Old habits are hard to break, and in Europe, it would seem, almost impossible. First, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said that “to counteract the radicalization, we must go back to the situation such as the one in the Middle East, of which not least the Palestinians see that there is no future: We must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence.”
Then Dutch Socialist Party Chairman Jan Marijnissen did not hesitate to link the Islamic State terror attacks on Paris to the Palestinian issue: “Their behavior eventually is connected also to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The guys — I assume they were guys — who carried out the attacks probably come from a group of outraged people from the French suburbs.” The Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he added, “is the growth medium for such an attack.”
Le Monde, a leading French newspaper, echoed this sentiment in its analysis, saying that it was necessary that France demand that the international community immediately establish a Palestinian state and that Israel return to the pre-1967 borders.
This is classic European scapegoating. While that strategy may have worked for Europe one way or another in the past, this time it will not. Islamic State is targeting the very heart of European cities — their transportation systems, bars, restaurants, concert halls, and sports stadiums — and the Europeans can try all they want to run away from the reality of this, but the truth is that there is nowhere to hide. Europe has pandered to the Arab world and tried to appease it for decades and all that it has brought Europeans is carnage, bloodbaths and hell on earth. This hell did not begin on Friday, Nov. 13. It began, on a truly large scale, with Madrid in 2004, when 191 people were murdered and 2,000 wounded in terrorist attacks. Still, even now, Europeans are talking of meeting the seething hatred and determination of Islamic State with love and understanding and — of course — a state for the Palestinians.