Stockholm syndrome: Blame Israel first

When I wrote a column earlier this week titled "Watch Israel get blamed for Paris," I didn't actually expect to see what I call the "blame-Israel-first mentality" displayed quite so quickly and forcefully.

It came in the form of a statement by Sweden's foreign minister, Margaret Wallstrom, in a Swedish public television interview.

"To counteract the radicalization, we must go back to the situation, such as the one in the Middle East of which not the least the Palestinians see that there is not future," she said. "We must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence."

Translation? The failure of Israel to sacrifice its own national security by carving up its own state and complete capitulation to Arab Palestinian demands, such as ridding historically Jewish lands of any Jews, and accepting terrorist attacks from its neighbors as a way of life, is the real cause of the brutal Paris attacks.

It was predictable indeed – especially from Sweden, a European leader in anti-Semitism and Israel bashing.

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It's called blaming the victim for the crime. No country in the world, no people in the world, face the daily threat of Islamic terrorism more than the one and only Jewish state, the one and only free state in the Middle East.

Well-named is the "Stockholm syndrome," named for a 1973 incident that occurred in the Swedish capital.

It's a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors. It was named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of a bank in Stockholm. During the crime, several bank employees were held hostage in a bank vault from Aug. 23 to 28, 1973, while their captors negotiated with police. During this standoff, the victims became emotionally attached to their captors, rejected assistance from government officials at one point and even defended their captors after they were freed from their six-day ordeal.

Sound familiar?

Thank goodness Israelis have not succumbed to the mental illness, for they are on the front lines of the terror war – literally surrounded by hostile neighbors who demonize the Jewish state day and night and incite the most vicious forms of anti-Semitic violence.

It is madness, indeed, that affects most of Western Europe, most of the international media and the global elite who find more fault with Israel than any other country in the world.

How do I put this politely? Nations that can no longer distinguish between right and wrong, truth and fiction, and justice and injustice have lost their moral and intellectual bearings.

Sweden has fallen in love with the "Palestinian cause," which means it embraces terrorism against Jews. Last October, it was the first Western European nation to officially recognize the state of Palestine – a state that doesn't exist, a fantasy of the Islamic Arab imagination, a country that has never existed in the history of the world.

Why does it do so? For the same reason those hostages declared their love and admiration for their captors.

Do Swedes think they will be exempt from terrorist attacks by pointing the finger of blame at other victims? Apparently so. But ignoring the real motivations of radical Islamic terror won't prevent new ones. In fact, it only ensures there will be more in the future.

But as I pointed out earlier this week, failure to face up to the real enemy and name it is simply putting one's head in the sand. It's not only affecting the Swedes. It's affecting the world – the U.S. included. Few are willing to speak the truth even in the U.S. for of being labeled an Islamophobe, a jingoist, an ultra-nationalist, a bigot, an extremist, a racist, a zealot, a fiend, a barbarian.

It's the same kind of mindset that led directly to the Holocaust just a generation ago.

Recall the famous words of Martin Niemöller, the pastor who became an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps: "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me."

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