Educating Europe on counter-terrorism.

Educating Europe on counter-terrorism.   

Original Thinking by Barry Shaw.

It took Europe a year before they, in their infinite wisdom, sanctioned “the military wing” of Hezbollah as if the rest of the Hezbollah body is beyond reproach and not tainted by terror.

Europe is desperately in need of an education in counter-terrorism.

There are nations in Europe, with reasons that are hard to fathom, who are unable to put the words “Hezbollah” and “terror” together, despite all the overwhelming evidence. Others, to a limited degree, prefer a selection process going through the Party of God’s personnel and defining them as terrorists, or not. It’s absurd.

That’s what happens when you have a committee of twenty seven members. You look for consensus and end up compromising. Compromise is, literally, a fatal flaw when it comes to defining and fighting terror, but this is precisely what Europe has done.  Affirmative clarity is needed, not a watered down definition that satisfies bureaucrats, a political-correctness that defies logic and knowledge, and even the terror organization itself. Peoples’ lives are at stake here.

As I wrote in an earlier article, there is no “Good Hezbollah, bad Hezbollah.” You cannot cherry-pick parts of a terror regime, but this is what Europe has done in their infinite ignorance.

Under the chinless leadership of Catherine Ashton, the EU is blundering from one crisis to the next like a blind bull in a china shop, breaking all the rules by setting new, ineffective, and damaging ones, which cause immense damage, and achieves nothing of lasting value.

We recently had the Ashton-led directives that arrogantly call parts of Israel including Jerusalem, with its ancient Jewish heritage sites and its modern day scientific, medical, academic, and archeological landmarks, as being non-Israeli. This decision rewards a violent and rejectionist Palestinian society, with a decades-old history of terror, by punishing Israel and siding with them in a unilateral move precisely at the most sensitive moment in the peace process. It will certainly make the Palestinian leadership less flexible in any future Kerry-inspired peace talks with Israel. Why should they be more moderate than the Europeans who have just set the ground rules?

If that blunder was not bad enough, we now have the European Union letting Hezbollah off the hook by isolating what they call “the military wing” while keeping the rest of that hideous body intact.  Their inability to call a spade a spade and Hezbollah, in its entirety, s a terror organization, leaves Hezbollah chief, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, laughing all the way to his Beirut bank.  His “political wing” can continue fund-raising and recruitment in Europe as if nothing has happened.  He, and his henchmen, will be considered politicians by the gnomes of Brussels, allowing Hezbollah to regroup, gather strength, continue their operations in Syria, and plan future operations around the globe, carefully avoiding Europe so as not to upset the Ashton committee.

If it wasn’t so seriously tragic, this EU foreign policy would be farcical.

What is to be done with a Europe headed by politicians and bureaucrats who are apparently so ignorant, or cynical, of what constitutes a terrorist organization, and incapable of coming up with a precise definition and effective sanctions. Why is it only Israel, the United States, Canada, and a few other nations, that can plainly see what is in front of their noses?

Israel and America are all too familiar with the Hezbollah leadership and infrastructure, their operating methods, and the inter-connection between all departments that implicate the organization in its entirety in the acts of terror from the political assassination of Prime Minister Hariri in Beirut to the attempted assassination of the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, to the blowing up of the Jewish Center in Buenos Aires to the Bulgarian bus bombing, and the preparation of terror attacks on European soil, including in Cyprus, not to mention their involvement in the Syrian slaughter.

To imply that the “military wing” of a terror regime is to be sanctioned while leaving the “political wing” to operate is akin to the Allies blaming the Wermacht for World War Two while exonerating Hitler and Nazi Germany. This is as plainly absurd as isolating a “military” branch of Hezbollah while leaving Nasrallah and his cronies to continue their mayhem. 

This was brought home this week when the Hezbollah Al-Mana TV channel revealed details of the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers inside Israel by Hezbollah that led to the 2006 Lebanon War. Sheikh Nasrallah said that he would never have ordered the operation had he known it would have produced the powerful and destructive reaction of Israel to that incident. This clearly demonstrates the link between the political ordering and approval of the terror attack and the military operation itself.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Qassam, said in 2009 that the “same leadership that directs the parliamentary and government work also leads jihad actions in the struggle against Israel.”

This was confirmed very recently by Lebanon’s Foreign Minister, Adnan Mansour, when he said that Hezbollah’s military wing was “an integral part of the political system.” He added, “Hezbollah’s political and military wing cannot be separated.”

What greater proof can there be of the link between politicians and active terrorists in a terror regime than Yasser Arafat. Arafat may be seen in myopian Europe as a charismatic leader, but Israelis saw, experienced, and suffered from his handiwork up close and personal. He was the godfather of modern terrorism, and the world’s first Islamic arch-terrorist. He wreaked death and havoc in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and even from his exile in Tunis. He was the patron of disparate and competing Palestinian terror groups. When he decided to launch his infamous and deadly intifada against Israel he ordered and equipped Islamist Hamas and Islamic Jihad on a murderous wave of suicide and car bombings against innocent Israeli civilians. He was a politician and a terror chief.

One would have thought that European politicians would have absorbed this truth firsthand that both politics and terrorism are part of the same body after Arafat murdered passengers at Rome and Vienna airports, not to mention the Palestinian attack on the Munich Olympic Games in a deadly assault against the Israeli athletes, ordered by Arafat and the PLO.

It seems that EU politicians are still in need of an education.

Clearly Europe needs an education on the definition, motivation, operation methods, and structure of terror groups, including Hezbollah. This includes their political and religious aims, recruitment and funding, their intelligence gathering, their training and equipment, their command and control structure with its intimate linkage between their “political” and “military” arms that connect together as one indivisible organization.

I strongly recommend that a team of top Israeli and American counter-terror experts make the rounds of European capitals and meet with politicians and think tanks in closed door seminars and conferences. They should start their tour at the European Union headquarters in Brussels and address their parliament. The education process should begin immediately before further retreat takes place in the war against terror.

The EU decision of sanctions against a part of Hezbollah was partly a product of cooperation between the Israeli Foreign Office and European governments. It must not stop there.

Detailed intelligence briefings by Israeli and American counter-terror chiefs, countries who are on the frontline in the war on terror, will give European politicians, national security and legal experts, something substantial on which to base current and future sanctions against terrorist organizations.

There is much that can be done to help Europe on the right path of counter-terrorism. The EU lacks the bureaucratic infrastructure, like the US Treasury counter-terrorism financial capability, without which it will fail to damage Hezbollah in any meaningful way. Europe can learn so much from agencies that have close-combat experience with groups such as Hezbollah. Intelligence sharing, including understanding the roles and movement of operatives, and the dots that connect funding and terror, will go a long way to curtailing the ability of terror groups to inflict harm beyond their borders.

I urge European parliaments to learn from Israeli and American counter-terror experts why it is wrong to compartmentalize parts of terror organizations and, instead, understand why it is so vital to address the combined agenda of the organization as a whole.

Europe must be educated as to why Hezbollah, all of Hezbollah, is tagged as a terrorist organization in its entirety, and apply this to all other groups that incite and practice the death of innocents for political and religious goals. Simply isolating “the military wing” will not cut it. 

Barry Shaw is the Special Consultant on Delegtimization Issues to The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College. He is also the author of “Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.” www.israelnarrative.com

Educating Europe in counter-terrorism. Original Thinking by Barry Shaw.

The confusing sounds coming out of Europe are appalling.

It has taken them a year and they are still unable to properly define Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Europe is desperately in need of an education in counter-terrorism.

There are nations in Europe, with reasons that are hard to fathom, who are unable to put the words “Hezbollah” and “terror” together, despite all the overwhelming evidence. Others do – to a limited degree.

That’s what happens when you have a committee of twenty seven members. You look for consensus and end up compromising. Compromise is a fatal flaw when it comes to defining and fighting terror, but this is precisely what Europe is doing.  Affirmative clarity is needed, not a watered down definition that satisfies bureaucrats, and even the terror organization itself. Peoples’ lives are at stake here.

As I wrote in my article “Good Hezbollah, bad Hezbollah”, you cannot hold a selection process by cherry-picking parts of a terror regime, but this is what Europe is doing in their infinite ignorance.

They have decided to pick on what they call "the military wing" of Hezbollah, neatly allowing the leaders of this terror gang to continue their deadly preparation work.

Under the chinless leadership of Catherine Ashton, the EU is blundering from one crisis to the next like a blind bull in a china shop, breaking all the rules by setting new, ineffective, and damaging ones, causing immense damage, and achieving nothing of lasting value. We have the Ashton-led directives that arrogantly call parts of Israel as being non-Israeli, a decision that rewards a violent and rejectionist Palestinian society, with a decades-old history of terror, by punishing Israel and siding with Palestinians in a unilateral move precisely at the most sensitive moment in the peace process.

If that blunder was not bad enough, we now have the European Union letting Hezbollah off the hook by isolating what they call “the military wing” while keeping the rest intact.  Their inability to call a spade a spade and Hezbollah, in its entirety, as a terror organization, leaves Hezbollah chief, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, laughing all the way to his Beirut bank.  His “political wing” can continue fund-raising and recruitment in Europe as if nothing has happened.  He, and his henchmen, will be considered politicians by the gnomes of Brussels even as Hezbollah gathers strength, continue their operations in Syria, and plan future operations around the globe, carefully avoiding Europe so as not to upset the Ashton committee.

If it wasn't so seriously tragic, this EU foreign policy would be farcical.

What is to be done with a Europe headed by politicians and bureaucrats who are apparently so ignorant, or cynical, of what constitutes a terrorist organization, and incapable of coming up with a precise definition and effective sanctions that it infuriates Israel, the United States, Canada, and other nations that can plainly see what is in front of their noses?

Clearly Europe needs an education on the definition, motivation, operation methods, and structure of terror groups, especially Hezbollah. This includes their political and religious aims, recruitment and funding, their intelligence gathering, their training and equipment, their command and control structure with its intimate linkage between their “political” and “military” arms that connect together as one indivisible organization.

I strongly recommend that a team of top Israeli and American counter-terror experts make the rounds of European capitals and meet with politicians and think tanks in closed door seminars and conferences. They should start their tour at the European Union headquarters in Brussels and address their parliament. The education process should begin immediately before further damage is done in the war of terror.

Israel and America are all too familiar with the Hezbollah leadership and infrastructure, their operating methods, and the inter-connection between all departments that implicate the organization in its entirety in the acts of terror from the political assassination of Prime Minister Hariri in Beirut to the attempted assassination of the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, to the blowing up of the Jewish Center in Buenos Aires to the Bulgarian bus bombing, and the preparation of terror attacks on European soil including in Cyprus, not to mention their involvement in the Syrian slaughter.

To imply that the “military wing” of a terror regime is to be sanctioned while leaving the “political wing” to operate is akin to the Allies blaming the Wermacht for World War Two while exonerating Hitler and Nazi Germany. This is as plainly absurd as isolating a “military” branch of Hezbollah while leaving Nasrallah  and his cronies to continue their mayhem. 

This was brought home this week when the Hezbollah Al-Mana TV channel revealed details of the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers inside Israel by Hezbollah that led to the 2006 Lebanon War. Sheikh Nasrallah said that he would never have ordered the operation had he known it would have produced the powerful and destructive reaction of Israel to the incident. This clearly demonstrates the link between the political ordering and approval of the terror attack and the military operation itself.

What greater proof can there be of the link between politicians and active terrorists in a terror regime than Yasser Arafat. Arafat may be seen in myopia Europe as a charismatic leader but to Israelis who have seen his handiwork up close and personal he was the godfather of modern terrorism and the world’s first Islamic arch-terrorist. He wreaked death and havoc in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and even from his exile in Tunis.

He was the patron of disparate and competing Palestinian terror groups. When he decided to launch his infamous and deadly intifada against Israel he ordered and equipped Islamist Hamas and Islamic Jihad on a murderous wave of suicide and car bombings against innocent Israeli civilians.

One would have thought that European politicians would have firsthand that both politics and terrorism are part of the same body after Arafat murdered passengers at Rome and Vienna airports and attacked the Munich Olympic Games in a deadly assault against the Israeli athletes.

It seems that EU politicians are still in need of an education.

Detailed intelligence briefings by Israeli and American counter-terror chiefs, who are on the frontline in the war on terror, will give European politicians, national security and legal experts something substantial on which to base current and future sanctions against terrorist organizations.

I urge European parliaments to learn from Israeli and American counter-terror experts the reasons it is wrong to compartmentalize parts of terror organizations and, instead, understand why it is so vital to address the combined agenda of the organization as a whole.

As former Canadian Justice Minister, Irwin Cotler, put it, “it is the European Union’s obligation, not just a policy option, to put Hezbollah on the terrorist list. It is shocking that it has not yet happened. It is a paradox that the EU wins the Nobel Peace Prize, holds itself up as a human rights leader, but has not put Hezbollah on the terrorist list, although combating terror is a fundamental principle of human rights.”

Europe must be educated as to why Hezbollah, all of Hezbollah, is tagged as a terrorist organization in its entirety. 

Barry Shaw is the Special Consultant on Delegtimization Issues to The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College. He is also the author of “Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.” www.israelnarrative.com

Jews under siege.

We have arrived at the moment that most of us reckoned we would never see.

Jews were prevented from praying at the Temple Mount on Tisha Be-Av, which commemorates the double destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the Romans. 

The jury is still out as to whether the Israeli Government took this step out of respect for angry Muslims, or out of fear of angry Muslims.  Either way, Jews were prevented from carrying out their religious obligations on one of Judaism’s most solemn days to assuage the feelings of Palestinian Arabs and Muslim outrage.

On the same day of Tisha Be-Av, one of the most sorrowful days in the Jewish calendar, the European Union announced an official policy of banning and restricting the products of Jewish industry from the heartland of Israel, including Jerusalem.

How often have European diplomats and politicians wrongly forecast events occurring in the Middle East? 

What they called ‘the Arab Spring’ turned into ‘the Islamic Winter’.  Didn't they force Israel to allow Arafat, the world’s first Islamic arch-terrorist, to return from his enforced exile in Tunis by acclaiming him as Israel’s peace partner? He spoke about ‘peace of the brave’ as they awarded him with their Nobel peace prize, but he gave us ‘peace of the grave’ as soon as he landed in Ramallah.  Didn't they encourage us to forcefully uproot eight thousand Jewish men, women, and children from their homes in the Strip in the name of peace with the Palestinians, and didn't we get Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets instead?

Now they have the chutzpah to aim an EU directive banning their European members “from cooperating with Israeli entities in the West Bank, Golan Heights, and east Jerusalem.”

As Daniel Seaman, of the Prime Minister’s Office, reminded us on his Facebook page, “the Europeans found an unequivocal voice when it comes to Israel, but still can't declare the Hezbollah a terrorist entity. Ironically, while Europeans try to define our ancestral borders, the Muslims are redefining theirs.” 

Seaman added, “With Europe's record regarding the Jewish People's past (Greece, Rome, Spain, Russia, France, Poland, Germany, Britain, et al), they have no moral say in determining the Jewish People's future.” 

But they are.  They have officially declared what they call the West Bank (but Jews call Judea and Samaria), and east Jerusalem, are no longer part of the State of Israel.

See how they have twisted historical fact and legitimacy. In their eyes, the Jewish homeland went from being mandated  for the National Home of the Jewish People to become “disputed territory” when land was recaptured from the Jordanians in 1967 after yet another aggressive Arab war was launched against the nascent Jewish state. This land has since transmuted into “occupied territories” as the Europeans act to appease radical Palestinian Arab voices.  When did fact, history, and legal definition dissolve into the lies, false definition, and anti-Israel action that has become new law in Europe - new law that for citizens of the Jewish state seem eerily akin to Nuremburg laws?

What happened to European patience, and a desire to allow the current peace initiative to take root? What happened to the Road Map that demanded no side to take unilateral action that may affect the outcome of negotiations?  Instead of a quiet and orderly diplomatic route to negotiations we now have the heavy one-sided hand of European bias against Israel. As usual, it is dressed up in fine language to make it appear that they are taking altruistic steps for the good of the region.  

Europe! You are not Israel’s parents any more, and we are not little children forced to take your nasty tasting medicine because you insist it is good for us.  You are wrong, and you should not be surprised if Israel refuses to quietly take your gruesome medicine, and here is one reason we will not do so.

On December 10, 2012, the European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council stated that “all agreements between the State of Israel and the EU must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.”

Taken at face value, this means that the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple, which was liberated from Jordan in 1967, and where I have just celebrated a family barmitzvah, and where many thousands of Jews from around the world commemorated Tisha B’Av, the double destruction of our holy Temple, is part of a new EU directive that states it is no longer a part of the Jewish State of Israel.

This alone should have outrage world Jewry. Rage and fury should also bring out millions of Christians that identify with an ancient heritage that no EU diplomat dare overturn.

Earlier this year I wrote an article that appeared in the Jerusalem Post. It was entitled, “Palestinian flags flying over Jerusalem.”  It detailed the significant real estate sites that will eventually fall into the hands of Hamas when outside misguided forces side with Palestinian bad intent. When writing that piece I never thought one such decisive step would be taken by Europe within such a few short months of publication. Have I become a modern day Jeremiah?

 The EU blunder has brought this terrible moment that bit closer. The Hebrew University, the Rockefeller Museum, Hadassah Hospital are, by definition of the new EU ruling, now prime targets for a European boycott. 

These shining institutes of Israeli brilliance are no longer considered Israeli by the European Union who are now in lockstep with the Arabs and Muslim world.  Jews are seriously under siege at the heart of their heritage.

We are not just talking here about Israeli industry in disputed territories that must remain as part of Israel in any future peace agreement, industries that employ in excess of thirty thousand Palestinian workers in a display of mutual respect and cooperation, building a better future for both Jew and Arab. Surely that in itself is what true peacemakers should applaud?   

Instead, the European threat will put an end to such positive steps that have given so many Palestinians a better life. The European ultimatum also targets Israeli research, academic, and medical centers, that do so much good for mankind, and now lies at the foot of the European guillotine.

And the Europeans think this is in the best interest of people in the region. That have been oh so wrong it the past. They are dead wrong today! The are acting as peacemakers against peace, the title of yet another recent article of mine. It seems my prophecies are, sadly, coming true. 

Jews of Israel feel themselves under siege by Palestinian rejectionism and terror. Now add to that the new European compliance with an agenda that reduces the Jewish presence, salami-style, from their Jewish heartland, without any commitment on the Palestinian side to permanent peace. 

Europeans find nothing wrong with that, in their muddle-headed thinking that is openly biased against Israel but does nothing to force the Palestinian leadership into accepting and agreeing that Israel has a right to exist.

Such a policy will result in failure and bloodshed. As we have seen in the recent past, such short-sighted, distorted, action always ends in Palestinian violence and Jewish deaths.

I pray to G-d that this prediction does not come true.

Due to European altruistic actions towards the Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Jews are under siege, under threat, and more isolated than ever. The future is bleak.

Barry Shaw is the Special Consultant on Delegitimization Issues to The Strategic dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College.  He was also the co-founder of the Netanya Terror Victims Organization, and  author of “Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.” www.israelnarrative.com