Mr. Halevi, even hours after the shootout in front of the Israeli Consulate General in Munich, not all the details are known. But it seems clear that the attack has an Islamist background. Do you have any further information?
We are constantly receiving more information. But I believe that you do not need to know every detail of the crime to be able to assess this terrorist act. It is Islamism that leads to such acts. And in Munich as in Gaza, the motive is the same for people who want to implement their totalitarian and barbaric vision in the name of religion.
How is this crime, which was committed exactly 52 years after the Munich Olympic massacre, being received in Israel?
It reminds us of the terrible massacre of 1972, when Palestinian terrorists attacked the Israeli Olympic team, killing 11 of our athletes and coaches. But it has not only transported us into the temporal and geographical dimension, but also into the same barbaric culture of Islamism. It has not changed over the years and decades. And I say this because the conclusion is very important: we must fight the ideological and political infrastructure of Islamist terror. We must do this in Gaza and in Munich, in Paris and London, and in many other places where these Muslim terrorists operate and have great influence on the population. We must defeat the Islamist ideological infrastructure. That is why I am convinced that today in Rafah or in Gaza we are also fighting for Washington, Berlin and Paris – and also for Munich.
The perpetrator is said to have been an 18-year-old Austrian who was known to the authorities as an Islamist. Is it a particular danger that young men in particular are being radicalized in this way?
This is a phenomenon that I think we need to analyse very well and very seriously. We can see that too many young people in Europe are being drawn into the spell of this Islamist ideology. This is a trend that is undermining the identity dimension as a whole in many areas in Europe. I mean, there is a kind of anti-identity education. And this school of thought, which is now more and more mainstream in the many academic institutions in Europe, fills many of the young European people with a void in terms of their identity. And then they are looking for something to fill this void. And that is where the radical Muslims come in and promise to give meaning to life.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog told German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier today: Together we are strong in the face of terror, together we will overcome it. Do you share this opinion?
Yes, I think so. And I see it from two perspectives: Firstly, from the point of view of our countries, Germany and Israel. And secondly, from the point of view of the Jewish state and the Jews in the diaspora. We are all fighting the same battle – against Islamist terror. In Munich or in Jerusalem. Jews in Germany or in the only Jewish state in the world, Israel. This perpetrator with a suspected IS background in Munich is the same one we encounter in the streets of Rafah and Khan Yunis. They are united by this radical ideology that aims to destroy the Jewish people and the State of Israel. And we must fight against it together and overcome this terror.
Detlef David Kauschke spoke with the Likud MP and member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee.
