Border Crisis Invites Terrorists Officials also need to consider the risk of a copycat attacker inspired by Hamas’s brutality. By Paul Mauro
What does war in Gaza mean for U.S. homeland security? The sudden outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Hamas creates three broad categories of risk for domestic counterterrorism officials. First among them is America’s porous southern border.
I worked in counterterrorism with the New York City Police Department for 15 years. During that time, an undocumented border-crosser with a bad-guy footprint was a rarity. It’s hard for a foreign terror group to project power overseas. Not only is it expensive to deploy operatives on foreign soil, but doing so is rife with potential points of failure. The discovery of one in New York would have caused a “spin-up” involving major resources from surveillance teams to phone and cyber forensics.
The disaster at the southern border has made it easy for a potential terrorist to slip into the country. Such a “clean skin” is virtually untraceable. To make matters worse, we are inviting these border-crossers to come and paying their way to major terror targets like New York.
The Hamas charter confines the group’s mission to “the liberation of occupied Palestine,” and it hasn’t traditionally been a major actor in the U.S. Hamas’s stateside affiliates have mostly confined themselves to fundraising. But with the unprecedented events unfolding in Gaza, the group must now be considered part of the domestic counterterrorism landscape.
Iran and its proxy Hezbollah stand behind Hamas and have demonstrated a willingness to export terror. In 2011 Iran allegedly plotted from Mexico to murder the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Hezbollah—with Iran’s backing—has carried out deadly overseas bombings against Jewish targets, including the 1994 attack on a community center in Buenos Aires and the 2012 attack on an Israeli tour bus in Bulgaria.
A second category of risk arises from propaganda. During its rise, ISIS successfully used the “loser to lion” recruiting model. Unlike al Qaeda, ISIS was adept at social media, creating slick videos and images that helped radicalize disaffected young Muslims around the world and invited them to join the jihad against Israel and the West. Hamas has clearly learned these lessons; its media outlets have already begun to disseminate ISIS-like videos depicting the attack on Israel with cinematic drama. Like ISIS, Hamas has released its own app.
Third among the risks are simple copycats who, acting from a legion of potential grievances, decide the time is right to emulate Hamas and lash out. The continuum here goes from the comparatively mild—say, harassing a yarmulke-wearing student on the street—to the violent or even deadly. Unlike a Hamas overseas “recruit,” who will undergo an indoctrination process, a copycat acts more from anger than ideology. The journey to violence can therefore be brief—as sudden as responding to an impulse. This makes copycat terrorists the toughest to interdict.
Counterterrorism officials must also consider the possibility of a major escalation in the war that leads to a military-level strike on the U.S. While such a possibility feels remote, it probably felt equally remote to Parisians in 1939. There is already a land war raging in Eastern Europe. Add to that a Middle East conflict with a high probability of drawing in major powers—including the possibility of direct U.S. involvement—and counterterrorism officials at the federal, state and local levels must spare at least some thought to where all this could be going. Keep in mind that law enforcement already has its hands full with the defund-the-police movement, hostile prosecutors and legislators, and a shortage of personnel and new recruits.
The success of the Hamas attack represents a major failure for Israel’s vaunted intelligence apparatus. But that isn’t the whole story. The public thinks about counterterrorism only when there’s been a failure; the successes stay buried. It can make for thankless work, but that comes with the terrain.
Mr. Mauro is an attorney and retired NYPD inspector.
Comments are closed.
