Josh Gleis: is angry: A time for vigilance

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, March 14, 2008

JOSHUA GLEIS

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

IMAD MUGHNIYEH, one of the most notorious and wanted terrorists in U.S. history, was recently killed in a car bombing in a posh neighborhood of Damascus. As security chief for Hezbollah, Mughniyeh was behind some of the deadliest terrorist attacks against Americans. He is believed the mastermind of two bombings against the U.S. embassy as well as the suicide truck bombings of the U.S. Marines and French paratrooper barracks in Beirut.

Those attacks alone killed almost 400 people. Add to that a résumé that includes kidnapping, hijacking, torture, murder and the admiration of everyone from Iranian intelligence to al-Qaida, and one comes to realize that the free world is a much better place today without Mughniyeh — who evaded U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies for over 25 years. Yet while his demise may be viewed as a victory, it should also be seen as a time for vigilance.

While nobody has claimed responsibility for his assassination, Hezbollah and the Iranians were quick to blame and the “Zionists” for the attack. It is worth noting the words of the secretary general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, as he eulogized Mughniyeh as a “martyr.” He explained that by this assassination, Israel took its fight outside the “natural battlefield” of Israel and and “crossed the border.” Thus he warned “Zionists, if you want this kind of open war, let the whole world listen: Let this war be open.”

Hezbollah is not known for making vacuous threats. The statement is eerily similar to those issued following the capture of senior Hezbollah official Mustafa Dirani and an Israeli strike on a Hezbollah training base that killed over two dozen of its operatives — both in 1994. In response to those assaults, Hezbollah leaders stated at the time that Israel could expect reprisals to “spread to more than one place inside and outside Lebanon” and that “the battlefield against Israel is as wide as the whole world, and the struggle against it would continue for a long time.” One month later, the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was bombed, killing over 80 Jewish civilians and injuring over 200.

It appears the Jewish community worldwide is facing a similar threat today. Hezbollah, Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations do not simply hold the Israeli military or even the Israeli people responsible for actions taken against them, they continuously threaten and act against Jewish people worldwide. Israelis are known for their high level of alertness and security, and thus when they are deemed too difficult to attack, those next in line for attack are often innocent Jews living around the world.

While the level of vigilance in the United States and indeed around the world has increased dramatically post-9/11, Jewish communities have grown accustomed to the need for added security and precautions long before the tragic attacks in 2001. As far back as the 1991 Gulf War, Jewish schools, community centers and houses of worship in the United States were forced to significantly increase their security as multiple threats against Jews started pouring in from around the globe. In 1993, elements that would later become al- Qaida planned to attack multiple Jewish targets in the New York area, in what was known as the “Twelve Jewish Locations” plot. The scheme was later deemed too narrow in scope and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was chosen instead. But the threat remains and attacks against Jewish targets in the United States and worldwide have taken place — often in response to what groups believe to be injustices meted out by Israel.

There is no doubt that a heightened level of awareness is necessary today. Hezbollah pioneered the use of suicide bombings. It has an advanced global network, sophisticated operatives, and financial and military backing from and Syria. The knowledge, experience and means to operate in multiple countries around the world exist, proven by actions they have taken in the past from Germany to Argentina to Israel. While Imad Mughniyeh is gone, the threat remains. And thus our vigilance must persevere as well.

Joshua Gleis is an international-security fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard University, and a visiting scholar at Columbia University. As an analyst at the Jebsen Center for Counter Terrorism Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, his areas of focus are counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and the Mideast.