means by the "tragedy of Andalusia," the Muslim name for Spain. Koret writes:

[For Bin Laden] and his followers, [October 12] is considered a holy day of revolution, when the weak communicate through terror to the strong, when the tribes strive to overturn the colonial powers.

Some Americans like Ward Churchill, Glenn Morris, and the late Eqbal Ahmad, share Bin Laden's perspective. Reuven Koret observes:

[O]n October 12, 1998, the late Eqbal Ahmad, a follower of bin Laden and a Professor at Hampshire College, gave a presentation at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He said: "History unfortunately recognizes and accords visibility to power and not to weakness. Therefore, visibility has been accorded historically to dominant groups. In our time, the time that began with this day, Columbus Day."

Professor Ahmad explained: "The time that begins with Columbus Day is a time of extraordinary unrecorded holocausts. Great civilizations have been wiped out. The Mayas, the Incas, the Aztecs, the American Indians, the Canadian Indians were all wiped out. Their voices have not been heard, even to this day fully. Now they are beginning to be heard, but not fully. They are heard, yes, but only when the dominant power suffers, only when resistance has a semblance of costing, of exacting a price. When a Custer is killed… that's when you know that there were Indians fighting."

Koret pointed out in his October 12, 2001 article that for Bin Laden, Columbus Day is a symbolic day for terrorist attacks.

10/12/2000---Terrorists bombed the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen.

10/12/2001---"A car-bomb exploded in an underground parking lot in Madrid's Plaza Colon, named for Christopher Columbus and the site of a monument in his honor. The car had been towed to the lot after being illegally parked near the crowded site where the former King of Spain, Juan Carlos, appeared earlier in the day." [Reuven Koret note--Basque separatists claimed responsibility for this bombing]

10/12/2002---Terrorists bombed nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia.