I was watching CNN while waiting for a ride to Ben Gurion airport on a Thursday morning in early 2004 when dramatic news broke of numerous explosions on commuter trains during the morning rush hour in Madrid. Over the remaining few minutes before a friend arrived to pick me up for my El Al flight that day to London, it became clear that a major, coordinated terror attack had just rocked Spain's largest city.
When my friend arrived, I informed her that al-Qaida terrorists had just attacked Madrid. As she turned her attention to the horrific pictures on my TV screen, she noted that CNN was reporting that Spanish government officials were fingering Basque separatists based in northern Spain for the multiple blasts. "It will prove in the end to be al-Qaida Muslim terrorists," I repeated, realizing from the date on my airplane ticket – March 11 – that it was exactly two and a half years to the day when the 9-11 atrocities changed life for all time in America.
In the end, it was confirmed that North African Arab terrorists linked to Osama Bin Laden's heinous group were indeed the perpetrators behind the deadly explosions.
The next evening, I needed to travel into central London for a live TV interview. I took the train from Richmond in southwest London to Waterloo station, not far from England's famous Parliament building and Big Ben clock tower, where I planned to change trains to arrive at my final destination. It was rush hour, and the huge station was packed with people moving like lemmings in every direction. Indeed, in the crush of rushing bodies, I was actually carried for a couple minutes in the opposite direction from where I needed to be.
When I finally got to my underground train 10 minutes later, I was barely able to squeeze onto it. All of the cars were crammed with commuters heading home for the weekend. After I just managed to squeeze on board, a slightly built woman with two young children attempted to get on. While her toddlers succeeded, she only got one arm in before the train doors started to close. As the panicking mother and her offspring screamed in unison, a quick-thinking passenger standing near me hit an emergency stop button next to the entrance, and she was finally able to sardine into the train.
As we sped away from the station, I looked around at the hundreds of weary faces. I noticed several passengers were carrying large backpacks, and most had briefcases or purses. Unlike what has become routine in Israel, no security guard had bothered to check any of these items for possible weapons or bombs. In fact, no such guards or policemen were even vaguely evident at Waterloo that Friday evening, or at the other bustling commuter centers that I passed through. And this just one day after another European capital city's public transport system had suffered the deadliest terrorist atrocity in the continent's modern history.
During my subsequent three weeks of public meetings all around the United Kingdom, I retold this story many times, warning my British audiences that a major al-Qaida attack – probably on the London transport system – was just a matter of time. After it occurred, security measures would have to be substantially beefed up, slowing up the system and therefore the local economy, as we had already endured in Jerusalem for some years. But, I added, there would simply be no other choice.
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Just hours after the predicted attacks occurred this past Thursday morning, I was amazed to hear British Prime Minister Tony Blair declare that he and seven other international leaders gathered in Scotland would carry on with their previous G-8 summit agenda, focusing on debt relief for Africa and global warming. This instantly reminded me of George W. Bush continuing to read a children's book at a Florida school after being told that an apparent terror attack was under way at New York's World Trade Center.
Will life become any easier for poor people in Africa if London and/or New York are obliterated by Islamic nuclear bombs? Will global warming be the world's main concern as mushroom clouds arise over the cities of the world's greatest democracies? Although these are, of course, ultimate weapons of mass destruction that are probably not in the hands of al-Qaida terrorists at present, they may well be in the not too distant future. After all, several countries currently developing such weapons, especially Iran and North Korea, share the same hatred for the West – and, in Iran's case, the same Islamic fundamentalist worldview – as Osama bin Laden.
Ironically, although possibly not coincidently, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak to an Israel investment conference very close to the first London blast. The MIT-educated politician was one of the first Western leaders to sound the alarm over Islamic terrorist intentions, and not only concerning Israel. Yet most of his international colleagues acted as if he was merely crying wolf, even after Muslim extremist attacks began to occur outside of the perennially troubled Middle East.
In recent years, Western demands for Israel to abandon territory to her mostly-Muslim Arab opponents have grown to a shrill crescendo. The chorus has been led by none other than George Bush and Tony Blair. In fact, their repeated calls for a Palestinian state to be established just outside of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv grew even louder after 9-11. The substantial evidence suggesting that such a state will become an al-Qaida-supported bastion of radical Islamic terror is completely ignored as politicians around the globe demand that Ariel Sharon rush to evacuate "occupied" land, and not only in the relatively isolated Gaza Strip.
If it's true that nations, like individuals, reap what they sow, then folks all over the Western world better get ready for even more difficult days ahead.
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Editor's note: "ISRAEL BETRAYED?" – the July issue of WND's acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine – is devoted entirely to an in-depth exploration of the controversial forced removal of thousands of Jewish residents from Gaza planned for August, and the likely creation of a Hamas-run terror state many believe will follow. Read more about "ISRAEL BETRAYED?"
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