Israel-Gaza War: MI5 Worries It May Fuel Radicalization

 Israel-Gaza War: MI5 Worries It May Fuel Radicalization

According to MI5's director, who spoke to the BBC, the UK is being watched for rising dangers as the Israel-Gaza conflict continues.

Understanding the precise nature of the UK effect is one of the things that worries Ken McCallum the most at the moment, he said in an interview.

He also cautioned against the possibility that radicalization toward violence may result from Middle Eastern events.

He was addressing in California during a rare public appearance by the Five Eyes alliance's security officials.

For the first time, the leaders of the security agencies from the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand appeared together to warn against China stealing technical innovation.

Mr. McCallum said "the scale and terrible nature" of the Hamas assault on Israel was received as an a "shock in an interview with the BBC.

He said: "That is definitely a risk." When asked whether the Israel-Gaza conflict had the potential to radicalize individuals in the UK toward violence, he replied: "It certainly could."

"It has always been the case that plenty of would-be-terrorists in the UK draw encouragement through their distorted understanding of whatever is happening in other countries."

According to him, he was unable to comment on any particular intelligence on any risks the Security Service was now aware of.

But he said that MI5 was already keeping an eye on a "pretty large cohort" of individuals with extremist ideologies, and that one of the most difficult aspects of its job was figuring out when these individuals, who were often operating alone, suddenly pushed toward violence in novel or unanticipated ways.

MI5 has seen a movement toward lone-actors who are motivated by events but are not technically a member of any organization or group in recent years. When they are going to act, Mr. McCallum said, they might be more difficult to detect and figure out.

In the aftermath of the Middle East events, according to US authorities, there has already been an increase in reported threats.

"We cannot and do not disregard the possibility that Hamas or other foreign terrorist groups could exploit the conflict to call on their allies to conduct attacks on our own soil," Chris Wray, the head of the FBI, told reporters.

"We are also particularly alert to the ability these events have to inspire acts of aggression against Jewish Americans or Muslim Americans, schools and houses of worship."

In what has been labeled a hate crime, a six-year-old Muslim kid was stabbed to death in Illinois on Saturday.

Because Stanford University is located in the heart of Silicon Valley and because the security chiefs are publicly warning the public about China stealing innovation, Stanford University in California was selected as the location for this historic first public gathering of the Five Eyes.

But the Middle East will be a major topic of discussion in their private sessions.

"As you'd expect, we will also use to organize ourselves together to discuss a range of other topics in private, including what Hamas's attack entails both in the region and in our homelands," added McCallum.

The Director of MI5 told the BBC that allocating resources to various threats of equal gravity was one of the most challenging elements of the job.

How do you strike a compromise between being able to find a juvenile would-be terrorist who is reading extremist right-wing and bigoted stuff in his bedroom and may be contemplating purchasing a bladed weapon with the longer-term hazards presented by quick or priceless leading edge research from one of our universities? Both are crucial to our national security.