August 29, 2008/Av 28 5768, Volume 60, No.

55 FEATURES

Counterterror field trip

ASU students get firsthand look at how Israel secures itself

BETH SHAPIRO
Special to Jewish News

A tour of suicide bombing attack sites in Jerusalem, a

view inside the Old City's command center and visits to
Israel's security fence are not included in the typical
itinerary for first-time tourists to Israel. Then again, this
wasn't the usual tour of Israel.

"I had this idea that Israel would be even more dangerous
than I thought it would be," says William Salley, a senior
political science and justice studies major at Arizona Several ASU students
State University. "But after being there, I would tell participated in weapons
anybody to go there. The Israelis know what they are training during their trip to
doing and they understand the situation. They would do Israel. Pictured here is ROTC
anything to help you and to make sure you are safe." Cadet Lance Bailey, who takes
aim with an Israeli-designed
Salley, who hopes to land a job with a federal agency Galil automatic assault rifle.
like the Department of Homeland Security or the Photo courtesy of Charles
Department of Defense, is one of 30 ASU students who Loftus
spent 10 days in July on a faculty-led interdisciplinary
study-abroad trip to Israel, a joint project between ASU and the Institute of Terrorism
Research and Response, a U.S. and Israeli nonprofit organization. The trip was organized
by Charles Loftus, a veteran member of ASU's police department and a faculty associate
in the school of social and behavioral sciences based at ASU's Polytechnic campus. He
teaches courses in national security, intelligence, terrorism and homeland security.
"They told us that now that (Israel's security fence) is built, they're getting more rocket
attacks because the (terrorists) can't walk in," recalls Salley about a briefing he heard in
the Israeli port town of Ashkelon, located about 15 kilometers from Gaza and a target of
numerous rocket attacks. "The thing I learned about the rocket attacks is that they're not
nearly as effective as suicide attacks. You're trading off, but it's the lesser of two evils."

Loftus was also accompanied by his wife, ASU faculty associate Rebecca Loftus, who
teaches criminal justice, and their 6-year-old son, Charlie, as well as ASU professor
Danny Peterson, who teaches in the area of emergency management.

"From the practitioner aspect, we try to look at what could happen here," says Charles
Loftus.

He zeroed in on Israel as the best example of a country dealing with terrorism on a day-
to-day basis with a focus on infrastructure security and mass casualty response.

"As an emergency manager, the whole idea for our preparedness, emergency
management and counterterrorism strategies in this country is to look at what has
happened elsewhere," he explains. "There's a lot of parallels between Arizona and Israel
... we have similar geography and weather. Also the societal situations are the same with
our volatile borders, unstable neighbors and cultural tension."

Half of the trip's participants have either military or law-enforcement experience; about
six of them are Jewish. Only two students had ever visited Israel.

Loftus' goal was for students to gain a real-life understanding of international conflict and
intelligence gathering.

"There are really not a lot of places where a person can say, 'I've gone to learn how
intelligence is gathered on the ground, how people set up perimeters or different ways of
hardening targets for their own safety,'" he says. "The ITRR instructors and experts
described how they do this in an open-source or public manner and allowed us to see how
they do this."

News events of the day were woven into the group's daily briefings and discussions. Just
days before the group's arrival, an Arab construction worker went on a violent rampage in
Jerusalem using his front loader as a weapon, killing three people.

"I talked to the police officers that responded to that incident, and they told us right then
and there what they did wrong and the things they should have done," shares Loftus.
"The same thing occurred with the second attack. But they knew what not to do to keep
people safe."
And while it didn't make front page news in the U.S., the group discussed a shooting that
took place while they were in Jerusalem: A suspected Palenstinian man shot two border
officers who were on patrol at Lions' Gate of the Old City. One of the officers died of his
wounds several days later. The students visited the site a day after the attack.

"From what we heard, they were caught off guard," Loftus remembers. "Both were shot
by one guy, and one of the officers was able to return fire and shoot a full magazine of
rounds. They clearly did their duty by stopping this person from entering the Old City
and defended the citizens. So the big idea in law enforcement is we go home every night,
even in Israel. What was repeated to us during our trip was, 'The terrorist fights to die.
We fight to live.'"

The ASU group also experienced rare behind-the-scenes tours along with briefings at
Mekorot, Israel's national water company; Ben-Gurion Airport; Azrieli Towers in Tel
Aviv; the Port of Ashdod; and Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, among other
locations. Those with military or law-enforcement backgrounds participated in a Krav
Maga self-defense class and weapons training. Participants also took time to explore
Israel's cultural and historical sites.

"Without an exception, no one in our group will hear or watch a newscast or read a
newspaper without having a totally different concept of what's going on in Israel," says
participant and ASU student Shalom Mintz, who has dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship. Mintz,
who is Jewish and works as an ASU security officer in the university's school of music, is
working toward his bachelor's of applied science degree in emergency management.

"When we were at the top of one of the Azrieli Center towers, one of the tallest buildings
in Israel, we could look west a couple of miles at the Mediterranean, and we could look
east and see Jordan," says Mintz, who lived in Israel for several years and fought in the
Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars. "When we drove into Ashkelon, which is not far from
Gaza, on the right-hand side there was a small mall which 30 days prior had been hit by
one of the Kassam rockets. Then we went further south to the fence where we could see
Gaza and see how close everything really is. So it gives you a different standard of
looking at things."

ITRR, which has offices in Jerusalem and Philadelphia, was founded in 2004 by co-
directors Michael Perelman and Aaron Richman to provide counterterrorism training,
education and security expertise in dealing with terror threats such as weapons of mass
destruction and suicide bombings to corporate and government entities. Seminars are
conducted either in Israel or in the United States. In addition to offering training
primarily to American first responders, ITRR also provides clients with international
intelligence information.
"We call it 'actionable intelligence,'" Richman tells Jewish News during a phone call from
Jerusalem. "It is information that we're constantly monitoring through our opened and
closed sources. We'll share this information with our clients, perhaps hotels or tourist
venues that are operating in areas that could be under threat. A lot of the sources are
Druse, who are Arab speakers and who have strong intelligence and military backgrounds
to analyze the information. Based on what we learn, we tell our clients what things they
should be doing or countermeasures that they should be taking to protect their assets."

Loftus has plans to offer the same program next summer in conjunction with ITRR.

"There are not a lot of colleges out there that bring young people in and expose them to
intelligence and counterterrorism," says Loftus, who is writing an article on this topic for
an upcoming issue of Homeland Defense Journal.

"The only way to get into this field is to go into law enforcement or the military. Some
people don't want to do that. How do you migrate into this field without having to join
the military or police? Not every person is cut out to be military or police. This war
(against terror) is so large, we need everyone to serve in some way. But we need people
from every aspect of life. We don't need just guys with short haircuts and unibrows. So
we need to bring the young people in and expose them if they want to see if this is what
they want."

Beth Shapiro is a freelance writer based in Scottsdale.

http://www.jewishaz.com/issues/story.mv?080829+trip