The Threat Against Israel's National Soccer Team (Tearline)
Video Transcript:
Video Transcript
The coach of Israel's national soccer team told reporters last week that the team faced a severe threat while playing a friendly match against Hungary. Let's examine the threat and why the ghosts of the 1972 massacre at the Munich Olympics linger in the minds of security services around the globe.
Eli Guttman, the coach of the Israeli team, said the Israeli delegation had been warned by security officials that they were at risk while in Budapest. Guttman told reporters that security precautions had been implemented to counter the threat. The team's official bus left the stadium empty, as a decoy, and the players were taken to their hotel in another bus later.
The coach was describing a dummy motorcade. In this case, an empty bus was used as a ruse to make it appear to be the VIP bus, complete with a police escort. Meanwhile, the VIPs quietly leave the venue by other means. In some cases, dummy motorcades are simply used to shake things up a bit and throw potential attackers off the trail, but the use of a dummy motorcade can also be threat driven.
In this case, it appears the threat concerns may have been legitimate. The warning in Hungary comes a month after the July 18 attack on a bus full of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria that left five Israelis and one Bulgarian dead. Israeli authorities have blamed the attack on Hezbollah and Iran and warned that additional attacks are possible. Given the coach's statements about the decoy bus, the warning may have involved a plot to hit the team while the bus was in transit from the stadium to their hotel. This is one time when the target would be most vulnerable and passing predictable locations. This threat also surfaced in the aftermath of the London Olympic Games. The timing of an attack would have been optimal as security services have been breathing a sign of relief and rolling back intelligence coverage following the end of the games.
Every security service that is tasked to protect Israeli athletes remembers the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes in Munich and no security service wants a repeat to occur on their watch. Given the high number of threats against Israeli targets in recent months, prudence dictates caution when protecting Israeli athletes and other soft targets, especially in public venues where others may be at risk.
What's the Above the Tearline aspect of this video? From a threat analysis perspective, an attack on an Israeli soccer team bus would be an attractive target for militants. Sports teams are not typically as well protected as high-value targets or government officials, making them more vulnerable to attack. While stadiums can enforce stringent security measures, these measures are not always employed in other locations that the sports team would frequent, especially while traveling overseas.
