The past few weeks have seen terrorist attacks from Finland to Spain, and such attacks are becoming increasingly common across the Continent. Drawing on the Israeli experience, Yaakov Amidror argues that European countries must fundamentally change their approach in order to confront the threat properly.

There are three areas that must be addressed to see major gains in the ability to battle terrorism. First, how the legal system views terrorism—particularly that it treats terrorism [as a kind of] crime, which plays into terrorists’ hands—must change. This is an enormous political and cultural change. . . . Implementing [it] is conditional on the political echelon telling itself and its citizens the truth, even [if this change] gives up a small part of citizens’ personal freedom.

The second effort needed is to focus intelligence work on the relevant communities. It appears that a lot has already been done in this field in recent years, but international cooperation must be improved and more aggressive interrogations must be permitted based on intelligence, before an [attack] is carried out. . . .

The third effort is more complicated and centers on [encouraging] ordinary citizens to respond quickly and aggressively when any terrorist action takes place. Israel has a clear advantage when it comes to this, because there are many citizens who are licensed to carry firearms and who can take action even before the police and the security forces arrive. Civilians carrying firearms are extremely unusual in many countries, so it will be difficult for these civilians to respond quickly, thus containing the damage of a terrorist act under way, whether it is a stabbing or drivers who use their vehicles as weapons of mass murder.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.