Germany warns of ‘real’ Islamist terror threat in wake of Israel-Hamas war
Berlin’s spymaster says conflict prompting calls for terror groups to join fray, carry out attacks; points at unnamed ‘foreign state actors’ seeking to exploit mood
Germany’s domestic intelligence chief on Wednesday warned that the risk of Islamist attacks is “real and higher than it has been for a long time” because of the Israel-Hamas war.
“We see calls in jihadist spectrums for attacks and for al-Qaeda and Islamic State to tag on to the Middle East conflict,” said Thomas Haldenwang in a statement.
A flood of images online related to the war triggered by Hamas’s devastating October 7 onslaught on Israel, paired with fake news, could act as catalysts for radicalization, he said.
Palestinians or Muslims were being portrayed as “victims of the West” in some of these social media posts, which sometimes also carry antisemitic content.
“The situation is exacerbated by foreign state actors, which are exploiting or seeking to boost this mood,” warned Haldenwang, the president of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Haldenwang did not cite examples of the state actors but added that the different extremist groups’ common view of Israel as an enemy was generating “new connections and could lead to strong cooperation in certain cases,” he warned.
German authorities had already announced they were ramping up security for Jews and Jewish institutions in the wake of the October 7 massacre.
Berlin was also working to prevent any attacks at large events, said Haldenwang in the rare statement.
Germany issued a ban on Hamas activities and organizations linked to the group earlier this month, after terrorists rampaged through Israeli southern communities, murdering at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians in their homes and at a music festival, and abducting at least 240 people to Gaza.
Israel then launched an air and ground offensive aimed at destroying Hamas in the coastal enclave.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has said that more than 15,000 people have been killed since October 7, most of them civilians. The numbers cannot be verified, and are believed to include Hamas terrorists as well as civilians killed by misfired Palestinian rockets.
An ongoing ceasefire has seen 61 Israeli hostages and 20 foreign nationals released in exchange for 180 female and underage Palestinians serving time in Israeli prisons for security offenses.
