As a rabbi, my geopolitical commentary or criticism of the continent may be the same as the next person’s, and I am certainly no prophet or sage of old. However, in my rabbinic career and as the head of an organization representing hundreds of Jewish communities, I have seen and learned a bit.
I served nearly 30 years as the chief rabbi of Moscow and was forced to flee after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. I know what dictatorship looks like. Standing up to Russia’s expansionist tyranny and supporting Ukraine is not only a moral necessity for Europe but a strategic must. If Ukraine loses its independence, it is almost certain that Russia will continue its aggression against other ex-Soviet states and ex-Warsaw Pact countries. Yet standing for Ukraine and against Russia must mean standing against Iran as well.
Iran is not just Israel’s problem. It is the West’s. It has funded terrorism in Europe, plotted assassinations on European soil, and is hurtling toward nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Its regime exports the Islamic revolution not only to Middle Eastern states but also destabilizes the democracies of the West. But yet, while Iran still subtly or not so subtly arms itself and fuels the fires of war, some in Europe, including the Dutch Labour and Green Party leadership, believe the answer to the latest flare-up in the Mideast is to strip Israel of its defenses. This is not complicated. Iran, its proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are proud to call themselves part of an “axis of resistance.”
Resistance to what? To democracy, Western values and Jews.
I am reminded of a British comedy sketch by Mitchell and Webb, of two SS soldiers, bearing their skull and crossbones insignia, asking themselves if they are the “baddies.” Yes, they are, and so is Iran, and all who use virulent antisemitism for domestic and international policies.
During the recent Iranian missile barrage on Israel as part of the 12-day war, a total of 29 Israelis were killed, among them a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor and a 7-year-old Ukrainian girl. Only the country’s air-defense systems stopped the death toll from spiraling into the thousands or even millions. While I was in Switzerland and Germany, my mother, children and grandchildren were huddled in a safe room or bomb shelter like millions of others. If those Dutch politicians had succeeded, those shelters would have become graves. The Iron Dome doesn’t kill. It saves lives.
Instead of following the resolution of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Belgian Parliament to put Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the European terrorist list and signal its disgust with the ayatollah regime, which continues to repress women and execute political dissidents, Timmerman’s party in the Netherlands chose to show support for a regime that for a half-century has caused mayhem and destabilization in the world.
Yet the call to boycott Israel is not a moral mistake; by doing so, Europe is also shooting itself in the foot.
Europe realized that it cannot rely on the United States for its defense. The new administration has reminded European leaders that it cannot count on it to repel further Russian aggression. As a result, a wide rearmament program has been initiated, allowing Europe to defend itself in the future. Yet the creation of “Fortress Europe” is impossible without the development of new technologies.
The chasm between Europe, America and China is widening because of the lack of development of artificial intelligence in Europe. Israel, still the Start-Up Nation, combines a magnificent new tech industry and innovation with state-of-the-art military and cyber intelligence. The Jewish state has exactly what Europe is sorely lacking. And when more pernicious elements and terror states rise to harm Western countries and values, despite the blinkered, closed eyes of most in our culture today, Europe will be caught off-guard, too busy supporting those terrorists at its music festivals and public squares to realize the threat.
Europe’s intelligence agencies and governments are lacking dreadfully. So, too, are their universities and research institutions, as Europe fails to retain the talent it so desperately needs.
One of Europe’s greatest and most chronic challenges today is its brain drain. The continent is hemorrhaging its brightest minds, particularly from Eastern and Southern Europe, to the United Kingdom, the United States and beyond. Young scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and doctors—many trained at public expense—are fleeing sluggish economies, high taxes and over-regulation for opportunities abroad.
Alarmingly, rather than craft smart strategies to keep or attract such talent, Europe has become complacent. A particularly baffling failure was Europe’s response at the onset of Russia’s war with Ukraine. As tens of thousands of skilled Russian academics, developers and dissidents (some of whom I have had the privilege to know personally) sought refuge and relocation, Europe could have welcomed them and built a new brain bank, so to speak, benefiting from such talent and intellect. Instead, populism and bureaucracy got in the way.
That moment passed, and with it, a golden opportunity to improve economically. Lately, European leaders have called on foreign students of American Ivy League universities expelled by Donald Trump to relocate to Europe. This is a smart move.
As Europe scrambles to construct a new security framework amid the waning alliance with the United States, attention is naturally focused on the steps required to upgrade European armed forces into a credible deterrent against potential Russian aggression. This shift will inevitably necessitate the development of a comprehensive and self-sustaining military-industrial complex capable of producing advanced weaponry, ammunition and logistical support to maintain Europe’s long-term defense capabilities.
However, as the latest war in the Middle East has demonstrated, military strength alone is insufficient. Tactical and strategic success depends just as much on intelligence superiority as it does on firepower.
Israel’s success in crippling Hezbollah in Lebanon stands in stark contrast to its continued failure to locate and rescue its hostages in Gaza, despite more than a year of reoccupation. The root cause of this divergence lies in the availability—or absence—of reliable intelligence on the enemy.
While Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, successfully penetrated Hezbollah and Iran, acquiring precise intelligence down to the exact locations of missile stockpiles, nuclear-enrichment facilities and command structures, its domestic counterparts—Shabak (Shin Bet) and Aman (Military Intelligence)—in charge of Gaza, have struggled for over a decade to recruit informants in Gaza. This failure has led to the massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the failure to locate almost any of the hostages during the last 600 days.
In Europe, domestic intelligence services face similar challenges, exhibiting limited capabilities in detecting and countering foreign operatives who seek to destabilize the European Union through terror attacks and political subversion aimed at weakening the bloc from within. Hostile actors, including state-backed operatives from Russia, Iran and China, as well as terrorist networks such as Islamist groups, have exploited these intelligence gaps to establish sleeper cells, spread disinformation and manipulate political narratives.
Since Oct. 7, we have seen a rise of 500% of attempts by jihadists to carry out terrorist attacks in Europe, one third of which are aimed at its Jewish community.
Today, when an imminent terror attack in Europe is identified, it is the CIA that provides the critical intelligence to European counterparts in 90% of all cases. This reliance underscores the urgent need for Europe to develop an independent intelligence infrastructure capable of proactive threat detection rather than reactive crisis management.
Moreover, existing European intelligence agencies lack the capacity for an effective, proportionate response against state and non-state actors actively working to undermine constitutional democracies across the continent. Cyber warfare, election interference and hybrid warfare tactics are being deployed against Europe with minimal coordinated response from the European Union as a whole.
Additionally, the heads of most national security agencies lack direct and immediate access to their respective heads of state. As a result, even when serious threats to national security are identified, intelligence officials face significant obstacles in implementing policy measures due to bureaucratic constraints, slow decision-making processes and limited political engagement.
To safeguard Europe and its member states, and also its Jewish community, fundamental reforms are required in the areas of funding, structural organization, legislative authority and operational strategy. A centralized European intelligence agency with broad counterterrorism and counterintelligence capabilities must be established to unify efforts across member states, reduce reliance on Washington and effectively respond to the modern threat landscape. Without such changes, Europe risks remaining vulnerable to external aggression and internal destabilization.
Those Europeans with a myopic view who think that the danger is coming only from the East and not from the Southeast should go and have their eyes checked. It is in Europe’s interest to work with Israel to secure its future, instead of giving political support to totalitarian regimes that want to destroy it.