New Scapegoat for Terror in Europe is the Old Scapegoat--Guess Who?

Europe is still in a state of shock after the horrific murders of innocent, unarmed people--mostly young people--in Paris. The latest figures are 129 dead and hundreds wounded. As of today, the French police have conducted an operation in St Denis, a Parisian suburb. Two terrorists are dead and some people have been taken into custody. The police suffered casualties.

ISIS took responsibility for the attack and, according to media reports, the terrorists were in contact with their operatives in Syria. European security officers were even sure for a while that the key terrorist who planned the coordinated attacks had already escaped to Syria.

But to where, pray tell, has 'enlightened' Europe shifted the blame? You guessed it, the Israel-Palestinian conflict. There is only flimsy evidence, if any hard evidence at all, to any Palestinian connection.

ISIS itself has attributed their terrorist attack in Paris to French bombings in Syria:

Let France and those who walk in its path know that they will remain on the top of the list of targets of the Islamic State, and that the smell of death will never leave their noses as long as they lead the convoy of the Crusader campaign, and dare to curse our Prophet, Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, and are proud of fighting Islam in France and striking the Muslims in the land of the Caliphate with their planes, which did not help them at all in the streets of Paris and its rotten alleys. This attack is the first of the storm and a warning to those who wish to learn.

Read the whole ISIS statement here. Not one word by ISIS about Palestine.

I saw one unsubstantiated report that said that a Palestinian might have been one of the eight or nine attackers. The fluid migration of Islamic terrorists from one Islamic conflict to another, however, makes this flimsy and almost inconsequential evidence of any 'Palestinian' connection, even if true.

But, never fear, the official elite already has the answer: look for the Jewish connection.

Why do I call them the 'official' elite? Because they hold (or have held) official positions, either appointed or elected. As such, they have easy access to mass media, and their voice carries influence and molds public opinion. This is what makes this elite so pernicious and dangerous. They are deflecting the consequences of their own failures and misguided worldview onto the State of Israel, the only state in the world where Jews can actually defend themselves by force of arms. They would deprive us of this, too.

In the present crisis, the first to come forth with the convenient 'answer' was the Swedish Foreign Minister, Margot Wallstrom, already well-known for her antipathy toward Israel. When asked on Swedish Television whether she was worried are by radicalization Sweden youth who are fighting for ISIS, she made the convenient 'connection' between radical Swedish youth and the Palestinian situation. Wallstroem said:

Obviously, we have reason to be worried, not just in Sweden but across the world, because there are so many that are being radicalized. Here, once again, we are brought back to situations like the one in the Middle East, where not least, the Palestinians see that there isn’t a future. We [The Palestinians] must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence.

To the Israeli Foreign Ministry's credit, it was quick to protest, inviting the Swedish ambassador for clarifications and elicited a statement from the Swedes that no connection had been made between the two situations.

Next to dutifully follow is the chairman of the Dutch Socialist Party, Jan Marijnissen. He said the perpetrators of the attacks in Paris acted in part over frustration over the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He was interviewed on the Dutch radio station NPO Radio1 on Monday, November 16. The following is a summary of what he said:

Their [The terrorists'] behavior eventually is connected also to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” said Marijnissen about the perpetrators. “The guys – I assume they were guys – who carried out the attacks probably come from a group of outraged people from the French suburbs,” he said. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he added, “is the growth medium for such an attack.

In days gone by, Christian Europe had the Jew as a convenient scapegoat for random unexplained murders, child molestation, poverty, war, economic crises, natural disasters and whatever other problems needed a quick fix. Rabble rousing officials, royal or otherwise, could set the crowd on the Jews to expend their rage and blood lust in murder, robbery and expulsion of Jews.

European Jewish Congress (EJC) President Moshe Kantor called Wallstrom's remarks 'borderline racist'.  Dr. Kantor said:

She [Wallstrom] has completely ignored the remarks made by those behind the attacks, Islamic State organization, almost as if depriving them of any agency for their reactions. This is a deeply troubling worldview and borderline racist. 

She ignores the tens of conflicts around the world involving Muslims and cherry-picks the only conflict involving Jews, as if to once again suggest, perhaps not consciously, the age old idea that the Jews are always central to international affairs in a malevolent way, and behind every event the hand of Jews can be found.

Implicit in the words of Wallstrom and Marijnissen is that Jewish Israel bears responsibility for the terrorist bloodbath in Paris. By extension, there is even justification to the continued attacks--stabbings, car bombs, shootings, and driving cars into crowds of Jews--on innocent Jews in Israel, for if such is the consequence in Europe what would be the result in Palestine itself!

Thus, a new scapegoat has been discovered to account for the woes of Europe. Not so remarkably, the new scapegoat looks much like the old one.