Israeli intelligence warns of a global increase in terrorist attacks in the West

FIRST ON FOX: Senior Israeli intelligence officials say warnings were sent to Australia before deadly attack at Hanukkah celebration Sydney’s Bondi Beach they were part of a much wider alert: an accelerated global growth of attempts to carry out terrorist attacks in Western countries, increasingly targeting not only Jewish targets, but also Christians and large gatherings especially during religious holidays.

According to a senior Israeli intelligence official, Israel’s foreign intelligence service has followed a sharp increase in attempted attacks worldwide, many of them low-tech, quickly mobilized and designed to exploit open societies and crowded public events.

“We stopped a few bombs, the target was on people’s heads,” the senior official told Fox News Digital.

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Israeli intelligence officials say Australia is not an outlier. From his perspective, the past few months have revealed a pattern of tentative and troubled plots across Europe, North America and beyond that point to a sustained. global threat instead of sporadic violence.

“If you knew how many terror attacks we exposed and prevented,” the senior official said, “your jaw would drop.”

Israeli intelligence officials say the increase in attempted attacks is driven in part by how extremist and state-linked networks are building the infrastructure of terror around the world while deliberately masking their origins.

Officials say the networks often rely on non-Iranian nationals to play various roles along the operational chain, including logistics, intelligence gathering, financing and execution, to blur any connection to Tehran. In some cases operatives are recruited from migrant or refugee backgrounds, while in others criminal elements or hired proxies are used to carry out acts of violence.

To avoid detection, officials say the networks rely on encrypted communications and clandestine in-person meetings, sometimes held outside the country where an attack is planned. In other cases, instructions are sent remotely via secure channels that bypass standard telecommunications monitoring.

According to Israeli assessments, extremist networks are increasingly overlapping: jihadist ideology, lone actor violence and state-linked activity now exist in the same ecosystem, fueled by online radicalization and geopolitical instability. Many plots, officials say, are unsophisticated, making them harder to detect early while still capable of causing mass casualties.

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Israeli intelligence officials and foreign diplomatic sources warn that the threat is not limited to Jewish targets and is global. “We have exposed terror cells in Germany, Greece, Austria – but not only in Europe – also in South America, India and Thailand.” The senior official said he could not elaborate further.

A senior foreign diplomatic source said the current environment is shaped by what they described as a global contagion effect, in which attacks are amplified online, celebrated on extremist networks and quickly imitated elsewhere.

According to the source, attacks are increasingly attractive to extremists because they are relatively easy to carry out while producing a large psychological and political impact.

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The source warned that Christian community and wider civil gatherings are also vulnerable, particularly during religious holidays and symbolic events that attract large crowds.

That concern has been reflected across Europe in recent weeks, where authorities have dramatically increased security at Christmas markets and holiday celebrations amid warnings that the seasonal events present prime targets for extremist violence. Armed patrols, barriers and surveillance were expanded in several cities as officials assessed high risks linked to attacks inspired by jihadists and lone actors.

On Monday, federal authorities announced that they removed a New Year’s Eve horror plotarresting suspects accused of planning coordinated attacks involving improvised explosive devices, according to the Justice Department. Prosecutors said the plot was disrupted before the explosives were fully assembled, underscoring both the scale of the threat and the importance of early intelligence intervention.

A second senior Israeli intelligence source said the broader threat environment has deteriorated after two years of war in the Middle East, which they said has energized radical Islamist movements around the world.

According to the source, instability in Syria is of particular concern, creating the conditions that could allow ISIS to regroup and once again project influence beyond the region.

“I am concerned about Syria and that ISIS will return,” the source said, warning that renewed activity there could inspire more attacks in Europe, Australia and North America.

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The source said the growing prevalence of lone actors and sleeper cells poses a significant challenge to Western security services, as individuals with minimal resources can still carry out deadly attacks and trigger copycat violence.

While the Australian authorities have not linked the Bondi Beach attack at the direction of foreign intelligence, Israeli officials say the case fits into a larger global picture: a sustained increase in attempted terrorist attacks, many of which never become public because they are disturbed first.

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“We see it everywhere,” the senior intelligence official said. “And most of what we stop, the public never hears about.”