At least 34 said killed as terror attacks rock Brussels airport, metro

At least 34 people were reportedly killed and dozens were wounded in twin attacks Tuesday morning on Brussels’s airport and metro, authorities said.
By mid-afternoon official figures put the death toll at 26. But local media was reporting a total of 34 dead, 14 in twin bomb blasts in the departure terminal of the airport and 20 more in a bomb attack a short while later at the Maalbeek metro station.

Dozens were injured in both incidents.

Authorities defined the explosions as terror attacks and the public transport system in the city was shut down in the wake of the blasts.
According to the Belgian VTM TV channel, police discovered an unexploded suicide vest at the Brussels airport. The report said a Kalashnikov assault rifle had also been located at the site.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, speaking on national television, described the attacks as “blind, violent and cowardly.”

Netanyahu to AIPAC: Brussels attack and terror in Israel part of same assault

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed AIPAC’s annual policy conference on Tuesday, sending his condolences to the families of those killed earlier in the day in a string of terror attacks in Brussels, Belgium.

Speaking via live video feed, Netanyahu said that the chain of attacks currently being seen from Paris to San Bernadino and now in Brussels is one continuous assault that includes the daily terror attacks in Israel.

“In all these cases the terrorists have no resolvable differences,” Netanyahu said.

“What they seek is our utter destruction,” he added.

“Their basic demand is that we should disappear,” Netanyahu told the conference. “That’s not going to happen,” he vowed.

Netanyahu said that political unity and moral clarity were needed to defeat terrorism.

Muslim police refuse to protect French synagogues

Muslim police in France refuse to protect synagogues as growing support for Jihad is affecting law enforcement, according to a Gatestone Institute report.
The report claims that a leaked confidential memo from the Department of Public Security, published by Le Parisien, detailed 17 cases of police officers radicalized between 2012 and 2015, noting that the police officers listen to and broadcast Muslim chants while on patrol.

According to the anti-terrorist unit of the French Interior Ministry, as of January 2016, France is already host to 8,250 radical Islamists (a 50% increase in one year). Some have gone to Syria to join ISIS while others have infiltrated all levels of society, including the police and the armed forces.

Some of these police officers have openly refused to protect synagogues or to observe a minute of silence to commemorate the deaths of Jewish victims of terrorist attacks.

The fact that police officers are armed and have access to police databases only intensifies the anxiety among France’s Jewish communities.

Israel won’t recognize Istanbul casualties as ‘victims of hostilities’

Ya’alon and other politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have cast the Saturday attack as identical in nature to the terrorism that has rocked Israel for decades.

“The State of Israel is fighting terror that strives to harm its citizens, not only within its borders but everywhere,” Ya’alon said a few hours after the attack.
That message, however, appears to be more rhetorical than practical, as the three Israelis killed and 11 injured have not been granted the special status awarded to other Israeli victims of terror, the Defense Ministry announced Tuesday.

Israeli victims who die or are injured in terror attacks either within Israel or abroad are considered “victims of hostilities” by the state, under a law drafted in 1970. Those injured receive special benefits from Israel’s tax authority and compensation from Israel’s social security, as do the families of those who are killed.

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