As the blind leads the blinded to catastrophe, few would suspect that the man most implicated in stalling Israel's security as it faces the most catastrophic terrorist threat in history is none other than the man propelled into power through promises of peace with security, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

Dizengoff, April of 1999. A car circles central Tel Aviv. Two days later, reports of a new spring flu surface. Four days later, Israel's hospitals bend under the pressure of increased demands for beds. A week later 60,000 people have died. Post-mortems reveal anthrax poisoning. Panic ensues, such that Israel has never witnessed. Elections are postponed.

This nightmare scenario threatens Israelis daily. Meta-terrorist Osame Bin Laden, operating from a high-tech cave in Afghanistan, controls a range of Jihad terror groups, stretching from Sudan, through Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, all the way to Pakistan. He has blessed bio-chemical weapons, declared war on America and Israel, and is so far believed to be in possession of bio-chemical weapons that Bill Clinton added an additional $2.8 billion to the budget for countering non-conventional terror.

Across the US, vaccinations are being stockpiled, emergency workers vaccinated and briefed, medical and high-tech counter-solutions pursued. It is the biggest revolution in US security thinking since Hiroshima. The mobilization of defenses on the civilian frontier has involved alerting the public to the existence of such a threat. Media stories have abounded. Debate thrives. The movements of tiny but devastating quantities of biological or chemical agents across the world's borders or through its airports is extremely easy. VX is an innocent colorless fluid. Anthrax looks like flour.

Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has not only failed to release any information on a critical threat to civilian security, he has not taken one parallel move in training, stockpiling, research and adjusting the very medical/defence infrastructure so that it can counter a threat that hangs over Israelis daily: if not by scud, than by aerosol.

Such is Netanyahu's reluctance to communicate the real security threats to the people, that even today, under risk of more non-conventional war-heads from the Gulf, most Israelis are unaware that their gas-masks are useless four hours after breaking the seal. Indeed, far from being mobilized, the public has resigned from dealing with the non-conventional threat...seal rooms, don't seal rooms, change gas-masks, not enough gas masks, we are at risk, we are at no risk...

Israelis have a right to be informed, trained, briefed and vaccinated (like their US counterparts). The government is so late in acting on an issue crucial to Israel's security that an absurd situation prevails in which the whole world is alert to bio-chemical terror and little Israel (at the eye of the storm) sleeps on...

In the words of terror expert Prof. Louis Beres of Purdue University: "Israel is even less prepared than you imagine: Israel's overwhelming intellectual deficiencies spells catastrophe. It is really already to late."

See a previous article by the same author on the same subject here