Contrast this with the experience I had a few years ago while visiting Israel with my wife… We were visiting an outdoor mall in Jerusalem when police stopped us at the entrance and informed us that they were investigating a suspicious package in a specific area they pointed out for us.

People went on their daily lives (the mall did not shut down) but they did so with full knowledge of what was going on, where was safe to go and where it was not.

Western governments keep their people in the dark for fear of creating panic, but in fact doing so achieves the opposite reaction. The better informed we are, the more we can trust the information we receive, the less terror we will experience.

Israel achieves better security than the US at a more cost-effective manner because its citizens are in-the-know and work hand-in-hand with the police to identify suspicious packages and people. Everyone is safer for it.