As Islamic fundamentalists step up their attacks against Israelis, they are also busy planning terrorist actions against Jewish and Israeli targets elsewhere in the world.
In France, Interior Minister Charles Pasqua said last week that a group of terrorists belonging to the Armed Islamic Group was planning to attack Israeli and Jewish sites in France.
French authorities last week arrested about 100 members of the group, which hopes to overthrow the Algerian government and replace it with an Islamic state.
Although concerned about the latest arrests, an official with France’s Jewish community said that security at Jewish institutions was being maintained at previously requested levels.
“It is good to have a visible police protection as a deterrent,” said the official, who asked not to be identified. “But this would be of no help in case of a suicide terrorist attack, as we have seen in Israel.”
In Germany, meanwhile, the news magazine Focus has reported that Islamic fundamentalists are renewing their efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets in Germany.
According to the magazine, the German security service received intelligence information that radical Muslims recently held a secret meeting at a mosque in Berlin to discuss future terrorist assaults on German soil.
The meeting reportedly was attended by representatives of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
Focus said the German secret service is concerned that the radical Muslims will try to carry out an attack as soon as security measures around Israeli institutions are relaxed.
Security at potential Jewish and Israeli targets in Germany was stepped up in September in the wake of intelligence reports that a terrorist squad of the Abu Nidal group had entered Germany with the aim of launching a terrorist strike.
Ilan Mor, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, said in an interview that Israeli diplomats in Germany were confident that German security services would do their utmost to protect them and their families, and would offer similar protection to Israeli and Jewish institutions in Germany.
As concern heightens over the threat of more international terrorist attacks, the World Jewish Congress focused on the issue at it executive committee meeting in Mexico City last week.
Addressing the WJC, a U.S. State Department official blamed Hezbollah and “its state sponsor, Iran” as the major challenge to stability to the Middle East.
Philip Wilcox, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, maintained that Hezbollah has infiltrated Muslim communities throughout the world, including those in the Western Hemisphere.
Repeating what many have long asserted, Wilcox said that Hezbollah “was almost certainly” behind the July 18 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish community building that killed 99 people and left more than 200 wounded.
“Hezbollah has a well-organized network of cells concealed in peaceful Lebanese Shia communities around the world, including in the Americas,” Wilcox told the WJC.
Referring to other Middle Eastern supporters of terrorism, Wilcox said that Iraq continues to practice and support terrorism, but that Libya’s terrorist activities have been “curtailed” as a consequence of U.N. sanctions applied against it in response to its involvement in the December 1988 bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Wilcox described Syria as “a special case,” saying it will remain on the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism.
However, Wilcox added, “Damascus has not been directly involved in planning or executing terrorist attacks since 1986.”
Wilcox said the topic of international cooperation against terrorism will be a topic at the Summit of the Americas in December, which is expected to be hosted by President Clinton in Miami.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
