Dutch politician: Paris attacks result of frustration over Palestinian-Israeli conflict

Politician refers to Palestinian-Israeli conflict as “growth medium for such an attack.”

By JTA
Rescue service personnel working outside a restaurant following shooting incidents in Paris, France, November 13, 2015 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Rescue service personnel working outside a restaurant following shooting incidents in Paris, France, November 13, 2015
(photo credit: REUTERS)
AMSTERDAM — The chairman of the Dutch Socialist Party said the perpetrators of the attacks in Paris acted in part out of frustration over the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Jan Marijnissen linked the Nov. 13 attacks, which left at least 129 dead and which French President Francois Hollande said were planned by the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria, to the Palestinian issue during an interview for the Dutch radio station NPO Radio1 on Monday.
“Their 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.”
On Monday, Israel’s foreign ministry and the European Jewish Congress harshly condemned similar comments by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, who said that: “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 no future: We must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence.”
EJC President Moshe Kantor said her view was “borderline racist” because she focused on the one conflict involving Jews in explaining the attacks, whereas Israel said her comments were “appallingly impudent.”
Susanne Sznajderman-Rytz, a Swedish Jewish linguist, said she confronted the minister about the issue on the street, and that the minister told her: “The Jews are campaigning against me,” though a ministry spokesperson later denied that the minister had said this.
Sweden’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying Wallstrom “has neither directly nor indirectly linked the terrorist attacks in Paris to the situation in Israel and Palestine,” adding the controversy owes to “a misunderstanding” that “will be clarified shortly.”


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