No answer to terrorism

No answer to terrorism


Despite our exceptional efforts, it's impossible to protect every Israeli in the world


Eitan Haber


Now will come the point of “the tough questions,” and first and foremost the following question: How did they fail to avert the attack in Burgas, Bulgaria?

People will be asking: Who’s responsible for this disgrace? And what do we do to prevent the next attack? Indeed, every attack draws almost the same questions and the same answers in its wake, if there are answers at all.


My answer is that there is no answer to terrorism. We can prevent – and we are preventing - a thousand terror attacks, yet there will always be scenario number one thousand and one, the one officials did not think of or prepare for, and this will be the next attack.

Those who initiate terror always have an advantage over those who try to defend against it and prevent the terrorists and different terror groups from carrying out their malicious plans.

Terror seeks vulnerabilities and finds them, because it’s impossible to protect every Israeli and every Jew anywhere in the world.

The intelligence community works day and night in order to identity the various perpetrators even before they embark on their acts. It has phenomenal success and breaks world records. The prevention of attacks does not enjoy big headlines yet it constitutes extremely hard work of gathering intelligence from numerous sites worldwide.

And still, terrorists will always find the hole in the wide net cast by the State of Israel across the world.

Hence, even if it’s hard to hear and read this, many terror attacks will be coming, and the vast majority of them will be averted by security forces in Israel and abroad. Yet there will always be the one attack that succeeds, such as the one in Bulgaria Wednesday.

The advisory to “be alert” may be good for the media, yet is certainly unnecessary for security officers in Israel and around the world. They are alert, they look for terrorists and often find them, and they cry along with the entire State of Israel and the Jewish people and many other people overseas when they fail to prevent terror attacks.

This is our life, and until we find a way to live with the Arab world, we shall have to learn to sustain such blows, but mostly to prevent them.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4257660,00.html