• Report: IDF planes strike Hezbollah weapons convoy, Syrian army target

    A Hezbollah arms convoy and a Syrian military target were hit overnight by Israeli air strikes, Arab media reported Wednesday. Syrian government-associated news sources reported that there were four explosions in Damascus at 1:15 in the morning, as a military compound near the Damascus airport was hit by Israel Air Force planes operating in Lebanese airspace. The Kuwaiti news network al-Rai reported that the planes also struck several vehicles travelling along the Beirut-Damascus highway, which were apparently part of a Hezbollah arms convoy.

  • Britain faces U.S. legal claims as a result of new terror-sponsors law

    Senior British political and military figures have warned that Britain faces a wave of legal claims from U.S. lawyers — and could even be taken to court by victims of ISIS follower Jihadi John. The warning comes in the wake of Congress passing the controversial Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which permits U.S.-based lawyers to sue foreign states for not doing enough to tackle terrorism, and limit terrorist activities by their citizens.

  • Extreme-right terrorism threat growing: U.K. police

    Neil Basu, deputy assistant commissioner to the U.K. national coordinator for counter-terrorism policing, has said police fear the threat of far-right violence is growing and poses a similar danger to communities as other forms of extremism. “Over the past twelve months, there have been indications that the threat from [the] extreme right wing could be increasing and we are alive to this,” he said. Figures release by the police show that concerns over potential extreme rightwing radicalization led to a 73.5 percent increase in referrals to the counter-radicalization program Prevent last year, compared with the previous twelve months.

  • NYC mayor said city would sue U.S. government over Muslim registry

    New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city would sue the U.S. government if Muslims were required, under a Donald Trump administration, to sign up to a “registry.” “We will use all the tools at our disposal to stand up for our people,” he said. The Muslim registry plan advanced by Trump supporters like Kris Kobach, the secretary of state of Kansas, would require all Muslims in the United States sign to a registry in which they would reveal their identity, religious beliefs, and political affiliations. In its original form, the registry requirement would apply to Muslim visitors to the United States – students, business people, and tourists – as well as to Muslim citizens of the United States.

  • Israel: Iran is smuggling missile technology to Hezbollah inside commercial flights

    Iran is smuggling weapons to the terrorist group Hezbollah inside commercial flights to Lebanon, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations has charged in a letter to the UN Security Council. Such actions would violate several Security Council resolutions. The arms were either shipped directly to Hezbollah on commercial flights to Lebanon, or flown to Damascus, Syria, and then shipped to the terror group over land.

  • Overall number of terrorism deaths falls, but increases in some countries

    New edition of the Global Terrorism Index highlights a complex and rapidly changing set of dynamics in global terrorism. While on the one hand the top-line statistics highlight an improvement in the levels of global terrorism, the continued intensification of terrorism in some countries is a cause for serious concern. There was a 10 percent decline from 2014 in the number of terrorism deaths in 2015 resulting in 3,389 fewer people being killed. Iraq and Nigeria together recorded 5,556 fewer deaths and 1,030 fewer attacks than in 2014. However, with a global total of 29,376 deaths, 2015 was still the second deadliest year on record.

  • Israel fortifies northern defenses against future Hezbollah attacks

    The Israeli army is bolstering the country’s northern defenses in anticipation of future attacks from the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah. The Israel Defense Forces changed its doctrine towards the terror group following threats by its leader Hassan Nasrallah, who claimed that Hezbollah sought to “enter into the Galilee.”

  • Israel Red Cross affiliate building underground blood bank to ensure supply during crises

    Magen David Adom, the Israeli affiliate of the Red Cross, is building an underground blood bank in order to secure the country’s blood supply in case of attacks or natural disasters. “With all blood transfusions stored in an underground space, the facility will ensure that they remain unharmed even when the building is under a massive barrage of missiles,” Magen David Adom director said. The terror organization Hezbollah has an estimated arsenal of over 130,000 rockets capable of firing at Israel — more than the combined amount of the twenty-seven non-U.S. NATO member states.

  • Georgia lawmakers mull bill prohibiting wearing hijabs, niqabs, and burqas in public

    A Georgia lawmaker wants to prohibit Muslim women from wearing hijabs, niqabs, and burqas in public. The proposed law would modify the original 1951 anti-masking law which targeted Ku Klux Klan members. The purpose was to prevent them from committing violence while preserving their anonymity by wearing their Klan hoods. The bill’s sponsor said the law would be expanded to women driving on public roads, making it a misdemeanor to wear a Muslim traditional headwear while driving. The language of House Bill 3, however, suggests the prohibition would apply to any public property, not only public roads.

  • Alt-right racists to flood Twitter with “fake black people” posts

    White supremacists associated with the alt-right movement said they were planning to retaliate against Twitter by inundating it with postings from fake accounts pretending to be black people. The alt-right extremists said the retaliation is in response to Twitter’s banning several accounts belonging to individuals and groups associated with the racist and anti-Semitic movement. Alt-right figure Andrew Anglin of the neo-Nazi Web site Daily Stormer instructed his followers: “When you have time, create a fake black person account,” he wrote. “Just go on black Twitter and see what they look like, copy that model. Start filling it with rap videos and booty-shaking or whatever else these blacks post.”

  • Kosovo arrests 19 suspects in ISIS plot to attack Israeli soccer team

    Kosovo police announced on Thursday the arrest of nineteen suspects for their involvement in an Islamic State plot to attack the Israeli national soccer team. Albanian security forces revealed last week that they had thwarted an attack on a World Cup qualifying match between Israel and Albania on 12 November. The terror threat prompted officials to move the site of the game from the city of Shkodër to Elbasan, which is closer to Albania’s capital.

  • Islam “not strongest factor” driving foreign fighters to join extremists in Syria, Iraq

    A new study of foreign recruits who joined Islamist groups in the Middle East shows that the overwhelming majority had no formal religious education and had not adhered to Islam for their entire lives. Jihadist groups in fact prefer recruits who are ignorant of religion because they are “less capable of critically scrutinizing the jihadi narrative and ideology” and instead adhere unquestioningly to their group’s violent and reductive interpretation of Islam, the West Point study says. Many Western recruits who travel to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamist organization are driven to join the jihadist cause because of cultural and political identities rather than Islam itself, which is moved into a “secondary role.”

  • Twitter suspends accounts of alt-right individuals, organizations

    Twitter has suspended the accounts of several individuals and groups linked to the alt-right. The alt-right movement embraces white supremacists, anti-Semites, and all manner of bigots in addition to conspiracy theorists and more “traditional” rabble-rousing populists and extremists. Steve Bannon, the publisher of the alt-right’s main organ, the Breitbart News Web site, was Trump campaign CEO, and is slated to become the strategic counselor to the Trump in the White House. Twitter said that company rules prohibit “violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct, and multiple account abuse, and we will take action on accounts violating those policies.” “The great purge is upon us. But Twitter could have purged the #AltRight BEFORE we memed a President into the White House. They didn’t because they never believed it was possible,” Pax Dickinson, founder of alt-right site WeSearchr; wrote. “Banning us now is too little & too late.”

  • October 2016 terrorism: The numbers

    The House Homeland Security Committee has released its November 2016 Terror Threat Snapshot, which details terrorism events and trends in October 2016. Among the key points:  ISIS’ message continues to resonate with American citizens as more extremists plot attacks on American soil and attempt to travel overseas to join the terror group; the threat of the “terrorist diaspora” to the West will continue to grow, particularly as fighters flee from recent offensives in Mosul and Raqqa; Iran continues to take aggressive steps to threaten U.S. interests at home and abroad, particularly in the Gulf.

  • Government mass killings intensify domestic terrorism

    Instances of mass killings and government violence spike domestic terrorism and allow terrorist groups to use grievances against government oppression to recruit more members, according to a new study. The authors say it is important to identify ways in which state policies influence terrorist activity or even embolden groups that end up carrying out domestic terrorism – especially as existing research about practices such as torture or extra-judicial detainment has found that human rights abuses actually increase the amount of terrorism a state faces.