Israeli planes fired four missiles Saturday on a six-story building in the suburb of Jaramana on the outskirts of Damascus, killing Samir Qantar, a Lebanese Druze who, as a 16-year old in 1979, took part in one of the most notorious raids by Palestinian terrorists. He spent nearly thirty years in an Israeli jail, and was released in 2008 as part of an exchange agreement with Hezbollah. In the 1979 attack, Qantar took a four-year old child and her father hostage. Israeli military units exchanged fire with the terrorists, who eventually ran out of ammunition. Qantar used the last bullet in his magazine to kill the man, and then, realizing he had no more bullets, smashed the head of the four year old with the butt of his rifle, before surrendering.

In 2004, to meet the threat of terrorists using chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in an attack in the United Kingdom, the government introduced the Incident Response Units (IRUs), with their distinctive red coloring with yellow stripes, at a cost of £54 million. To save money, one third of all the fire brigade vehicles which were part of the IRUs, and which would have been called out in the event of terrorists setting off a “dirty bomb,” are being scrapped.

Liberals’ attitudes in the United Kingdom toward Muslims and immigrants became more like those of conservatives following the 7 July 2005 bombings in London, new research shows. Data from two nationally representative surveys of British citizens revealed that feelings of national loyalty increased and endorsement of equality decreased among political liberals following the terrorist attack. “Our findings show that terrorism shifts public attitudes towards greater loyalty to the in-group, less concern with fairness, and greater prejudice against Muslims and immigrants, but it seems that this effect is stronger on those who are politically left-leaning than those who are right-leaning,” explained one of the researchers.

The leaders of U.S. and European law enforcement and intelligence agencies have been explicit in their warnings: commercially available communication devices equipped with end-to-end encryption software make it impossible for security services to track terrorists plotting an attack – or monitor the terrorists’ communication while the attack is under way. Sources close to the investigation of the 13 November Paris terrorist attacks have now confirmed that the terrorists used the encrypted WhatsApp and Telegram messengers apps to communicate for a period before the attacks – and with each other during the attacks. What was said in those encrypted messages, and who sent and received these messages, may never be known, because the companies themselves do not have the key – or back door – to decrypt these messages. Thus, security services could not monitor such messages before an attack in order to prevent it, and cannot read these message after an attack to learn more about the terrorists’ network and support system.

Germany on Wednesday announced the creation of a new police unit which officials said will be specifically armed, outfitted, and trained to deal with terrorism; the UN Security Council on Thursday passed a resolution aiming to make it more difficult for IIS to raise funds by selling oil and antiquities, ransom payments, and other criminal activities. It remains to be seen whether the two big buyers of ISIS oil – the Assad regime and Turkey – will comply; a Facebook photo inadvertently reveals U.S. commando presence in Libya.

Israel and Turkey were once close allies, but the relationship between the two countries has cooled after the Islamist party of President Recep Tayeep Erdogan came to power in 2002, and he was elected president in 2003. The two countries have decided that the many challenges they face in common now justify the resumption of normal relationship, even if the two countries are deeply divided over the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel; Denmark is set to pass a law which would allow authorities to confiscate jewelry from refugees entering Denmark in order to pay for some of the refugee-related expenditures by the government; the new government in Argentina will reopen the investigation in to the mysterious death in January of a prosecutor who was about to charge former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner with covering up Iran’s involvement in the killing of eighty-five Argentinian Jews in 1994.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia announced the formation of a new alliance, consisting of thirty-four Sunni Arab and Muslim states, to fight terrorism. The alliance forces will join the moderate rebels in Syria – Prime Minister David Cameron said last week that these rebels were 70,000-strong – not only to fight ISIS, but also to turn their fire on the weakening Assad regime’s military; Italy will send troops to defend the strategically important Mosul Dam in northern Iraq; the EC ordered Italy to use force if necessary to compel migrants and refugees to have their fingerprints taken, this obliging these refugees to apply for asylum in Italy rather than use Italy as a corridor on their way to other EU countries.

Officials from DHS and the Department of State, as a general policy, do not check social media postings of applicants out of civil liberties concerns. With this policy in place, the department’s officials who handled Tashfeen Malik’s application could not have seen her pro-ISIS postings and note her growing radicalization. Officials from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) pressed for a change in DHS policy in light of the fact that social media  is increasingly used by followers of jihadist groups to declare their allegiance, but the disclosures by Edward Snowden about NSA surveillance programs was behind the reluctance of DHS high officials to change the policy for fears such a change would further damage the administration’s standing with civil rights groups and European allies.

There have been many books on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there are few about the recent military interventions of America’s allies in countries such as Mali and others on the African continent. Because the January 2013 French intervention in Mali against the local Al Qaeda affiliate was quick, effective, and relatively low cost, the story contains valuable lessons for future strategy.