Read in
A few years ago, before the Arab Spring broke out in the Middle East and became a gloomy, rainy winter, I had a talk with a former senior official in Israel’s Shin Bet on condition of anonymity. This man’s entire life was dedicated to the war against terror; acquiring him a long, personal and even intimate familiarity with radical Islam. At the time, he told me, “Israel will, sometime in the next decade, become one of the safest places in the Middle East. Afterward, it will become one of the safest places in Europe.”
I asked him for an explanation. “We have been coping with radical Islam for generations already,” he said. “We are prepared, we are realistic, we understand and know what we are up against. They are not.”
