In France, authorities have been caught by surprise again and again by terrorist attacks with many lives lost; in Belgium, terrorists have been coming and going for years, buying military weapons with remarkable ease. But it is Italy that has long been the most vulnerable. It has been a front-line state in all the recent military expeditions in the Muslim lands of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya; it has added to the provocation by loudly supporting U.S. policies and by actively collaborating with Israel, lately on multibillion-dollar military projects that have received much publicity.
Moreover, Italy has a Muslim population that exceeds 2 million and porous borders -- and lately no borders at all because of the mass entry of Muslims from Syria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, a country where more than 60% of the population supports the Islamic State group.
