THE LATEST ZAWAHIRI TAPE, his tenth in the last year, will leave some al Qaeda watchers perplexed. In it, Zawahiri refers to his “brothers” in Lebanon and Gaza and links their war with Israel to al Qaeda’s jihad against the West. “The shells and rockets ripping apart Muslim bodies in Gaza and Lebanon are not only Israeli [weapons], but are supplied by all the countries of the crusader coalition. Therefore, every participant in the crime will pay the price,” Zawahiri says. Bin Laden’s number two threatens retaliation for what is being done to his “brothers” in southern Lebanon saying, “We cannot just watch these shells as they burn our brothers in Gaza and Lebanon and stand by idly, humiliated.”

Zawahiri’s statements run counter to the conventional wisdom. It is widely believed in academic circles and some corridors of the U.S. intelligence community that al Qaeda and Hezbollah are ideological rivals competing for the hearts and minds of potential jihadists. In fact, some experts are already arguing that Zawahiri could not possibly be referring to Hezbollah in the tape and that he must mean al Qaeda’s operatives or friends in Lebanon and Gaza.