After a soccer match between Germany and the Netherlands was cancelled on Tuesday due to a bomb threat, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said that his country should respond to terror like Israel does, Ynet reported on Wednesday.

Hans-Georg Maassen, president of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, observed in an interview on German television that Israel does not cancel public events in the face of terror threats.

Maassen said Germany must not surrender to ISIS’s terrorism. He noted that in Israel, soccer matches and concerts go on despite threats of terrorism….

Massen told German television that if ISIS will attack Germany if it can, and that’s his agency’s main concern, but that Germany has to avoid cancelling large public events in the face of these concerns. He said that a very serious tip that German intelligence received caused the cancellation of the match on Tuesday. He did not reveal what that tip was or comment on the reports that said it came from France.

Bard College professor Walter Russell Mead made a similar point in The American Interest, writing that in the aftermath of last week’s terror attacks in Paris, Israel needs to serve as a model for the West:

To survive and to thrive, the West will have to become more like Israel: guarding ourselves constantly against a threat that can’t be eliminated. The terrorists will continually try to develop new tactics to get around our security measures, and our security forces will have to find countermeasures against new and shifting terror attacks. Life in the West will be marked by periodic episodes of violence, which will be followed by security increases—but life will still go on.

Grave dangers remain. The terrorists are still on the hunt for WMD. Chemical weapons are being used in Syria; the jihad knows no scruples when it comes to their use. The dirty bomb, the chemical attack, the poisoning of reservoirs: These dangers grow over time.
But for now, Paris simply reminds us that, like the Israelis, we live in a dangerous world. The peace and security of the western world, our ability to enjoy the amusements and the diversions of the greatest and most beautiful cities the world has ever known, all depend on the vigilance of our security forces and the competence of their leaders.

Last week’s terror attacks in Paris, for which ISIS claimed credit, have prompted France to declare a state of emergency and lead a continent-wide search for accomplices in the attacks.

[Photo: wochit News / YouTube ]