Article published by International Business Times, 21 August 2017. © Richard Kemp and Arsen Ostrovsky
By Richard Kemp and Arsen Ostrovsky
Shortly after the horrific terror attack in Barcelona last week, which claimed the lives of 14 people, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said terrorism is Europe’s main problem ‘right now’.
Similarly, it was not until the London Bridge car ramming in June this year that killed eight people, that UK Prime Minister Theresa May said ‘enough is enough’. But therein lies the problem.
Jihadists have been waging terror in Europe for years now and ‘enough’ was enough after the first attack. But European leaders have largely been in denial, only now beginning to concede there is a problem, and even now, many refuse to identify and confront the radical Islam at the root of this war.
These might be so-called ‘lone wolf’ terrorists, but they are united by the same homicidal ideology, with pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (Isis).
The vehicular terror attack in Barcelona follows a similar wave of car ramming attacks in Nice, London, Paris, Berlin, and Stockholm over the past year, which have claimed a combined total of 130 lives.
But the sober reality is that the wave of vehicular terror we are seeing across Europe now was pioneered by Palestinian terrorists in Israel, when the world mostly looked the other way, trying to downplay, excuse or just plain ignore the attacks, seeking to differentiate terror in Israel from terror in Europe. Today, Islamic jihadists are copying and exporting this murderous methodology across Europe.
So what can be done about this, and, specifically, how can Europe stop this wave of car rammings by ‘lone wolves’ and what can it learn from Israel? Continue reading