Israel in Oslo - Britain in Stockholm

As a Londoner I have the feeling that recent events have finally brought Britain and Israel closer together than they have ever been.

Last weekend Britain’s brand new Prime Minister Gordon Brown was laying a wreath in memory of the victims of the London bombings in July 2005 even as his police were still rounding up suspects in the new bombings of July 2007. At the same time, he issued an order forbidding his ministers to utter any linkage of Islam with the bombings and to expunge the phrase ‘war on terror’ from all his government’s communications. And with that policy firmly established, he felt able to reduce the national threat condition from ‘critical’ back down to ‘severe’. Brown’s new Jewish foreign secretary – the son of holocaust survivors – has been gushing with praise for Hamas and their critical assistance in the freeing of the BBC’s Gaza correspondent with his head still attached to his body. He feels that now is the time to ‘engage’ with Hamas and is likely to be at the forefront of moves to restore EU funding to the terrorist group regardless of their failure to renounce terror or recognise the existence of Israel.

With a UK general election not far off, you would have thought the opposition Conservative party might have a different approach. Some hopes! Its own new leader David Cameron seems more worried about global warming and his carbon footprint than anything else. His response to the latest act in the UK jihad is the parachuting of Sayeeda Warsi into no less than the chamber of the House of Lords as the first Muslim member of his shadow cabinet. The new Baroness, who supports ‘engaging with’ Hamas killers, will be responsible for our ‘community cohesion’. Cohesion is of course an area of specialist knowledge for jihadists who have experimented widely with unsuspecting civilians in crowded buses and restaurants.

What all this amounts to is the most blatant denial of the true message of 7/7 2005 and this month’s repeat performance which failed only by the merest fluke; or as I would prefer, by the grace of God. The speed of the British government’s capitulation in the face of a clear and present threat from the fifth column embedded in its health and other public services, makes even France look like a safer place for those who seek freedom and security.

Whilst all this was going on, the Israeli government was also denying reality. Still not cured of its Oslo delusions, Israel is again sending guns and writing out more hundred-million-dollar cheques payable to those sworn to its destruction. At the same time, Ehud Olmert draws up his latest list of terrorists to be freed in exchange for … nothing and no-one. It is unlikely that a single cabinet member doubts that the money will find its way to Hamas to fund more terrorism against Israel. Nor will anyone doubt that many of the freed terrorists will be back to murder more Jews. But still they send the guns, the money and the prisoners.

Oslo is a delusion of peace, a fantasy that by throwing more meat to the lions, they will become vegetarians. Usually the most effective cure for such mental illness is shock treatment. There is therefore hope that last year’s rocketing from Lebanon and the second round of war which seems likely to follow very soon on a more extended front, will ultimately silence the voices of Oslo.

Where Britain is concerned, it’s plain to see that the government’s reaction is rooted in fear. Like that BBC correspondent who now speaks so highly of Hamas, Britain had her blindfold taken off on 7/7 and found herself held hostage by a community of 2 million Muslims and the threat of civil disobedience if any of their sensibilities were offended. The rabid ‘cartoon demonstrations’ in European cities and the torching of cars and property in over 3 weeks of rioting in France were messages that a fearsome British government took to heart. It had two choices: Churchill or Chamberlain. It chose Chamberlain.

Hostages often suffer from a condition known as the Stockholm Syndrome. This is named after a failed bank robbery in the Swedish capital some 30 years ago. The bank staff developed a bond with their captors and did everything possible to protect them from the police surrounding the bank. This friendship extended long after the criminals were jailed when former hostages visited them and one was rumoured to have become engaged with her former captor.

Britain was that quiet Swedish bank which, one sunny day, saw evil walking through its doors. Two years ago, within days of the 7/7 carnage in London, government leaders were wringing their hands not over what the jihadists had done, but what Britain had done. Instead of demanding that Muslim leaders dissociate from and condemn the action, British parliamentarians went Mosque-hopping with reassurances ‘old chap’ that everything’s okay. Taken together with Gordon Brown’s performance in this latest round of terror, there can be no doubt that this is a classic case of Stockholm.

Whilst Israel’s prognosis now looks better, Britain appears to be beyond recall. There seems to be no limit to what may be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. Last month a judge walked out when a fully veiled defendant appeared in his courtroom accused of vandalising an apartment from which she was evicted. The judge now faces suspension.

Of course it is the case that whilst not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorists these days seem to be Muslims. The vast majority are simply too silent, either out of fear or plain complicity. Some community leaders have condemned the killing as contrary to the teachings of the Koran and a blasphemy of the Prophet. But if that is the case, why is this blasphemy not being protested in Europe’s capitals with as much force and vitriol as the cartoons of Mohammed?

That is the question Gordon Brown should have put to Muslim community leaders. They need to become active partners in the fight against jihad terrorism. By ordering the denial of Islamist terror Prime Minister Brown spat on the victims of 7/7 and their long suffering families. It would have been more appropriate to see Muslim clerics laying wreaths in their memory, and to beg forgiveness for their misguided brothers.

[A slightly edited version of my above article appeared on Arutz Sheva]

A Bad Case of Stockholm

These days it`s not so easy for Jews living in a European Union country, particularly when it happens to be the homeland of the BBC.
Everyone knows our EU taxes are used, at least in part, to fund Palestinian terror and Jihadist indoctrination in Hamas-run schools and medrassas.

Everyone knows the BBC is grossly biased against Israel but we have to pay for that, too. Just as we are powerless to dictate where our EU taxes go, we cannot escape paying a statutory license fee that keeps the BBC in business.

Here in Britain it is unlawful to watch TV -- any channel -- unless you have paid that license fee to the BBC. They even have detector vans roaming the streets, topped with parabolic dishes and antennae. The BBC`s answer to AWACS, these units are able to ferret out any poor pensioner freeloading on soap operas on the fifth floor of a council estate and impose a heavy fine.

However, it is even more difficult for our brothers and sisters living in France. Paying the same EU taxes, they see their synagogues and community centers vandalized and torched and their kids abused on the streets. The Chirac government says a lot but does very little in practice
to deter and punish those responsible.

As for Belgian Jews, in addition to their own EU taxes, they also have to fund the prosecution of Ariel Sharon as a war criminal.

Last weekend it was Sweden`s turn. Swedish Jews pay state and municipal taxes which fund local institutions and amenities such as the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm. As part of an upcoming conference on genocide hosted by the Swedish government, the museum
staged an exhibit featuring an image of the notorious Haifa suicide bomber floating in the center of a large pool of blood-colored water. The visiting Israeli ambassador flew into a rage when confronted with this scene and did his best to vandalize it before being escorted from the premises. He later called the exhibit a monstrosity and an affront to the grieving families and victims of the Haifa bombing. To make things worse, the exhibit turned out to be the work of an Israeli expatriate by the name of Dror Filer and his Swedish wife.

For me, the Stockholm incident plumbed a new low for Israel and European Jewry and our hopes of ever getting a fair hearing or a fair shake of the burgeoning political correctness which seems to benefit all minorities except the Jews.

We all ask ourselves the same kind of questions. Can you imagine any country putting on such an exhibit that glorified attacks on Arabs? How is it possible that serious journalists and politicians can so successfully peddle a moral equivalence between the bombing of a restaurant filled with women and children and the targeted killing of armed terrorist leaders? Why does the enlightened world hate the Middle East`s only democracy while doling out sympathy and limitless funds to the inventors of airline hijacking and suicide bombing? This is plain madness.

Until now, I have accepted the conventional wisdom: it`s either oil or anti-Semitism. Or perhaps it is a mixture of the two. (I can imagine some Talmudists speculating whether the oil would tend to rise above the anti-Semitism.)

However, the Stockholm incident has changed my view. Either by way of word association or pure chance, I found myself thinking about the phenomenon known as Stockholm Syndrome.

Thirty years ago, on August 23, 1973, three women and man were taken hostage in an armed raid on one of the largest banks in Stockholm. They were held for six days by two ex-convicts who threatened their lives and occasionally put nooses around their necks. After a few days, police negotiators were astonished to find the hostages siding with their captors and actively frustrating efforts to free them. The hostages had formed a bond with their captors which persisted long after they had been freed. Amazingly, one of the women later became engaged to her former captor while he was in prison.

This strange behavioral manifestation was later dubbed “Stockholm Syndrome.” It starts out as a survival mechanism when people are under threat of violence in captivity. Psychologists have attributed it to all kinds of victims, from Holocaust survivors to battered wives. One of the
best-known case histories is that of Patty Hearst, who, after being kidnapped in the mid 70`s by the Symbionese Liberation Army, ultimately took that group’s side and willingly participated in its bank robbing exploits.

One expert describes it like this: “The strategy of trying to keep your captor happy in order to stay alive becomes an obsessive identification with the likes and dislikes of the captor, which has the effect of warping your own psyche in such a way that you come to sympathize with your tormentor.”

This makes me conclude that much of the EU must be suffering from a bad case of Stockholm.

Consider: for the last thirty years Western Europe has been gripped by Palestinian terrorism. The PFLP, PLO and Black September made sure there was hardly a European airport or airline that was not hit by one hijacking or another. Then came the seizure of the OPEC headquarters in Austria and the attack on the Munich Olympic Games. An entire continent
captive to terror for three decades.

Since 9/11 Londoners have waited nervously for the other shoe to drop. Will it be St. Paul`s Cathedral or the Houses of Parliament? Most accept that it will probably not be the Eiffel Tower because of the French government`s support of the Arabs and opposition to the war in
Iraq. The Germans have a similar insurance policy.

Isn`t this behavior exactly Stockholm Syndrome on a national scale?
Isn`t it likely that, as a means of self-preservation, these countries and their official news gathering organizations seek to appease their tormentors and those who hold them captive in this ongoing war of nerves? Do they not show “an obsessive identification with the likes and dislikes
of the captor”?

Beyond keeping their cars gassed up and way above the undercurrent of anti-Semitism, isn`t it all about self-preservation? About keeping the bombers out of our own back yard?

No wonder a recent EU survey found that most Europeans considered Israel the biggest threat to peace. This is akin to the Stockholm bank hostages, with nooses around their necks, shouting that the police were the biggest threat to their lives.

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This article first appeared in the Jewish Press