Compassion, it seems, has its limits even in Sweden.
European liberal left blames victims, leaves Europe in decay
Recent incidents highlighted the dangerously failed European left-wing politics that has draped itself in the false cloak of morality and judgment.
Israel has been hit by more than 1,000 terror attacks perpetrated by Palestinian Arabs in a four-month period. With knifing, car ramming, fire bombing, rock throwing and occasional shooting attacks, about 30 Israelis have been killed and another 200 hospitalized. Fortunately, the rapid response of armed Israeli citizens and the presence of highly trained security personnel have managed to neutralize hundreds of attackers both in their terror acts or immediately after, thereby successfully reducing the number of victims.
And yet, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, a regular anti-Israel provocateur, has demanded an international investigation into what she calls “extrajudicial killings of Palestinians” in order to bring about “possible accountability.”
Her demand is yet another of her public acts of anti-Israelism. As with her past statements, she has ignored Palestinian-incited mass terrorism against Israel and, instead, targeted Israeli victims and potential victims for possible prosecution.
Wallstrom has a talent for finding Israel guilty for all of Sweden’s woes. When, according to Swedish intelligence, more than 200 Swedes were reported to have joined the so-called Islamic State, Wallstrom pointed at Israel: “Clearly we have a reason to be worried, not only here in Sweden but around the world, because there are so many who are being radicalized. Here again, you come back to situations like that in the Middle East where not least there isn’t any future. The Palestinians either have to accept a desperate situation or resort to violence.” The implication is that Israel is responsible for the radicalization that is driving so many Swedes into the arms of Islamic terror groups.
Wallstrom is typical of the political sickness that has swept Europe. Her attitude of blaming the victim makes her a kindred political spirit to the mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker, who told the women of her city that they should have kept an “arm’s length” distance of the thousand migrant men that raped, sexually abused and robbed almost 200 German females in the city’s central square on New Year’s Eve.
This is yet another example of a left-wing pro-immigration politician blaming the victim.
Swedish leftist politicians also advocated a badly flawed policy that allowed masses of unverified migrants into their country. As in Germany, one result has been the rapid rise of violent and disturbing crimes committed by this flood of undisciplined humanity, mainly from the Middle East.
Under politicians like Reker and Wallstrom, European nations have shifted from being homogenous countries into dysfunctional societies. In Sweden in 2014, there were 80,000 requests for asylum, and leftist politicians allowed them to enter in the name of cultural tolerance.
Last year, the number of accepted migrants rose by 150 percent to 190,000 in Sweden, this time in the name of compassion. The Swedish prime minister said at the time, “My Europe doesn’t build walls.”
Sweden’s generosity grants welfare benefits to non-Swedes. It also grants permanent resident status to stateless persons after four years, and citizenship after a number of years as residents. Little wonder that this has attracted hundreds of thousands of migrants to target the nation. When the growing flood stormed over the Oresund Bridge that connects Denmark to Sweden and homeless people began camping out in Swedish town squares, the same prime minister changed his tune by saying, “Sweden is no longer able to accept the high number of asylum-seekers we’re seeing today.”
Wallstrom-style compassion for terrorism will also find its limits in Sweden, it seems, only after it experiences murderous terrorism on its soil.
Only then will a Swedish foreign minister, perhaps, understand how to fight terrorism and allow citizens and security forces to neutralize the killers in the same manner that Israel has done.
The only other way that countries such as Sweden and Germany will change the dangerous, misguided and failing politics and rhetoric is by a frustrated and beleaguered population rising up and electing right-minded politicians able and willing to shift both domestic and foreign policies in defense of traditional and core values.
Israel is finding that countries that “get it” and shift to the right suddenly discover the way to solve their terrorism and migrants problems is to follow the Jewish state’s examples.
Barry Shaw is the senior associate for public diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
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