Earlier this month, an American federal court ruled that families of victims of terrorist attacks carried out by individuals—including the wave of stabbing and car-rammings that beset Israel in 2015 and 2016—could sue the countries that fund the groups behind the attacks. For instance, the court concluded, when a Palestinian murdered the American military veteran Taylor Force in Tel Aviv in 2016, Hamas could be held responsible—as could Syria and Iran, which support Hamas. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner explains that Israeli and American policymakers should follow the court’s lead when understanding the misleadingly named phenomenon of the lone-wolf terrorist:
[T]errorist organizations use “lone-wolf” attacks to harm Israel without assuming direct responsibility. . . . Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad use social media as a tool to instruct followers to carry out low-intensity attacks on Israeli targets, after which they only assume tacit responsibility.
These murderous acts, therefore, are anything but spontaneous; they can be predicted and perhaps even foiled in advance. A year prior to his attack, for example, the terrorist who murdered Taylor Force listened to a sermon by Sheikh Mohamad al-Arefe, a radical Islamist cleric from Saudi Arabia who preaches the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. About a month before carrying out his attack, the terrorist posted a message on his Facebook page that unmistakably implied his desire to die a shahid (martyr). Two days after his attack, Hamas proclaimed responsibility for the attack on various online platforms affiliated with the organization, calling the terrorist a shahid and a warrior.
The state of Israel must adopt the spirit behind the American court’s ruling and act accordingly. To eliminate the waves of “lone-wolf” attacks, Israel must also target the people who dispatch these terrorists, rather than just focus on direct prevention. Lone-wolf terrorists are cogs in an orchestrated [strategy], and action must also be taken against the states and organizations that support them.
Read more on Israel Hayom: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/no-such-thing-as-a-lone-wolf-terrorist/