The Common Terrorist Threat Facing India and Israel

"From Munich to Mumbai"
A27 (Op-Ed), Saturday 12/20/08
By Ami Pedazhur

In this positive Op-Ed, Israeli academic Ami Pedazhur, a leading expert on suicide terrorism, writes about the similarities and differences of the terrorism facing both India and Israel in light of the recent Mumbai terrorist attack. Overall, he understands that both countries will continue be connected by the "latest terrorism challenge."

Pedazhur's Op-Ed is most useful in reminding the audience that "these attacks did not indicate the emergence of a new form of terrorism." In doing so, he goes through a rash of horrific terrorist attacks against Israeli targets that employed similar strategies:

• 1972 Muniche massacre of Israeli athletes, which captured the world's media attention at the time and focused it on the Palestinian plight
  
• 1974 Ma'alot Massacre ("22 Israeli high school students killed")
• 1978 Coastal Road Massacre ("37 murdered, including 13 children")
• 1979 Nahariya terrorist in which terrorists, including the infamous Samir Kuntar, infiltrated Israel by boat

In the article though, the Israeli academic does not simply focus on the commonalities, but also the differences. He was "very surprised to hear Israeli security experts criticizing the Indian response," particuarly given that Israel had its own fair share of counter-terrorism failures until it reached its own effective strategies. In his view, "protecting a huge multiethnic, multireligious country like India is far more challenging than securing a rather homogeneous, tiny state like Israel."

This seems to be quite a valid point. All in all, still a very positive article. Unforunately though, the piece ends on this line: "While Israel has much to be proud of in how it has handled terrorism, it also has much to be humble about." This makes the article very much Israel-centric, focusing on Israeli criticism of the Indian response instead of focusing on the common terrorist threat the two nations will face in the years and decades to come.

The common terrorist threat being Islamically-inspired, which Pedazhur somehow fails to mention.