Counter jihad
Rainy Day does not subscribe to the "Intelligence Service" offered by Rita Katz. Although convinced that evil has to be opposed, we don't have the pressing need to spend $2,500 a year on "real-time information on terrorist activity to aid you in tracking the terrorist threat." But others do and Katz's clients include the media and people on the frontline in the War on Terror. She has also worked with US prosecutors in more than a dozen different terrorist investigations.
We're content to be her mailing list. Actually, it's the mailing list of the "Search for International Terrorist Entities", which is shortened to SITE. Rita Katz is the director and co-founder of the SITE Institute. Born in Iraq and a graduate of the Middle Eastern Studies program at Tel Aviv University, she speaks Arabic and Hebrew with native fluency — invaluable assets.
SITE is a very fitting name for Katz's enterprise, because it's mostly on websites that she harvests the data that she turns into intelligence. Since 9/11, the jihadis' online presence has become central to their propaganda strategy. Who can forget the impact of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the late unlamented leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, posting a video of the beheading of Nicholas Berg?
In the 29 May issue of the New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote about "How Rita Katz got into the spying business". He quoted Jessica Stern, a terrorism specialist who served on the National Security Council under President Clinton, and who now teaches at Harvard: "Some people think that she's a zealot, but only a zealot would provide this kind of service."
Rita Katz believes that terrorists are more sophisticated and resilient than most of us realize, and "that the war against radical Islam is likely to last for decades, and that the outcome is far from clear." Still, some argue that she goes too far when she posts sample materials found on jihadist sites. On the other hand, it is instructive for the more complacent among us to view the titles, never mind the contents: Plan to Inexpensively Kill Thousands of American Civilians, A Manual Instructing in the Use of Letter and Parcel Bombs, A Manual Instructing in the Use of Plague as a Biological Weapon, Guide for Modifying a Cellular Phone for Use as a Remote Explosive Detonator and, our favourite, An Alternate Method for Suicide Bombing Operations Explained. Is that the one where the bombers kill themselves before heading out on their missions? By creating a link to the deranged terrorist mind, Rita Katz is alerting us to the seriousness of the threat facing the West.
