Saturday, December 12, 2015

Polish security firm brings volunteers to help defend Israelis from terror

(JPost) One of Poland’s largest security firms brought to Israel 20 of its top experts to help prevent Palestinian terrorist attacks.

The group arrived last week in Israel, where its members met with officials, including Israel’s deputy defense minister, Eli Ben Dahan. The security experts also joined a Border Police patrol in Jerusalem.

The visit is part of the initiative of Benjamin Krasicki, president of the board of the Warsaw-based City Security, who in October offered to send 100 of his top guards at his company’s expense to Israel.

He has paid $25,000 in covering the expenses of the delegation, according to Jonny Daniels, founder of the From the Depths organization, which does Holocaust commemoration work and is also active in promoting Israeli-Polish ties.

“Benjamin put his money where his mouth is,” Daniels said.

Krasicki’s offer in October came amid a total of 620 terrorist attacks on Israelis that month, according to figures provided by the Israeli Security Agency, or Shin Bet. A total of 11 people who were targeted in these attacks were killed in them. Dozens of Palestinians also were killed in clashes with security services or while perpetrating attacks.

The bloodshed was the continuation of a massive surge in attacks that occurred in September. In November, the number of attacks was nearly halved to 326, according to Shin Bet, but the attacks nonetheless claimed the lives of 10 people targeted in them.

“As Polish citizens, we have unfortunately seen too many attacks against Jews in our history and know that it starts with you and ends with us, as we have seen in the Holocaust,” Krasicki wrote in October in a letter to Israel’s minister of interior security, Gilad Erdan, in which he offered assistance.