News Service from House Harris

MID: Indonesian Islamists see recruiting boon in Gaza conflict

JAKARTA, Jan 8 AFP - Indonesian Islamists say they are recruiting "holy warriors" to help battle Israel's military incursion into the Gaza Strip - but analysts dismiss the enlistment drive as self-serving bravado.

While well-known jihadi groups such as the Jemaah Islamiah network, which was behind attacks such as the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, have stayed silent, other radical movements have jumped into the fray.

Some groups even claim to have enrolled thousands of would-be mujahedeen to fight against the Israeli air and ground attacks which have killed more than 700 Palestinians, many of them civilians, since December 27.

Newspaper coverage in this Muslim-majority nation of 234 million people is heavily in favour of the Palestinians and mostly ignores Israel's side of the story, and radical groups are eager to harness public outrage.

At one group's recruitment station in Jakarta, where media have flocked along with would-be warriors, bespectacled 28-year-old Dhuharniyeti said she was prepared to fight Israeli troops with bamboo sticks and arrows.

"I don't know how to use a gun but I'm physically fit. I walk a lot, jump rope a lot. I'm not afraid to die and my future is life in heaven, which is everlasting," she said.

"For the atrocities they have committed, the men in Israel are devils and the women are snakes. I can go there and pierce them with sharpened bamboo and arrows and use flammable spirits to burn them."

Indonesians like Dhuharniyeti are not hard to find whenever Israel deploys its sophisticated militarily machine against the homemade rocket launchers and mortar teams of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which governs Gaza.

One of the most prominent Indonesian groups seeking recruits is the Islamic Defenders Front, which claims to have signed up over 4,000 would-be fighters.

But Sholeh Mahmud Nasution, a senior member of the front, conceded to AFP that the group could only afford to send "three to five" fighters to Gaza.

The prospective warriors will undergo 10 days of training in the jungles of West Java, "living on grass and fruit."

"We won't be teaching them how to use weapons. They will have to learn in the field when we dispatch them to Gaza," he said, dismissing critics who call the recruitment drive a farce.

"Those who say we are all talk and no action are irresponsible. A few years ago we sent 15 people to Iraq when America invaded but we couldn't gain access into the country. That's action, not just talk."

The Mosque Youth Coordination Body, which has more than six million members nationwide, has recruited 3,500 people to deliver aid and, if needed, fight in Gaza, president Ali Mocthar Ngabalin said.

"Probably half of them may get to go. It will be cruel if we just sit and do nothing to help the poor Palestinians," he said.

Indonesia's government has said sending medicine and other aid is the best way to help the Palestinians, and security analysts say Hamas should not await the arrival of armies of bamboo-wielding Indonesians.

Noorhaidi Hasan, a lecturer on Islam and politics at Sunan Kalijaga Islamic University, said the Middle East conflict was important to local Islamists but their rhetoric should be judged against their actions.

"The Palestinian issue has become central to the Islamist movement in Indonesia and Islamist groups must be seen to at least show their sympathy toward the Palestinians," he said.

"On one hand, the groups want to show the commitment and solidarity of the Islamic world but on the other, some are using this issue to boost their image or to show that they are relevant in the community."