Mossad Tells Kerry San Bernardino Shooting Also Had “Rationale”

“That will help the families and friends cope better with their loss,” said Kerry.

Washington, December 3 – In a bid to reassure Secretary of State John Kerry in the wake of the fatal shooting spree in California yesterday, the Israeli intelligence chief told him that there was indeed an understandable rationale for the massacre, mirroring the secretary’s characterization of attacks on Jews in Paris earlier this year.

Mossad director Lee Nakam telephoned Kerry in the aftermath of the San Bernardino shooting, in which a Muslim married couple attacked a community center, killing 14 and injuring 18. Echoing Kerry’s remarks about the terrifying randomness of the Paris terror attacks last month, which he contrasted with attacks in January on Jews, Nakam told the secretary that Americans should not be worried about the incident, since Mossad sources indicated that, like those attacks on Jews, the San Bernardino shootings could be explained in some way, and were not terrifyingly random.

“Our intelligence arms has gathered evidence that points to a pattern of sorts that places this attack in context and helps give it a rationale,” Nakam told Kerry. “I’m telling you that because it is apparently important to you, given your remarks about Paris, to distinguish between attacks that have a rationale and those that seem not to.” Nakam added that Kerry, and the grieving American people, should of course feel less troubled by the attack in light of this information, just as Kerry himself expected the existence of a “rationale of sorts” to make a difference to the people of France.

The secretary thanked Nakam for his remarks, and for helping clarify the difference between different types of “random” attacks, as opposed to terrorism with a specific ethnic or political identity as the target. “I told Mr. Nakam that I was grateful to accept his call on behalf of the administration,” Kerry told reporters. “It was helpful to know that despite the president’s characterization of the Hypercacher attack victims as ‘random folks in a deli,’ back in January, Israeli officials understand that I did not consider it random, since the targets were Jews, so you could kind of understand where the attacker was coming from. Now that we have information that the San Bernardino attack was also not totally random, but that the perpetrators selected the location for a reason, I’m sure that will help the families and friends cope better with their loss.”

Kerry added that he asked Nakam to look into protection for Muslims in Israel, who are clearly the primary victims of the incident.