July 11, 2006: Currently, European counter-terror operations are resulting in about twenty arrests a week. Many of these pass without much notice. Most of those being picked up are Moslems accused of terrorism, or support of terrorism. While European police and intelligence agencies take the war on terror very seriously, their governments send out a more ambiguous message. Anti-Americanism is very popular at the moment, as is support for Palestinian terrorists. It's also popular to depict the United States and Israel as bad guys for the way they go after terrorists in Iraq and the Palestinian territories.
The Palestinians have been careful to keep their terrorist activities at home, so as not to alienate their supporters in Europe. This has not been easy, because some of the more extremist Palestinian terrorists have joined forces with al Qaeda, and were recently involved with terrorist attacks in Egypt. This has caused some consternation in the Palestinian terrorist community, which is facing a cut-off of over half a billion dollars a year in economic aid, from Europe, to Palestinians, over Islamic terrorism issues. Mainly, this has to do with terrorist group Hamas, which won the recent Palestinian elections, and is now running the Palestinian Authority government. But Hamas has always insisted that it's ultimate goal is the destruction of Israel, and they refuse to back down on that. This issue has been avoided, in the past, by most European supporters of the Palestinians, by simply ignoring it. But with Hamas in charge, it's hard to avoid the issue. Because of all this unwanted attention, European counter-terror efforts are now being directed more towards Hamas activities in Europe. Hamas has a large fund raising operation in Europe, which tries real hard to stay out of trouble. Hamas was banned from raising money in the United States after September 11, 2001.