Homeland Security In A Wave of Terror
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עברית (Hebrew)
Arik Davidi
We are currently facing a terror attack that could be referred to as a wave of terror, lone-wolf terror, unorganized terror, terror without intelligence, spontaneous terror, maybe an Intifada and more.
The very best experts, professionals, security services, the military, General Security Services, the police and others are preparing and training throughout the year for national emergency scenarios, one of which is the terror scenario which has a number of forms – one of them is what we are witnessing the past couple of weeks.
This scenario falls under the category of Homeland Security or how the country’s citizens are reacting to interior threats such as this current form or terror.
We are well aware of the fact that in every such event, social media instantly shows pictures or video footage from the scene. Information about these events sometimes even reaches social media before the news channels. Today’s ability to receive information on an event just starting is all a matter of seconds. Why does this happen? The fact is quite simple: Whole systems were deployed in order to offer an inner-country solution to every event, especially to terror attacks such as those seen recently. These systems are the different media systems, as well as state-of-the-art surveillance capabilities, police forces deployment, vehicles deployed for such events and scenarios, air forces, UAVs and more. Properly combining all this data, and properly managing and commanding such events allow a proper response to any event.
Proper response to any event calls for correct deployment, response capability for most scenarios, deploying video communications and forces coordination, as well as efficient and correct combination of rescue forces.
What we see today is actually a very good picture of our ability to handle many different events in different sectors, each one with different components.
We examine these events according to their results, or the result of the encounter between the terrorists to those attacked.
So far we can see, after analyzing events so far, that security services arrive at every event in a matter of seconds or minutes, the deployment of forces is efficient and and is usually at close proximity to each event.
The citizens are responding relatively fast and well, whether it is countering the attackers or calling and directing the security forces.
Rescue forces arrive quickly to the scene, offering life-saving treatment to those injured. In light of this, it seems we have taken several steps forward in our ability to cope with such terror attacks.
These are unorganized terror attacks, and difficult to prevent. These are attacks that offer little intelligence beforehand, and still, usually, we can answer them with quick defense and response time.
A whole technological array, a system for learning and producing conclusions from past events in Israel and abroad, deployment of forces and incorporating them in contested areas, and properly coordinating and managing such events – all offer the correct response for such attacks.
