Israel’s National Security Council Counter-Terrorism Bureau, which works in tandem with the country’s two major intelligence branches, Shin Bet and Mossad, has issued a warning to Israeli and Diaspora Jews who might be considering international travel during the upcoming Rosh Hashanah/Sukkot holiday season.
According to the bureau, “The travel warnings are based on solid and reliable information and reflect tangible threats. They are liable to constitute pretexts for terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad.”
Some of the potentially dangerous regions listed by the bureau are obvious (Arab nations and unstable Third World countries) – but others should give us pause to reflect on the kind of world we live in:
“[T]errorist attacks by Islamic extremists over the past year in Belgium, Canada, Australia, France, and Denmark raise concerns over additional attacks against Western targets, including Israeli and Jewish targets, by veterans of the fighting in Syria and Iraq who are affiliated with Global Jihad (including Islamic State) and by local and regional elements inspired by the terrorist organizations. The global terrorist campaign by Iran and Hizbullah continues to threaten Israeli and Jewish targets around the world, especially tourists and Jewish symbols (rabbis, community leaders, Chabad houses).”
As a point of fact, global jihadists and Hizbullah agents are active and operating across Latin American countries and even within the U.S. There have been numerous stories in both the American and Israeli media focusing on the active recruitment of young immigrant Americans in Minnesota, Michigan, and Texas, as well as Muslim immigrants living in Paraguay, Venezuela, and Brazil, by global jihadists such as al Qaeda, Islamic State, and Hizbullah.
It makes no difference that al Qaeda/Islamic State, which are affiliated with Sunni Islam, and Hizbullah, which is aligned with Iran’s Shiite brand of Islam, despise each other. When it comes to killing Jews and Israelis they are aligned in a common cause.
Based on the information from the Counter-Terrorism Bureau, Jews and Israelis need to look over their shoulders when conducting business or just walking across the street to pray in a synagogue in major cities such as Toronto, London, Paris, Brussels, Melbourne, Copenhagen, and yes, even New York. In recent years, the NYPD has increased its visible and below-radar security presence at synagogues, Israeli government offices, and other vital Jewish venues in the city.
The U.S. Congress will, it now appears, vote to give Iran $150 billion in 9 months’ time – money that Iran will undoubtedly use to fund its global terror activities and destabilize the moderate Arab regimes in the Middle East.
Only 70 years after the mass murder of six million Jews, the U.S. will be enabling terrorists to continue to murder Jews around the world.
Since August 2001, when a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up the crowded Sbarro eatery in the heart of Jerusalem as innocent civilians were enjoying a meal and good conversation, OneFamily, the organization I chair, has been on the front lines of providing life-saving and life-changing physical and fiscal support to thousands of victims of terrorism and war.
It is a revolutionary and an evolutionary organization that constantly responds to the ongoing and changing needs of those who have been directly and indirectly affected by terrorism. Not a day goes by without a terrorist incident in Israel.
OneFamily’s staff of dedicated volunteers know only too well of targeted holiday terrorism in Israel, highlighted by the 2002 Park Hotel Passover Seder massacre in Netanya and the recent murder of high-ranking police officer Baruch Mizrachi by a Palestinian terrorist as he was driving with his wife and children to a Passover Seder. To this day, OneFamily continues to provide support to the victims of both horrific attacks.
