Here's what happened when Israel wasn't allowed to get involved in protecting Israelis from terrorism-- because Germany insisted "they could handle it." If you haven't seen this documentary, you need to.
Posted on 03/29/2004 2:29:42 PM PST by yonif
Greece needs to do more to prepare for any biological or chemical attack on the Athens Olympics and the mass casualties it could inflict, Israel's security advisor to the Games said on Monday.
Though he voiced no qualms about Israel attending the Olympics, opening on August 13 under record security, Major -General David Tsur urged Greece to hone the responses of emergency teams to save lives should al Qaeda strike.
"The one main gap the Greeks have yet to bridge is in preparing for the sort of coordination demanded by major terrorist attacks, especially when there are biological or chemical agents involved," Tsur, one of seven international security experts advising Athens, told Reuters in an interview.
"In Israel, emergency forces close in on the site of suicide bombing within minutes, and clear it within hours. This is a function of hard experience," he said, referring to attacks in a more than three-year-old Palestinian uprising.
Osama bin Laden's global Islamic network has so far kept to similar suicide tactics, but security analysts believe it could soon turn to weapons of mass destruction.
"The Greeks still have to work on coordinating their response teams, medical facilities and security forces. They are in the midst of preparations which I expect will go on until the last minute," said Tsur, chief of Israel's paramilitary police.
Tsur said Israeli security forces had given "tens of millions of dollars" worth of advice to Athens.
Greece is staging the biggest security operation in the 108 year modern history of the Olympics at a cost of more than 650 million euros ($800 million). More than 45,000 security staff, including 7,000 troops, will guard the Games and escort teams.
Security concerns following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States had already put pressure on Greece to ensure the Games were secure. But the Al-Qaida-linked bomb attacks in Istanbul in November and the March 11 Madrid bombings, also linked to Islamic militants, raised fresh alerts.
Experts have said they were increasingly concerned about the possibility of chemical or biological attacks.
"The Olympics are an ideal target because no other event enlists the entire civilized world and concentrates its representatives in one place," Tsur said. "Al-Qaida thinks long-term, but as we have seen over the past few years, its terrorists can strike at short notice."
Eleven Israeli athletes were killed in a Palestinian attack on the 1972 Munich Games.
While Israel's Olympic Committee has the final call on whether to attend the Athens Games, Tsur was sure of its approval.
"I see absolutely no reason why Israel should not participate in the Games. Greece is doing its best to prepare, and Israel would be the last country to yield to terrorism by backing out of the Olympics because of the ever-present threat," he said. "Olympic innocence died in Munich, for everyone.
"Olympic innocence died in Munich, for everyone."
Here's what happened when Israel wasn't allowed to get involved in protecting Israelis from terrorism-- because Germany insisted "they could handle it." If you haven't seen this documentary, you need to.
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