“We must wage unceasing war against the Americans until they leave the land of Islam, or we will burn and destroy all their interests across the entire Islamic world,” al-Ghannouchi was quoted as saying. “Muslim youth must be serious in their warning to the Americans that a blow to Iraq will be a license to strike American and Western interests throughout the Islamic world.”In 2009, Al-Ghannouchi ruffled feather on television when he praised Palestinian terrorism as “wonderful” and said that he admires rockets fired at Israel by a Palestinian terror outfit known as the Al Qassam Brigades.In other television appearances, the sheikh has praised the mothers of suicide bombers.“I would like to send my blessings to the mothers of those youth, those men who succeeded in creating a new balance of power,” he said, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “I bless the mothers who planted in the blessed land of Palestine the amazing seeds of these youths, who taught the international system and the Israeli arrogance, supported by the U.S., an important lesson. The Palestinian woman, mother of the Shahids [martyrs], is a martyr herself, and she has created a new model of woman.”

Sheikh Rashid Ghannouchi, of Tunisia’s equally moderate Islamist Ennahda Movement, said, “There are no civilians in Israel. The population—males, females and children—are the army reserve soldiers, and thus can be killed.”