Episode 273 – Terms may hurt, but accuracy is paramount
In a world dominated by jihadi terrorism we cannot discount the minor players who are also bent on violence. We have Hindu terrorists in India, Christian terrorists in the US and, wait for it, Jewish terrorists in Israel. Violence in the West Bank and elsewhere by ‘settlers’ and ultra-Orthodox Jews is skyrocketing and the government of Binyamin Netanyahu is doing nothing to stop if (quite the contrary: some of his cabinet encourage it). Should we shy away from calling this phenomenon what it is: Jewish terrorism?
Former IDF chiefs issue warning over ‘Jewish terrorism’ in West Bank
Israeli Settlers Unleash Record High Attacks in West Bank – The New York Times
The Two Extremists Driving Israel’s Policy – The Atlantic
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Quick Hits
In a world of multiple voices and opinions it can be very hard to know where to turn. One choice is to look to those who actually worked in counter-terrorism in the national security world.
In these short podcasts, 30-year Canadian intelligence veteran Phil Gurski reflects on a wide range of national security and intelligence issues and seeks to provide insight into what they mean and what we need to do about them.
About Phil Gurski
Phil worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specializing in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation. From 1983 to 2001 he was employed as a senior multilingual analyst at Communications Security Establishment (CSE – Canada’s signals intelligence agency), specialising in the Middle East. He also served as senior special advisor in the National Security Directorate at Public Safety Canada from 2013, focusing on community outreach and training on radicalisation to violence, until his retirement from the civil service in May 2015, and as consultant for the Ontario Provincial Police’s Anti-Terrorism Section (PATS) from May to October 2015. He also headed Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting from May 2015-2025.
He was the Director of Security and Intelligence at the SecDev Group from June 2018 to July 2019 and the Director of the National Security Programme at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute from 2020-2022. He has also taught on national security issues at George Brown College, the University of Ottawa and Georgian College. Mr. Gurski has presented on violent Islamist-inspired and other forms of terrorism and radicalisation across Canada and around the world and is actively sought by Canadian and international media on national security and intelligence issues. He has written hundreds of op-eds on these matters for several Canadian media since 2016.
He is the author of The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda-inspired Radicalization and Terrorism in the West (Rowman and Littlefield 2015) Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), The Lesser Jihads: Taking the Islamist fight to the world (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), An end to the ‘War on Terrorism (Rowman and Littlefield 2018), When Religion Kills: How Extremist Justify Violence Through Faith (Lynne Rienner 2019), The Peaceable Kingdom? A history of terrorism in Canada from Confederation to the present (self-published: 2021, republished by Double Dagger in 2022), The Fenians: Brotherhood of fools or Canada’s first terrorist threat? (Double Dagger: 2025), as well as a forthcoming book on the terrorism landscape globally a quarter century after 9/11.
