Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his intelligence services have stopped many attacks in Europe.

He spoke of "mass attacks, of the worst kind," which "involve civil aviation."

That seemed to be an oblique reference to 9/11-style hijacking efforts.

Netanyahu spoke at a lunch with NATO member state ambassadors.



Israel's security services have helped prevent "several dozen" catastrophic terror attacks in Europe, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Though he did not go into specifics, he claimed that the schemes in question would have been an order of magnitude worse than the likes of the attacks in cities like Paris, Nice, and Berlin, which had death tolls ranging from 35-135.

Netanyahu also said the worst attacks "involve civil aviation."

He made the remarks at a press conference in Jerusalem on Tuesday afternoon, in the course of praising Israel's relationship with NATO. Netanyahu said:

"When we talk about ISIS it's important to understand that Israel helps Europe in two fundamental ways:

"The first is that we have, through our intelligence services, provided information that has stopped several dozen major terrorist attacks, many of them in European countries.

"Some of these could have been mass attacks, of the worst kind that you have experienced on the soil of Europe and even worse, because they involve civil aviation.

"Israel has prevented that, and thereby helped save many European lives."

The reference to attacks "even worse" than Europe has experienced, combined with the mention of planes, appears to be an oblique reference to the 9/11 terror attacks.

The New York attack had a death toll of close to 3,000, more than 10 times higher than even the bloodiest atrocities in Europe, like the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270.