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Feb. 17, 2006
Terrorist threat grows
Expert warns of "inevitable" rise in violence.
DAVE GORDON
David Harris's voice was calm and composed, but his message was
terse and urgent. "Islamic extremists are our number one threat,"
he told a gathering in Toronto last week.
Harris, an investigator in national security matters, is director
of the International and Terrorist Intelligence Program, INSIGNIS
Strategic Research Inc. His lecture, Terrorism at Our Doorstep,
was part of the Know Radical Islam Week conference, held at the
University of Toronto by the Toronto chapter of Betar/Tagar and
the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
"Three thousand people were killed in one day," said Harris,
referring to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "Do you
think if Islamic terrorists had the means, the casualties wouldn't
be 70,000?" Future Islamic targets, he predicts, will "not
be buildings of people, but cities of people. Soon enough, they
will have nuclear bombs." These radical Muslims have "been
long at war with the democratic world," he said – and
thrive on their "seething irrational medieval hostilities."
None of this is new to Harris, who is a former chief of strategic
planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. His analyses
have received international media attention. As a commentator on
terrorism and national security, Harris has appeared on numerous
television news programs and been quoted in major United States
and international newspapers.
Harris warned that Canadian immigration policies could be at times
too lax and our homeland security too careless at this critical
time, when terrorist cells have the chance to operate unfettered
within our borders. "Militants operate in Canada freely under
our charter of rights," he said. More than 29,000 refugees
are welcomed into Canada annually, according to Harris. "We
bring in twice [as many] refugees as the U.S.," he asserted.
Radical Islamic new Canadians, he said, seek to undermine the liberal
freedoms we hold dear. They endeavor to threaten the free press
and "prefer ghettoizing to avoid interaction with those who
differ from they do."
One of the many ways terrorists are manipulative and clandestine
in our own country is by using our system against us, said Harris.
Islamic extremists "seek credibility by building intimate relations
with journalists, lawyers, academics and politicians," he said.
Consequently, people have been charmed by them, wooed and "many
have blundered into relationships with problem groups."
In one example Harris cited, the media has in some instances been
complicit in skirting the airing of hot-button topics, out of fear
of retribution: "Journalists are requested not to ask [their
Islamic interviewees] if their views have changed now that Hamas
is in charge [of the Palestinian Authority]."
His suggestion for people to avoid such situations is to trust gut
feelings and be sharp critical thinkers. "If red flags come
up, you must raise questions," he said. "We need our national
community to come together as one, not to be terrified or agitated."
He asked laypeople and journalists alike to dig deeper and remain
mindful of whom the friends of our enemies are. "Iran works
closely with Hezbollah," he said, adding that there is no such
thing as a terrorist group that ought to be ignored by virtue of
its relatively small size. The very catalyst for the conference,
according to one of its organizers, Jonathan Jaffit, was the growing
problem of Islamic extremism here and around the world.
"We want to expose oppression, persecution and the trampling
of human rights. Ignoring radical Islam isn't the way to make it
go away," said Jaffit, 21, a University of Toronto student
studying biology and Jewish history.
Moral clarity, Jaffit said, only develops from open dialogue, and
the right way to face conflict is to embrace it. "The best
way to end oppression is knowledge," he said, "not avoidance
or ignorance of an issue. We won't pretend these problems don't
exist."
Harris presented several solutions for preventing the further spread
of Islamic extremism in Canada. He proposes to "give moderate
Muslims a microphone," so that they may speak out against the
dangerous practices of their coreligionists.
But it's not just individuals that need to be aware. Canada, he
said, needs "counter-terrorist politics protecting all of us
from the inevitable."
Dave Gordon is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn.
He has previously written for the Baltimore Sun, Canadian Jewish
News and the New York Jewish Week.
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