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Global Terror Threat Has Skyrocketed Due to Oct. 7 Hamas Attack, Gaza War, Experts Warn
A man runs on a road as fire burns after rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The threat of terrorist attacks in the West has escalated in the wake of the Hamas terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and amid the ensuing war in Gaza, according to experts who spoke with The Algemeiner.
The brutal success of Hamas’ invasion of the Jewish state last fall, coupled with images emerging from Israel’s military operations against the terror group in Gaza, has sparked a new wave of radicalization, experts argued. Of chief concern has been the emergence of a new wave of so-called “lone wolf” terrorists who gained inspiration from Islamist extremist groups such as al Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) and have become further galvanized by the current conflict in the Middle East.
“The FBI and others have reported a sharp uptick in terrorist activity, including active recruitment and self-radicalization, since the Oct. 7 attacks and the Israeli response,” said Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“This applies across a wide ideological divide and geographic space,” Levitt added. “It includes both organized activities by established groups and lone actors who may be inspired by the sharp rise in terrorist propaganda produced against the backdrop of these events.”
Senior US officials have similarly been warning about a heightened threat of terrorism since Oct. 7, when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped over 250 others as hostages.
“As I look back over my career in law enforcement, I’m hard-pressed to come up with a time when I’ve seen so many different threats, all elevated, all at the same time,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told NBC News in an interview last month.
Earlier in April, Wray told US lawmakers in congressional testimony that he believed small groups or individuals “will draw twisted inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home.” He noted that concerns were rising before Hamas’ attack, but “we’ve seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole other level after Oct. 7.”
Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of US Northern Command, shared Wray’s sentiment while testifying before Congress in March. Terrorist groups are using Israel’s war against Hamas to encourage more attacks against the US, Guillot argued. However, he added, terrorism has become more dispersed and informal, making it more difficult to combat.
“The increasingly diffuse nature of the transnational terrorist threat challenges our law enforcement partners’ ability to detect and disrupt attacks plotting against the homeland and leaves us vulnerable to surprise,” Guillot said.
Days earlier, US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said that al Qaeda and ISIS have been inspired by Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that rules Gaza, to attack Americans and Israelis.
“While it is too early to tell, both al Qaeda and ISIS, inspired by Hamas, have directed supporters to conduct attacks against Israeli and US interests,” Haines testified to the US Senate Intelligence Committee. “And we have seen how it is inspiring individuals to conduct acts of antisemitism and Islamophobic terror worldwide.”
She added that the Gaza war “will have a generational impact on terrorism.”
The US and its allies have spent years eroding the capabilities and networks of terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS. Intelligence services have also improved their methods for identifying and thwarting terror plots. As a result, experts believe that smaller-scale groups such as ISIS-K and radicalized individuals present the chief threats to the US homeland. Experts also noted the threat posed by Iran, which the US government has consistently deemed the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.
“The ongoing and primary terrorist threat is from the Iranian regime and its proxies,” said Marshall Wittman, a spokesperson for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). “That is why it is critical that America stand with its ally, Israel, which is on the front lines in this struggle against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian aggression. American national security interests are aligned with Israel’s battle against Iranian-sponsored terrorism which threatens regional stability in the Middle East.”
Iran is the chief international sponsor of Hamas, providing the terror group with arms, funding, and training.
In addition to spurring a heightened threat of terrorism, the Oct. 7 massacre has also led to a global surge in antisemitism, making the Jewish community a likely target of potential terror plots.
The Anti-Defamation League released a report last month showing antisemitic incidents in the US rose 140 percent last year, reaching a record high. Most of the outrages occurred after Oct. 7, during the ensuing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Meanwhile, antisemitic incidents have also skyrocketed to record highs in several other countries around the world, especially in Europe, since the Hamas atrocities.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has said that Oct. 7 unleashed a “tsunami of hate” against Jewish people.
Much of the antisemitism has manifested in the form of violent threats and attacks against Jewish individuals. In late October, for example, authorities arrested a Cornell University student for threatening to “stab” and “slit the throat” of his Jewish classmates. That same month, the FBI foiled a plot to bomb a Jewish gathering in Houston, Texas.
Corey Walker is a journalist based in Washington, DC.
The post Global Terror Threat Has Skyrocketed Due to Oct. 7 Hamas Attack, Gaza War, Experts Warn first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency

The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation

Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack

A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.