In the wake of Thursday's terrorist attack on the ultra-Orthodox town of Elad, Israeli authorities are flooded with applications for firearm permits. 

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A particularly spike has been noted among Haredi applicants, while the overall volume of applications is three-fold in the immediate aftermath of the attack, in which two terrorists murdered three civilians after making their way from Judea and Samaria through the Green Line. 

According to the figures released by the Interior Ministry at the request of Israel Hayom, more than 5,000 Israelis inquired by phone on the application process, which is three times higher than a week earlier. 

More than 630 applications were filed on Monday this week, compared to just over 240 on Monday in the previous week. More than 22,000 applications have been filed since March, when the most recent terrorist spate started. 

"This is unprecedented and truly amazing," senior officials at the ministry said. "We have never encountered such a volume of applications. This shows just how shaken people's sense of security is." 

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Antisemitic incidents rose 35% in the last year with more than 440 recorded cases, including physical assaults and graffiti, according to a report by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

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"The ECAJ 2021 Antisemitism Report," issued on Sunday, recorded 272 attacks – physical assaults, verbal harassment, vandalism and graffiti – and 175 threats in the year ending in September, up from 331 in the previous 12 months.

The rise in acts of Jew-hatred includes an uptick in abuse and harassment, which rose 14% from 128 to 147 incidents, and graffiti, which went from 42 instances to 106. The discovery of antisemitic posters and stickers increased a whopping 157%, from 28 to 72.

Eleven incidents of vandalism were recorded, and the number of physical assaults remained stationary at eight incidents, while threats via email, phone and mail declined.

The increase tracks with the findings of a smaller regional study conducted earlier in 2021.

In the survey of Jews in the state of Queensland, which includes Brisbane, Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef, six in 10 Jews reported experiencing anti-Semitism though the vast majority, 91.5%, said they had not reported the incident.

In a press release on the ECAJ report, Julie Nathan, the group's research director and report author, said: "Behind the statistics lie some horrific personal stories of persistent antisemitic bullying of Jewish students at schools, the brutal physical assault of a man on his way to synagogue," along with the flying of a Nazi flag above a synagogue in Brisbane and the spray-painting of a synagogue in Adelaide.

"What is perhaps worse is the disgraceful discourse online and occasionally in the mainstream media of those who, for whatever reason, seek to rationalize or minimize this egregious behavior," she said.

Like elsewhere in the world, antisemitism against Australia's Jewish community was impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and Israel's Operation Guardian of the Walls operation against Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip in May, during which more than 4,000 rockets at Israeli population centers.

"A total of 88 incidents was logged for the month of May alone, when the hostilities between Israel and Hamas occurred, compared to between 22 and 46 incidents for each of the other 11 months of the year," said Nathan.

She also reported the threat from extremist groups including Hizb ut-Tahrir, which the Anti-Defamation League says "seeks to establish a worldwide Islamic theocracy," and the neo-Nazi group, National Socialist Network.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org. 

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In all these cases, however, civil defense was seen as a means of protecting civilians from attack while military forces fought to defeat the enemy. Ultimate protection of the civilian population was to be achieved through military victory.

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When the State of Israel was established, bomb shelters, and civilian evacuation from combat zones were used to protect civilians while the Israel Defense Forces fought the enemy. Because victory could take time to achieve, it was imperative that the civilian population be protected in the meantime.

In 1991, Israel faced a new phenomenon: A threat to civilians against which the IDF had no effective military response. Iraqi Scud missiles could only be confronted via civil defense tactics: directives for the civilian population to maximize survival rates, coupled with a rudimentary Patriot missile defense system. The IDF had no credible military method of stopping the attacks, and Israel was forced to await the defeat of Iraq by coalition forces.

In the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, Israel recognized that the threat of ballistic missiles coupled with the possible use of nuclear, biological, or chemical (NBC) munitions exceeded the capabilities of existing civil defense units, and accordingly established the Home Front Command. Faced with the prospect of tens of thousands of potential casualties, the Home Front Command developed a doctrine designed to mitigate the effects of strategic attacks against the civilian population.

Terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas, through their acquisition of large quantities of rockets and missiles, have gained a significant capability to threaten Israeli civilians. The Second Lebanon War of 2006, coupled with an increasing rocket threat from Gaza, led to a shift in Israeli civil defense strategy from a critical adjunct of protecting civilians while the military defeated the enemy to an end in itself.

The IDF is thus no longer required to defeat the enemy. It is considered sufficient that civilian casualties be minimized through sirens, shelters, and defense systems like the Iron Dome. Punitive airstrikes designed more to signal displeasure than to cause serious damage substitute for warfighting aimed at achieving even tactical victory.

The tactic of protecting civilians has become a strategy. This is a serious strategic error.

There are three deleterious consequences to this policy: strategic, domestic, and international.

Strategic: If Israeli strategy is based on deterrence, a focus on civil defense is counterproductive. Non-response to attacks emboldens the attacker and erodes deterrence. By reducing the real and perceived costs of enemy rocket fire (in part by only taking civilian deaths into account as a "cost"), Israel has consented to a new status quo that tolerates rocket fire into its territory. Attacks inside Israeli territory are consequential regardless of their results, but that message is lost when such attacks are tolerated without an adequate response.

A state that is perceived as weak is more likely to be attacked. Restraint rather than escalation in the face of attacks on civilians might appear prudent – but the attacker might interpret such inaction as fear or weakness and escalate attacks. This would result in its inflicting more damage on Israel and gaining popular support among its constituents. If the enemy is trained to expect no serious punitive costs when it strikes, it is likely to continue or even increase its attacks.

Domestic: An attack on a state's territory erodes its sovereignty, violating the Weberian principle of the state's "monopoly on the use of violence within its borders." Israel is allowing its sovereignty to be degraded by discounting the value of attacks on its territory, particularly when such attacks cause neither casualties nor significant physical damage. While life is protected by the civil defense, property, and lifestyle routines are not, leading to the erosion of civilian morale and community resilience.

International: The world at large has become accustomed to Israel's toleration of attacks on its civilians. Escalation by the enemy is often incremental, whether in terms of duration of the period of attacks, number of rockets fired, or casualties, and damage severity. When attacks eventually escalate beyond the "tolerable" and Israel reacts militarily, that response is likely to elicit severe international criticism, as the foreign perception is likely to be that the incremental escalation did not justify the response.

Anti-missile systems have been thought to lead to arms races, a key concept precipitating the US-USSR Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Israeli civil defense strategy has led to a one-sided arms race with Hamas that will continue until the defense system can be overcome, as has already occurred on the Lebanese front with Hezbollah.

Relying on civil defense as a strategy only provides incentives for an enemy that has much to gain from attacks on Israeli civilians, regardless of the quantitative damage inflicted by those attacks. Ultimately, only an offensive strategy designed to convince the enemy that the benefits of an attack fall far short of its costs, or to eliminate the enemy's ability to inflict damage in the first place, will truly protect the civilian population.

IDF Maj. (res.) Elliot Chodoff is a strategic analyst and Executive Director of Israel Strategic Solutions.

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The world's top oil exporter has said preliminary indications show Iran was to blame for the Sept. 14 attacks on Saudi oil facilities, rejecting a claim of responsibility by Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group. Tehran denies involvement.

SPA quoted King Salman as saying at the cabinet meeting that the attack represented a "dangerous escalation."

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Iran said on Tuesday that a statement by Britain, France and Germany accusing it of responsibility for the attacks on Saudi oil facilities showed that they lacked the will to confront US "bullying," the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

"The statement showed that the European parties have no strength or willpower to counter US bullying," Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi was quoted as saying.

On Monday, Britain, France and Germany joined the United States in blaming Iran for the attacks, but the Iranian foreign minister pointed to claims of responsibility by Yemeni rebels and said: "If Iran were behind this attack, nothing would have been left of this refinery."

Fallout from the Sept. 14 attacks is still reverberating as world leaders gather for their annual meeting at the UN General Assembly and international experts investigate, at Saudi Arabia's request, what happened and who was responsible.

The leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany released a statement reaffirming their support for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which the US exited, but telling Iran to stop breaching it and saying "there is no other plausible explanation" than that "Iran bears responsibility for this attack."

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Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Peru, Poland, Kuwait, the Dominican Republic and Indonesia delivered a démarche – a formal diplomatic petition – to Guterres on Tuesday over the lack of an inquiry into attacks on some 14 locations.

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"The investigation will cover destruction of, or damage to facilities on the deconfliction list and UN-supported facilities in the area," UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement, adding that it will "ascertain the facts of these incidents and report to the Secretary-General."

"The Secretary-General urges all parties concerned to cooperate with the board once it has been established," he said.

The locations of the UN-supported facilities and other humanitarian sites like hospitals and health centers had been shared with the warring parties in a bid to protect them. However, the United Nations has questioned whether it made them a target.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, backed by Russia, began an offensive on the last major insurgent stronghold three months ago that the United Nations says has killed at least 450 civilians and displaced more than 440,000 people.

Russia and Syria have said their forces are not targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure and questioned the sources used by the United Nations to verify attacks. Syria has also told the United Nations that more than a 100 sites "have been out of commission since being taken over by terrorist groups."

An array of insurgents have a foothold in northwestern Syria. The most powerful is the jihadist Tahrir al-Sham, the latest incarnation of the former Nusra Front which was part of al-Qaeda until 2016.

Deputy Russian UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told reporters it was a mistake for Guterres to give in to pressure and set up the inquiry. He said Russia would investigate Guterres' legal basis for setting up the board of inquiry.

"We doubt very much that this is for the sake of investigation – this is for the sake of blaming Syria and Russia (for) the things we did not do," he said on Thursday.

The Security Council has been deadlocked on Syria with Russia and China – two of the body's five veto powers along with Britain, France and the United States – shielding Assad's government from any action during eight years of war.

In 2014, former Secretary General Ban Ki-moon set up a similar inquiry into attacks on UN facilities and the use of UN sites to store weapons during fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

That inquiry found that Israel fired on seven UN schools during the 2014 Gaza war, killing 44 Palestinians who had sought shelter at some sites, while Palestinian militants hid weapons and launched attacks from several empty UN schools.

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Weeks of tensions culminated last month when US President Donald Trump's last-minute decision to call off planned strikes on Iran after Tehran downed a US drone. Washington also accused Iran of being behind the attacks on ships in the Gulf, which Tehran denies.

"If the US attacks us, only half an hour will remain of Israel's lifespan," Mojtaba Zolnour, the chairman of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee said on Monday, according to Mehr.

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Saudi Arabia's king told an emergency Arab summit that decisive action was needed to stop Iranian "escalations" in the region following attacks on Gulf oil assets, as American officials said a U.S. military deployment had deterred Tehran.

"Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi ... rejected the baseless accusations by the heads of certain Arab countries ... and said 'We see the Saudi effort to mobilize [regional] opinion as part of the hopeless process followed by America and the Zionist regime against Iran,'" the state news agency IRNA said.

On Thursday, Saudi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf urged Muslim nations to confront recent attacks in the region that the U.S. and its allies have blamed on Iran with "all means of force and firmness."

Al-Assaf made the comments at a meeting of foreign ministers of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation ahead of a series of summits in the kingdom that began on Thursday.

Al-Assaf said the alleged sabotage of boats off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and a drone attack on a Saudi oil pipeline by Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels requires the region to "make more efforts to counter the terrorist acts of extremist and terrorist groups."

"We should confront it with all means of force and firmness," al-Assaf said.

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The Southeast Asian nation has been on high alert since gunmen allied with Islamic State carried out a series of attacks in Jakarta, the capital of neighboring Indonesia, in January 2016.

The four suspects are two Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, an Indonesian and a Malaysian, Inspector General of Police Abdul Hamid Bador told reporters.

Dubbed the "wolf pack" cell, he said its members had planned to launch large-scale attacks during the first week of Ramadan to avenge a Muslim fireman who was allegedly beaten to death during a racially charged riot at a Hindu temple in November.

The fireman's death angered majority Malay Muslims, some of whom had accused Hindu leaders of inciting the riot through racial remarks.

"This cell had also planned an operation to assassinate high-profile personalities accused of insulting and failing to uphold Islam," Abdul Hamid said in a video recording of a press conference seen by Reuters.

He declined to identify the targets of the planned killings.

Muslims all over the world fast during daylight hours during Ramadan.

One of the Rohingya suspects, a 20-year-old waiter, told police he was a supporter of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, an insurgent group said to be behind a number of killings and attacks in Myanmar's Rakhine state, Abdul Hamid said.

The man possessed a UNHCR identification card issued by the U.N. refugee agency, he said.

Police also seized a gun and six homemade explosives during the arrests.

The Rohingya have for years fled persecution in Myanmar, which denies them citizenship as they are seen as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They often arrive on Southeast Asian shores in rickety boats seeking asylum.

More than 90,000 Rohingya are registered with the United Nations in Malaysia but non-profit groups estimate as many as 200,000 Rohingya are living in the country.

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Late on Friday, ISIS's Amaq News Agency announced that the new province, which it called "Wilayah of Hind," also claimed ISIS inflicted casualties on soldiers of the Indian army in the town of Amshipora in the Shopian district of Kashmir.

The ISIS statement corresponds with an Indian police statement on Friday that a militant called Ishfaq Ahmad Sofi was killed in an encounter in Shopian.

ISIS's statement establishing the new province appears to be designed to bolster its standing after the group was driven from its self-styled "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria in April, where at one point it controlled thousands of miles of territory.

ISIS has stepped up hit-and-run raids and suicide attacks, including taking responsibility for the Easter Sunday bombing in Sri Lanka that killed at least 253 people.

"The establishment of a 'province' in a region where it has nothing resembling actual governance is absurd, but it should not be written off," said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intel Group that tracks Islamic extremists.

"The world may roll its eyes at these developments, but to jihadists in these vulnerable regions, these are significant gestures to help lay the groundwork in rebuilding the map of the ISIS 'caliphate.'"

Sofi had been involved in several militant groups in Kashmir for more than a decade before pledging allegiance to Islamic State, according to a military official on Saturday and in an interview given by Sofi to a Srinagar-based magazine sympathetic to ISIS.

He was suspected of several grenade attacks on security forces in the region, police and military sources said.

"It was a clean operation and no collateral damage took place during the exchange of fire," a police spokesman said of Friday's encounter.

The military official said it was possible that Sofi had been the only militant left in Kashmir associated with ISIS.

For decades separatists have fought against Indian rule in Muslim-majority Kashmir. The majority of these groups want, who use armed conflict to achieve their goals do so to gain independence or to join India's arch-rival Pakistan. They have not, like Islamic State, sought to establish an empire across the Muslim world.

The nuclear powers of India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir and came to the brink of a third earlier this year after a suicide attack by a Pakistan-based militant group killed at least 40 paramilitary police in the Indian-controlled portion of the region.

A spokesman for India's home ministry, which is responsible for security in Kashmir, did not respond to a request for comment.

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The website of the Izzadine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' armed wing, ran a message on Sunday in Hebrew that read, "We haven't even gotten started" and warned residents of Israel that "they were in for surprises."

"We are not deterred by a long-term conflict. If Israel wants to continue the conflict, we will fight until the end," the message stated.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Jihad reported that talks were underway through Egyptian mediators for a cease-fire, but that "if the Zionist occupier does not comply with our demands, there will be no truce."

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