DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Madrid Suspects Were Known Years Ago - John Leicester (AP/Washington Post)
    Long before Jamal Zougam was picked up as a suspect in the Madrid bombings, he'd flitted across the radar screens of anti-terrorism investigators.
    Police searched his apartment in 2001, and both he and his half brother, also under arrest, reportedly had been vouched for by an al-Qaeda suspect in a monitored phone call.
    A U.S. counter-terrorism official said authorities found no evidence of increased "chatter" - monitored contacts between suspects that might have pointed to a plot - in the days prior to the attack.
    "You cannot expect the police to secure every citizen, every building in every location from every possible terrorist attack," Interpol chief Ronald Noble said Tuesday at a security conference in Manila. "The only way is to identify terror groups and dismantle them."

PA, Hamas Exchange Gunfire in Gaza - Eli Vaked (Yediot Ahronot-Hebrew)
    A Palestinian policeman was killed and 16 people were wounded in Gaza Wednesday in an exchange of gunfire after Palestinian security forces sought to inspect a vehicle containing Kassam rockets driven by Hamas terrorists.

Israeli Soldiers Find Bomb in Truck at West Bank Checkpoint (AP)
    Israeli troops found a 22-pound truck bomb at a West Bank checkpoint Tuesday, apparently planted by Palestinian militants who wanted to get the explosives to an attacker in Israel.
    When soldiers detonated the bomb, the blast could be heard throughout the West Bank city of Nablus.

Police Disarm Bomb in Van at U.S. Consulate in Karachi - Kamran Khan and John Lancaster (Washington Post)
    Pakistani police defused a large bomb inside a van containing a tank filled with 200 gallons of liquid explosives parked just outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi Monday.
    A police investigator, Qazi Chand, said that less than five minutes remained on the timer when the bomb was disarmed.
    "The device...would have triggered a massive fireball just under the Stars and Stripes," said Fayaz Leghari, who is heading the police investigation.

Using Children in Combat a War Crime (B'Tselem)
    B'Tselem strongly condemns Monday's attempt to use an eleven year-old boy to transport explosives.
    There is no possible justification for attacks targeting civilians. Any such attack is illegal and immoral.
    Using a child to transport explosives is in and of itself a war crime. The intentional harming of civilians must cease.

Useful Reference:

The Exploitation of Palestinian Children by Terrorist Groups (IDF)
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Observations:

Memories Are Short, Hatred Is Forever - Omer Bartov (Los Angeles Times)

• Europe's anti-Semitism did not vanish. It was banished to the fringes of society; it was buried in the recesses of people's consciousness; it was transformed into philo-Semitism and fads for things Jewish; it seeped back in as self-righteous indignation against Israel; and it was exported into the Muslim world. Now that it is back, we can see where it was hiding all these years.
• The new anti-Semitism is obsessed with fantasies of secret cabals, visions of bloody upheaval and apocalyptic devastation. Like its Nazi predecessor, it promises to do to the Jews what they are supposedly doing to the world. It is inherently, then, genocidal.
• Its more soft-core manifestations can be found in the European left, camouflaged as anti-Americanism and an anti-Zionism that denies Israel's right to exist. Right-wing anti-Semitism has also come out of the shadows.
• The new anti-Semitism has found its most lethal incarnation in the Muslim world, where it has become a prevalent subculture, a focus of identity, a rallying cry for the masses, a tool to divert attention from the real reasons for poverty and despair, and a cause for militant mobilization and destructive urges.
• Prophesies of destruction must be taken seriously, and silence facilitates their realization. Even after the deed, silence ensures its recurrence, for it erases the memory of what has been destroyed and obscures the guilt of the murderers. It allows us to forget that when some people say they want to kill you, they mean what they say.

  The writer is professor of history at Brown University.