I've went through 9 terrorist attacks in Israel before I joined the military - I lived in downtown Jerusalem during the Second Intifada. In the other countries, you're right - there is no excuse for getting rid of personal rights and freedoms, but in Israel the sheer number of terrorist attacks cause the reality to be different. If we didn't have the intel, we could never stop the terrorists, and that is simply unacceptable.
Israel do have everything on a different scale; multiples of times more terror against its civilians than what the rest of the western world have -- combined.
Afaik, despite this the courts in Israel seems to better keep up rule of law than the US ones, re terrorism... Which is sad.
But I think that without terror problems, the situation would be very different in Israel. And you probably agree.
Edit: I think you missed my point a little. I didn't discuss if it is right to throw out freedoms or not, I noted that empirically democracies seems to be very likely to do that in a certain situation.
