From the Liveblog of
Saturday, January 10, 2015
FM: Terror wave expected to go on, Jews should move to Israel
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman says the current wave of terror in Europe is expected to continue and that the best security precaution for Jews is immigration to Israel.
“Israel is concerned about two issues: One, the terror attack on the Jewish market came after France already increased its terror alert. Two, this is the third terror attack [against Jews]: in Toulouse [in 2012], at the Jewish museum in Brussels [last May], and now at the kosher market on Friday,” he tells Channel 2.
“Europe has not yet internalized that the foreign fighters coming back [from the Middle East] to European soil or those who have connections to al Qaeda or Daesh [the Arab acronym for the Islamic State] are a real, serious threat,” he says.
It is estimated that almost 1,000 French nationals alone have left to join jihadists in Iraq and Syria.
“We have a lot of empathy and we identify with the problems [Europe is facing] but we want to demand that security be significantly upgraded at Jewish institutions. There is a lot of room for improvement,” he adds.
Liberman warns that the assessment held by “all security establishments, in Europe, the US and here [in Israel] is that this terror wave will continue. There is always a desire to carry out copycat attacks.”
“The best security precaution [for Jews] may be aliya [immigration] to Israel. I hope that French Jews will start immigrating to Israel in significant numbers,” he says.
The Times of Israel Community.