Sunday, November 22, 2015

Scapegoating Israel as a temporary relief for a clueless European establishment

...Scapegoating Israel is ‎certainly serving a purpose of temporary relief for a clueless European establishment, which has never ‎known war and does not know how to face it other than with vacuous statements of peace, love and ‎harmony. However, the burning ideology and hatred that fuels Islamic State will sooner or later have to force a ‎reality check on the Europeans. So far, however, it seems that will not be forthcoming anytime soon.‎

Judith Bergman..
Israel Hayom..
20 November '15..

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.‎

It is time Europe faced the facts: Islamic State, just like al-Qaida, does not care for "Palestine." Even assuming that ‎Europe got its way and managed to force the creation of a Palestinian state, Islamic State would not leave Europe ‎alone. ‎

Contrary to what the above-mentioned politicians and their ilk believe, Islamic State is not about "frustration" and ‎‎"outrage." If terrorist attacks were about frustration and outrage, the world would have experienced a ‎spate of terror attacks from all corners of the world -- occupied Tibet, Western Sahara, Northern Cyprus ‎and so forth. Instead, practically all terrorism originates almost exclusively in the Muslim world. ‎

What Europe refuses to acknowledge, since it happens to be an politically inconvenient truth, is ‎that radical Islamic terrorism is a means to accomplish religious and political domination and to bring about ‎the worldwide Sunni caliphate, which the terrorist leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, proclaimed in ‎June 2014 with himself as the caliph. The last Sunni caliphate was ruled by Ottoman sultans for 500 years. ‎

The caliphate simply means a single, global Islamic state. It is for the establishment of this state that Islamic State is ‎waging jihad in Europe. Under the jihadist interpretation of Islam, there will be constant conflict until ‎those countries that do not adhere to Islam begin to do so. There is nothing new about this. Muslims ‎have dreamed of the re-establishment of the caliphate for decades. The Muslim Brotherhood was ‎established in 1928 with the goal of re-establishing the traditional caliphate.‎

Islamic State is very explicit about all this, which begs the question of why this piece of information is so hard to ‎digest for Europeans and why they keep rambling on about "Palestine."‎


A small part of the answer lies in the European self-obsession, which makes it impossible for the ‎European establishment to change its inflexible and stale view on this world, according to which ‎everything and everyone is divided into the powerful and the powerless. It is a reductionist and primitive ‎outlook, yet extremely convenient because it saves people from spending time on facts, as everything is ‎neatly boxed into a fixed ideology, which almost always features "Palestine" prominently.‎

The European view also reveals a staggering ignorance about Islamic State. Islamic State is a multibillion dollar enterprise, ‎which gets huge amounts of revenue from the oil fields that it has managed to get its hands on, as well as ‎the sale of looted ancient artifacts. It is a well-oiled and organized war machine, complete with a ‎professional recruitment and propaganda machinery and led by officers in Saddam Hussein's former Baathist Iraqi army. How these people can be described as "frustrated" victims in anything but a parallel ‎universe is beyond any sane person's imagination.‎

Someone should ask members of the European establishment whether they think that "frustration" is also a ‎legitimizing factor behind the mass rapes and killings of Yazidi and Christian women and children ‎wherever Islamic State has occupied territory. Europe was completely silent when reports of the ‎gruesome activities of the group first hit the news. It is only now, as the mainly male and Muslim ‎migrants are flooding the continent that Europeans with bleeding hearts speak of the necessity of taking ‎in refugees. Why?‎

Blaming Israel for the terrorism happening on European soil is a mistake that has already backfired greatly ‎on Europe, as its myopic view on world affairs blinds it to the realities of Islamic State. Scapegoating Israel is ‎certainly serving a purpose of temporary relief for a clueless European establishment, which has never ‎known war and does not know how to face it other than with vacuous statements of peace, love and ‎harmony. However, the burning ideology and hatred that fuels Islamic State will sooner or later have to force a ‎reality check on the Europeans. So far, however, it seems that will not be forthcoming anytime soon.‎

Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=14425


Judith Bergman is a writer and political analyst living in Israel.

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