Europe’s leaders, often busy criticizing Israeli anti-terror techniques, should learn about those very techniques

Daniel Schwammenthal, the director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute, writes @ Politico.eu

The now four-day long Brussels lockdown in response to fears of imminent, multiple terror attacks is both reassuring and disturbing. Reassuring because finally, after previous governments preferred denial, the authorities are taking the enemies of free society seriously. [...]

The Economist wrote recently that the Paris terror attacks are “testing the capital’s reputation for joie de vivre — and its resolution not to become Tel Aviv-sur-Seine.” Paris, Brussels and the rest of Europe should be so lucky — and not just because of the great beaches, food and culture the Big Orange has to offer.

Not even when facing the most horrendous Palestinian terror wave in the early 2000s did Tel Aviv, or any other Israeli city for that matter, shut down public life or declare a state of emergency.

Europe’s leaders, often busy criticizing Israeli anti-terror techniques, would be well-advised to quickly call their colleagues in Jerusalem to learn about those very techniques. We must also learn from Israel about public resilience, which allows the Jewish state to fight terror without canceling football matches and closing shopping centers and discos — in short without giving up that “joie de vivre.”

Much has been said about the peculiar circumstances that have turned Brussels and its particularly troubled district of Molenbeek into safe havens for Jihadists. But let’s not kid ourselves. The same misguided political correctness that allowed the creation of parallel societies and the spread of radical Islam in Belgium can be found throughout Europe. [...]

In a BBC poll after the murders at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket in January, 27 percent of Muslims polled said they had “some sympathy for the motives behind the Paris attacks.” Most other EU countries prefer not to conduct such polls.

One of the few social scientists who tries to systematically quantify the problem is Professor Ruud Koopmans, director of the research unit for migration, integration, and transnationalization at the Berlin Social Science Center, and his research makes for grim reading. [...]

According to Koopmans, Muslims also show much higher levels of “out-group hostility,” as social scientists call it, and so 57 percent reject homosexual friends, 45 percent do not trust Jews and 54 percent see “the West as an enemy out to destroy Islam.” [...]

Be it the Palestinian Authority or Egypt, we need to demand and receive an immediate end to radical religious incitement in state-controlled media, schools and mosques. Let’s begin by cutting off the satellite signals of those Middle East TV stations — and there are plenty — that spread anti-Western conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism and radical Islam into our living rooms, just as we would never allow domestic TV broadcasts to run outright racist material. Foreign hate preachers need to be speedily expelled and those schools and mosques tolerating such preaching should be closed.  Read more.