Thousands of people walked slowly up to the Mount of Olives to accompany Rabbi Gabriel and Rivka Holtzberg to their final resting place in Jerusalem yesterday.

The rabbi and his wife had been tortured and murdered by radical Muslims in far away Mumbai, India.

The only surviving Mumbai terrorist said they had come to Mumbai to locate and kill Jews.
It was hard for anyone in the crowd of mourners to not ask, in one way or another, whether this would be the last lethal Islamic attack on Jews abroad.

The Israeli government security cabinet entertained the question Monday morning as to whether the Israeli security establishment should protect Jewish institutions abroad.

The Islamist threat to Jews is a global one, even reaching into the Western hemisphere.

Presently, Muslims in North America slightly outnumber Jews, with seven million adherents, compared with six million for the latter.

According to an Islamic umbrella group, contacted by The Bulletin, most American Muslims enjoy a cordial relationship with their Jewish neighbors, but it estimated one million North American Muslims have shown hostility to Jews.

In that context, a Toronto scholar, fluent in Arabic, who now is completing his Ph.D. in Islam at York University, has noted alarming rhetoric on Arabic-language sites aimed at Jews.

In June, that Toronto scholar followed an Internet discussion of Arab Islamic groups that was intent on blowing up several Jewish religious institutions in Canada.

The scholar notified CSIS, the Canadian equivalent of the FBI, of what he was following.

CSIS moved swiftly and was able to apprehend the radical Canadian Islamists before they could do any damage.

Had it not been for one Arabic-speaking Canadian scholar, several Jewish institutions in Canada would have suffered the consequences of a devastating terror attack, as the world witnessed last week in Mumbai.

David Bedein can be reached at Bedein@thebulletin.us

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David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.