In response to Israeli terror attacks on Gaza that killed hundreds of civilians, Southeast Asia Islamist terror groups are now said to be planning retaliation against Israeli government offices, including Mossad intelligence, in Bangkok, Manila, and Singapore.

This account comes from Southeast Asia civilian sources who speak directly to some group leaders and who have in the past provided accurate information on their activities.

Such groups have frequently murdered civilians en masse, as in the Bali nightclub bombings, but are now claiming that they want to answer the Israeli mass murders of civilians in Gaza by targeting the closest thing to Israeli combatants in the Southeast Asia region, the offices housing Israeli intelligence and military sales and training operations.

They further claim, according to these sources, that they are not currently targeting Americans due to a supposed belief that new President Obama may change US policy.

The sources for this report, themselves religious Muslims, say they condemn the groups’ tactics but share their anger at Israeli forces’ repeated killings of civilians.

It is not clear if the planning talk is just bravado, or if it’s true they’ll just target combatants, since — like their Israeli and US counterparts — these groups have repeatedly shown their willingness to kill many civilians to make a point. (Islamist terror leaders like Bin Laden and Abu Bakar Baasyir frequently state this openly; for a rare, frank statement of near-identical Western pro-terror thinking see Thomas L. Friedman, who writes approvingly that in Gaza, Israel was “trying to ‘educate’ Hamas” by attacking not just Hamas combatants but also by “inflicting” “heavy pain on the Gaza population,” just as in Israel’s attack on Lebanon ’06 “the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians…” Thomas L. Friedman, “Israel’s Goals in Gaza?,” New York Times, January 13, 2009. Also see News and Comment posting of Nov. 28, 2007, “Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers. Cold-Blooded Celebrity”).

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