• Terrorism

    A United Nations report found that although the threat of ISIS has diminished, as the terror group is transitioning from “a proto-State network to a covert network,” al Qaeda is newly resurgent with support from Iran. The report states, “the global Al-Qaida network continues to show resilience. Al-Qaida’s affiliates and allies are much stronger than those of ISIL in certain places, including Somalia, Yemen, South Asia and the Sahel.”

  • Extremism

    Last week, in advance of the first anniversary of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released the ADL H.E.A.T.(Hate, Extremism, Anti-Semitism, Terrorism) Map — an interactive map detailing extremist and anti-Semitic incidents in the United States. The map is a visual reflection of select proprietary datasets developed by ADL experts in its Center on Extremism.

  • Terrorism

    In 2014, Jeremy Corbyn, now leader of the Labor Party but then a back bencher, was invited to Tunisia to attend a conference on the Middle East. He used the occasion to visit the cemetery where several PLO terrorists are buried (the PLO had moved its headquarters from Beirut to Tunisia in 1982). Corbyn claims that he laid a wreath at the grave of a PLO leader who was killed in an Israeli commando raid in 1985 – but pictures show that he laid a wreath about 20 meters away, at the grave of a Black September terrorist who took part in the killing of 11 Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics.

  • Terrorism

    Despite the military defeat of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and most of Syria, the extremist group still has around 20,000 to 30,000 militants in the two countries, according to a United Nations report. The report says that Al-Qaeda’s global network also “continues to show resilience,” with its affiliates and allies much stronger than the IS group in some spots, including Somalia, Yemen, South Asia, and Africa’s Sahel region.

  • Terrorism

    The London police have arrested a man on suspicion of “terrorist offenses” after he crashed a car into security barriers outside Britain’s Parliament, injuring several pedestrians. London’s Metropolitan police said that they are treating the car crash as a terrorist attack, and that the Met’s Counter-Terrorism Command was leading the investigation.

  • Terrorism & social media

    The EU is planning to take legal measures to control online content which supports and promotes terrorism. The EU Security Commissioner, Julian King, said voluntary agreements, which are currently in place, had not provided European citizens enough protection against exposure to terrorist-promoting content.

  • The Russia connection

    The State Department says it will be implementing new sanctions on Russia as punishment for the March 2018 poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on British soil. The new sanctions, which will go into effect on 22 August, target export licenses of sensitive U.S. technologies and industrial equipment, such as electronics, calibration equipment, and gas turbine engines. Russia will also be given 90 days to comply with other demands, including allowing international inspectors into the country to ensure that no chemical or biological weapons exist there. If Moscow does not comply with the demands, a second round of sanctions could further downgrade diplomatic relations with Russia, or even restrict flights by Russian air carrier Aeroflot.

  • Terrorism

    With 10,900 terrorist attacks killing more than 26,400 people in 2017, the numbers of terrorist attacks and deaths worldwide have declined for the third consecutive year, according to new data released last week. Despite recent decreases in terrorist violence, the number of attacks in 2017 is 28 percent higher than in 2012, and deaths 71 percent higher. Terrorist violence peaked in 2014 at nearly 17,000 attacks and more than 45,000 total deaths.

  • Terrorism

    The mother of the late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has said in her first interview with Western media that her infamous son was “brainwashed” into a life of extremism. She appeared to blame Abdullah Azzam, a Muslim Brotherhood member who became bin Laden’s spiritual adviser at the university. The bin Laden family confirmed that Hamza bin Laden, the son of the late al-Qaeda leader, has married the daughter of Mohammad Atta, the lead hijacker in the 9/11 terror attacks.

  • Extremism

    The British Labor Party has been embroiled in a bitter dispute over anti-Semitism in Labor ranks, and what many critics of Labor leader Jeremy Corbin see as his tolerance of hate-speech, and his own “insensitivity” (his words) to issues dear to British Jews. The London Times yesterday reported that in 2010, when he was a backbencher, Corbyn hosted an event on Holocaust Memorial Day at the House of Commons, where he likened Israeli government policy to that of the Nazis.

  • Extremism

    Against a backdrop of rising reports of hate crimes, Human Rights First and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Wednesday released their annual analysis of hate crime reporting by the 57 participating states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a security- and human rights-focused intergovernmental organization comprising governments from North America, Europe, and Central Asia. The report notes that many OSCE governments remain unwilling or unable to meet even basic standards concerning the reporting of hate crimes.

  • Conspiracy theories

    Paranoia is the tendency to assume other people are trying to harm you when their actual motivations are unclear, and this tendency is increased when interacting with someone of a higher social status or opposing political beliefs, according to a new study.

  • Kite terrorism

    An arson balloon landed in the major southern Israeli city of Be’er Sheva for the first time on Monday evening, raising fears that the range of terror devices employed by Palestinian terrorists, which have caused numerous fires in Israeli border communities, is increasing.

  • Extremists

    Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, in a new report says extremists’ criminal activity in Germany has declined, but that the numbers of potential extremists has risen. The BfV’s annual report especially noted a sharp increase in members of the radical far-right Reichsbürger movement.

  • Terrorism & the media

    Terrorist attacks committed by Muslim extremists receive 357 percent more U.S. press coverage than those committed by non-Muslims. The findings, based on all terrorist attacks in the United States between 2006 and 2015, show that terrorist attacks committed by non-Muslims (or where the religion was unknown) received an average of 15 headlines, while those committed by Muslim extremists received 105 headlines. The disparity in coverage is out of sync with reality, given that between 2008 and 2016 white and rightwing terrorists carried out nearly twice as many terrorist attacks as Muslim extremists.

  • Guns vs. butter

    New findings dispute “guns versus butter” narrative as a major factor behind the Arab Spring. Researchers caution against uncritically applying lessons from Western nations to interpret public policy decisions in the Middle East.

  • Terrorism

    German prosecutors have arrested the wife of a Tunisian man who was detained last month for plotting a biological attack. The couple bought a hamster to test a chemical substance before they were going to use it in a planned terrorist attack.

  • Terrorism

    The Israeli intelligence service Mossad helped thwart a major Iranian terrorist attack in a Parisian suburb last month. The Mossad gathered intelligence which was passed on to authorities in Germany, France, and Belgium that led to the arrest of a cell headed by an Iranian diplomat. The intelligence cooperation between Israel and European countries prevented a planned bomb attack on the annual National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) rally in the town of Villepinte on 30 June.

  • Extremists & politics

    British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn has been accused by his own MPs of being an “anti-Semite and a racist,” who turns a blind eye to anti-Jewish sentiments in the Party. Veteran Labor MP Dame Margaret Hodge on Tuesday labelled an “anti-Semite and a racist” three hours after Labor’s highest governing body ignored pleas of the Jewish community and rejected the internationally recognized definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

  • Extremists & politics

    Far-right extremists – and at least one on the far left — are making their presence felt in mainstream American politics, and voters will find a record number of them on the ballot this fall. Around the country, in blue and red states alike, members of the extremist right – and their racist, anti-Semitic views – are enjoying more exposure today than at any time in recent history.