JERUSALEM — It sounds like a counter-terrorism official's worst-case scenario: how to protect a global network of lightly guarded (at best) sites, all filled with unarmed civilians and publicly identified as prime targets.
That's the issue being debated in Israel in the wake of the last week's terrorist rampage in Mumbai, India. Among the targets was the Nariman House, a hostel and religious center run by Chabad Lubavitch, a New York-based ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect that operates hundreds of such facilities around the world.
"It's clear that we don't want our Chabad Houses to turn into barricaded forts," said Rabbi Menachem Brod, official Chabad spokesman in Israel. "The whole idea of Chabad is that we are open and accessible to Jews traveling abroad."
The concern has left Israeli officials fending off charges that they should do more to protect the buildings, which serve as outposts for ultra-Orthodox Jewish culture.
"Of course we care, of course we worry, but there's not much we can actually do," said Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. "Not only is it not governmental, it's not even Israeli."
Official Israeli government buildings around the world, including embassies, consulates and cultural centers, have been on heightened alert for most of this year following the February assassination in Syria of Imad Mughniyah, a military commander with Hezbollah. Israeli officials denied involvement in the killing, but have braced for a reprisal by Islamic militants -- amid steady speculation that the attackers would choose an overseas target tied to Israel.
But it's unlikely that the alert led to serious security modifications at any of the hundreds of Chabad Houses around the world.
According to multiple accounts, it took only two gunmen to seize control of the five-story building. Among the eight bodies found inside after Indian commandos retook the building were Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, the couple who founded the Mumbai Chabad center. Some of the victims were Israeli citizens.
"You can't expect a rabbi and his young wife to defend against terrorists," said Eli Karmon, a senior researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism, based in Herzliya, Israel.
But Karmon pointed out that a security guard or two outside the Nariman House may not have made a difference in the face of what was clearly a well-planned attack. He noted that the luxurious Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, which had its own private security, fell just as easily to the gunmen.
