Maurice Sosnowski, the head of the Belgian Jewish community umbrella group COOJB, has warned that European Jews should brace for further terrorist attacks.
In an interview with the Israeli newspaper 'Haaretz', Sosnowski said "every Jewish community in the world today has to be prepared for such a kind of incident.”
Citing terrorism experts, he added that "this kind of event will happen probably five times in Europe over the next two years, so that means everyone has to be prepared.”
Sosnowski was in Israel participating in a delegation of Jewish community leaders from around the world who met this past week with Israeli government officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Four people, including an Israeli couple, were killed in the terrorist attack at the Jewish Museum of Brussels on 24 May 2014. A week later, a French national with reported links to Islamic radical groups was arrested in connection with the attack.
In wake of the attack, Sosnowski said he had demanded that the government help finance the costs of upgrading security in buildings and institutions that could be targeted in the future because of their links to the Jewish community. This included 50 buildings in Antwerp and another 30 in Brussels, the two major centers of the local Jewish community.
“They are now investigating how much this will cost,” he told 'Haaretz', noting that in several other European countries, such security costs were met by the government.
