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Lone Wolf Terrorism and Social Media
(Jerusalem Post) Boaz Ganor - When senior Palestinian Authority officials joined the chorus accusing Israel of desecrating and "contaminating" the al-Aqsa Mosque, this mainstream voice was the catalyst that drove inflamed young people into the streets to randomly wound and kill Israelis. By any rational cost-benefit analysis, the initial wave of attacks seems to have failed. In most cases, the terrorist perpetrators were killed, wounded or captured, and the strategic damage they were able to inflict was limited. As a result, the Palestinian terrorist organizations led by Hamas published instructions on the Web on how the attackers could be more effective. The social networks are used by many young terrorists as a platform to convey their political messages before leaving for their attacks. Without these messages, the terrorist acts might lose their meaning. Another aspect is the glorification bestowed by the social media on the terrorists. Each terrorist act becomes a model for emulation, sparking a vicious cycle that is fueling a terrorist epidemic. Nevertheless, we need to be absolutely clear that the current wave of terror will only subside after the messages from the Palestinian leadership to the Palestinian public change. The writer is executive director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism and dean at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.