[Lt_Apple]

Originally posted by peacelover
Very interesting Newsguy - did you write it? Yes. I write some of the articles that appear on this forum.

I was wondering what the security is like in Israel - can you get on a train without being searched? Can you get into a club without getting searched? Theme Parks etc? Israel has armed security guards and soldiers at the entrances of all public places. I'll leave it, though, to those of our members who live in Israel to fill in some more details.

Because the more I think about it, the more I think that if you know how to make a bomb, the actual distribution of it is very easy. That's probably true, unfortunately. However, someone who is inclined to set off bombs generally has some kind of history of membership in a terrorist organization or a history of political activism that intelligence agencies may very well be aware of. Those who don't, tend to be more susceptible to acting in ways that could indicate to security forces that a potential problem exists. These are not fool-proof by any means, but these have been used by Israel very effectively in many cases.

Still, the question is how the intelligence agencies react to information. In the case of the 9/11 terrorists, it now turns out that the FBI and CIA had information of the type I described, yet failed to act upon it mainly for fear of upsetting certain civil rights groups. That has changed now.

I would guess that Europe will be forced to change its nonchalant attitude now that large-scale Islamist terrorism has reached its shores.

I guess this makes England a "soft target" - I see with my own eyes here what the article describes in Spain. And it's worrying. Yes, very.


It is a gross misrepresentation of the average European feeling to say the man on the street said when hearing of a baby murdered in Israel "it was that baby's personal fault". I guess it depends on which man on the street. Certainly, the European press blames each terrorist attack on Israel. Sometimes the blame is placed on the government of Israel, sometimes the blame is placed on those Israelis who live in border towns, and sometimes the press seems to blame all Israelis for Palestinian terrorism. There are rarely, if ever, articles that blame Palestinian society for glorifying suicide bombers, nor for that matter is there a description of terrorist groups as "terrorist" at all. But there is always finger-pointing at the victims in one way or another. And it is essentially the same with the American victims of terrorism or the Spanish victims at this point.

It is also important to remember when looking at opinion polls etc how many of the votes are cast by Muslim immigrants - it's not clear when you say 'Europeans' whether they are included. Their presence greatly distorts the picture if you are trying to assess the non-Muslim population. That's a very good point. The Muslim community's direct and indirect support of terrorism does tilt the perception of Europeans. But the European Left, too, shares many of the same values that are held by the Muslim community when it comes to appeasement of terrorists, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism.

...then people will hopefully stop putting pressure on their governments to appease the terrorists, because of some warped (and bitterly ironic) belief that it is this support for the war on terror which will expose them to attacks. Well said. In essence, the position of the European Leftists is that confronting terrorists causes terrorism. That is as silly as saying that punishing murderers causes more murders.