15-Sep-19: Terror victims recover damages via Iranian assets in Canada

Haniye of Hamas [Source]

Though it's gotten little media coverage, Iran's key enabling role in terror attacks conducted via its proxies and Iran-funded agents has been recognized in an important string of Canadian court decisions.

This has practical implications worth knowing about for all the involved parties.

The following is extracted from a September 12, 2019 article published by Canada's Globalnews.ca

Iran’s properties in Canada sold, proceeds handed to terror victims

Stewart Bell National Online 

Tens of millions worth of seized Iranian government properties have been sold off in Canada and the proceeds handed to victims of terrorist groups sponsored by the regime, Global News has learned. According to a document filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice last month, the victims got a share of the money earned through the sale of Iran’s buildings in Ottawa and Toronto. The properties went for more than $28-million, documents show. The recipients were victims of Hamas and Hezbollah — terrorist groups bankrolled, armed and trained by Iran.

“The distribution to creditors as authorized by the court has been made,” the Toronto law firm appointed as the court-appointed receiver, Albert Gelman Inc., informed the judge on Aug. 7.

Normally that would be an unremarkable statement but the creditors in the case were terrorism victims and the assets were Canadian properties seized from the Iranian regime.

The Ottawa property, which had been the Iranian Cultural Centre, was particularly valuable. Marketed as a “transit-oriented development opportunity on the apron of the University of Ottawa,” it sold to a Montreal developer for $26.5-million. The Toronto property, which was owned by a company headed by an embassy official and served as the Centre for Iranian Studies, went for $1.85-million.

A lawyer representing one of the victims also confirmed the sales had occurred.
The Canadian Coalition Against Terror, which lobbied to changed the law so victims could seek redress from states that sponsor terrorism, said it was pleased Tehran had been held to account.

“The Iranian regime unwaveringly and unabashedly provides tens of billions of dollars for terrorist organizations that have destroyed innocent lives across the globe, including those of Canadians,” said Danny Eisen, the C-CAT spokesperson.

Foreign governments typically can’t be sued, but the legislation lifted state immunity for those countries. Only non-diplomatic assets can be claimed by victims, meaning embassies and consulates are off-limits... 

Iran initially ignored the case but then hired a law firm to appeal the Ontario court ruling, which the regime called “politically motivated.”

The sale and distribution of Iran’s assets began after the Supreme Court rejected Iran’s appeal last year. Now that the sale of the properties is complete, the assets have been distributed to the victims.

The rest of the article is here. The unsurprising Iranian reaction:

Iran says Canada's sale of properties "unlawful"

TEHRAN, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Ministry has said that the recent sale of Iran's properties in Canada by the Canadian government is "unlawful," Iran's state TV reported on Saturday.
Based on a Canadian ruling back in 2016 and later an endorsement by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, seized Iranian government properties worth of tens of millions of dollars have been sold in Canada and the proceeds have been handed to "victims of terrorist groups (allegedly) sponsored by Iran."
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi on Friday dismissed the Canadian move, saying that it is "a clear breach of the international law." Mousavi urged the Canadian government to "immediately" return the properties and revoke the decision.
"If Ottawa fails to immediately revoke the unlawful decision and does not compensate the damage, Tehran will take action to restore its rights based on international regulations," he was quoted as saying. "The government of Canada will be held responsible for all the consequences," he added.
[Full story here: Xinhua, September 14, 2019]

Long-running efforts to achieve essentially the same thing in the United States continue to follow a rocky trajectory. This is extracted from an August 9, 2019 Reuters report:

US verdict allowing seizure of Iran-linked Manhattan skyscraper is overturned 

Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A jury verdict allowing the U.S. government to seize a midtown Manhattan office tower that it said was effectively controlled by Iran was thrown out on Friday by a federal appeals court, which cited several errors by the trial judge. The 3-0 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan is a defeat for the Department of Justice, which went to trial hoping to sell the 36-story building at 650 Fifth Avenue, perhaps for close to $1 billion (829.26 million pounds), and distribute proceeds to victims of bombings and other attacks linked to Iran.

Jurors had found in June 2017 that the nonprofit Alavi Foundation, which had a 60% stake in the partnership that owned the building, violated U.S. sanctions imposed against Iran in 1995 because it knew that the 40% owner, Assa Corp, was a front for an Iranian state-owned lender, Bank Melli.

But in Friday’s decision, Circuit Judge Richard Wesley faulted trial judge Katherine Forrest, who is now in private practice, for “a troubling pattern of errors on relatively straightforward issues.” Wesley said these included admitting videotapes of former Alavi board members repeatedly invoking their constitutional right against self-incrimination, and refusing to let Alavi gather evidence to show the government sued too late.

“If this case returns to trial, a properly informed jury may or may not find for the government - a topic on which we have no opinion,” Wesley wrote. “But getting to any outcome requires a fair and procedurally adequate process, something that has been lacking in this case. There are no shortcuts in the rule of law.”

...The cases are In re: 650 Fifth Avenue and Related Properties, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 17-3258; and Havlish et al v 650 Fifth Avenue Co in the same court, No. 17-3278.

Setbacks notwithstanding, there's a comforting degree of vindication in seeing Iran's property seized and turned into cash compensation for the victims of its unparalleled global malevolence.

02-Feb-16: Testifying at a Congressional committee hearing

Arnold Roth will be giving testimony today (Tuesday) before the US Congress in Washington DC at a hearing of the Subcommittee on National Security of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Some details, and live video streaming, here.

03-Dec-15: In San Bernardino, they're starting to think this perhaps might possibly have been terror

San Bernardino [Source: The Independent]

The killings in southern California yesterday have - as most of us have learned to expect in an era afflicted with the curse of  political correctness - led to some quite foolish theory-propounding and circumlocations. 

But in the past couple of hours, the elephant in the room has gotten noticed by the reporting classes which means there might be some true investigative journalism on its way. (But we're not holding our breaths.) We're not going to do any speculating of our own - yet.

This is from the New York Times ["F.B.I Treating San Bernardino Attack as Counterterrorism Investigation"] today:

The F.B.I. is treating its inquiry into the massacre here as a counterterrorism investigation, two law enforcement officials said Thursday, based on materials the suspects stockpiled — including explosives — their Middle East travels and evidence that one of them had been in touch with people with Islamist extremist views, both in the United States and abroad. 

The suspects, a married couple identified as Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, are believed to have opened fire inside a social services center on Wednesday, killing 14 people and injuring 21 others, in the nation’s deadliest mass shooting since the assault on an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., nearly three years ago. The suspects died hours later in a shootout with the police on a residential street. 

Law enforcement officials said Thursday that the couple had thousands of rounds of ammunition in their home as well as 12 pipe bombs. “We do not yet know the motive,” David Bowdich, the assistant director of the F.B.I. office in Los Angeles, said in a news conference... Asked whether there were contacts with possible terrorist suspects, he said “We are still working through that.” Authorities added that there was certain level of sophistication in the explosive devices.

Law enforcement officials said the F.B.I. had uncovered evidence that Mr. Farook was in contact over several years with extremists domestically and abroad, including at least one person in the United States who was investigated for suspected terrorism by federal authorities in recent years...

We're hoping the lives and back-stories of the victims start getting some public attention. The first identifications have started to appear in the media in the past couple of hours. The LA Times ["San Bernardino shooting victims: Who they were"] has a "developing" article that we will be watching. Only a handful of the 14 murdered are documented at this stage.

21-Nov-15: Lethal journalism: Fabricating victimhood at the "moderate" Palestinian Authority

Friday's funeral for Rabbi Ya'akov Don, one of the victims of the Gush Etzion ramming/shooting terror attack
a day earlier [Image Source]

As the tools for creating and disseminating news become more widely available via the Internet, a plague of false reporting and fact distortion has become a growing factor in the incitement of gullible audiences, and eventually the taking of innocent lives. (Think of Al Durah, the children killed in the Shati refugee camp, the Jenin massacre.) We're seeing an egregious instance unfold in front of our eyes.

Ezra Schwartz, 18 - murdered

Shadi Arafa is the name of the Hebron-area Palestinian Arab who was killed in a terror attack aimed at Israelis in the suburban-Jerusalem community of Gush Etzion two days ago ["19-Nov-15: Thursday, bloody Thursday"].

Three people were murdered in the attack: Arafa, along with Rabbi Ya'akov Don, 49, a beloved, lifelong educator (well-known in Toronto for the four years he spent there as a visiting teacher at CHAT) who left a widow and four children, and Ezra Schwartz, a young man of 18 from Sharon, Massachusetts who was spending a post-high school year learning in an Israeli yeshiva and engaging in acts of volunteerism (that was brought him to the Gush Etzion area that fateful day). Five of Ezra's friends, also students from overseas spending the year in Israel, were injured, none of them very seriously.

The deaths of the three came as a result of the terrorist, attacking while behind the wheel of his Toyota sedan, opening fire with an Uzi sub-machine gun at people inside other vehicles at the always-busy Tzomet Alon Shvut road junction [video]

[F]ootage from the scene shows that after he [the attacker] drove at high speed with his gun blazing at vehicles stopped in a traffic jam, he crashed into a car and got out unharmed with his hands raised, at which point a Border Patrol officer arrested him... [Israel National News]

Rabbi Ya'akov Don, 49 - murdered

Two Israeli women were hospitalized after the attack: one for wounds suffered in the shooting attack; the other for injuries suffered in the vehicle ramming. Both were sent to Shaarei Zedek Medical Center and released the following day.

The attacker identified by Palestinian Arab media as the terrorist is Mohammed Abdel Basset al-Kharoub, 24 from a village close to Hebron that is reported widely - but inaccurately - as Dir Smat. From our knowledge of the area, we think they mean the place various rendered into English as Dayr Samet, Dayr Samit and Deir Sammit. The killer's background is not our concern - though we do ask rhetorically how long it's going to be before we hear calls for the ramming/shooting murderer's release from behind Israeli bars on the customary nonsense grounds that he's a political prisoner?

But what is very much on our minds is the way our moderate, peace-seeking neighbours (excuse the deep cynicism) in the Mahmoud Abbas-dominated Palestinian Authority have turned reality on its head and declared the death of the Arab victim as another instance of Israeli malfeasance. And how little (meaning no) attention this has aroused in the mainstream news media.

The ramming/shooting terrorist was captured
unharmed. A celebrity now, his photo is
all over the Arabic-language media 
[Image Source] 

Here's how the editors at the European-funded, influential Palestinian Arab news source, Ma'an News Agency, tell it:

Hundreds of Palestinian mourners marched in Hebron on Friday for the funeral of Shadi Arafa, who was killed a day earlier in a shooting attack in Gush Etzion. Arafa's body was carried by mourners along Ein Sara street towards the al-Shuhada cemetery as the crowd shouted "God is Great" and slogans calling for national unity...
Official Palestinian sources said that Arafa, from Hebron, was killed by Israeli forces who opened fire during the shooting attack. Israeli sources say he was killed along with two other Israeli victims when a Palestinian gunmen [sic] opened fire with an automatic weapon. A series of attacks have been carried out by Palestinian individuals on Israeli military and civilians since the beginning of last month, leaving at least 15 Israelis dead.

In its Arabic-language on-line edition [here], Ma'an is less restrained:

A large crowd in the city of Hebron, after Friday prayers today, buried the body of the martyr [الشهيد] Shadi Zuhdi Arafa [شادي عرفة] at his final resting place in the Martyrs Cemetery in the Zoughair neighborhood in Hebron.

Ma'an's not-so-successful attempts to sound independent and authoritative are notorious. But in this case, it's the substance of their reporting that's the point. When, in their English-language edition, they write "Official Palestinian sources", they mean government ministry sources inside the allegedly-moderate Mahmoud Abbas regime, the Palestinian Authority. (There's some background here: "10-Mar-15: The not-so-moderate Palestinian Authority and the terrorism it enables".)

It's likely that every person in this crowd of Arab mourners at Friday's funeral
of Arafa in Hebron is there because his death at the hands of a
shooting/ramming Palestinian Arab terrorist has been knowingly twisted
by the moderates of the PA into another incident of "death by Israelis"
[Image Source: Ma'an] 

Here's an interpretation of what that means:

Israel had delivered Arafa's body to the PA late Thursday, reports the Palestinian Arab Ma'an News Agency. His body was taken from Bethlehem in Judea to the al-Ahli Hospital in Hevron... and there official PA sources [claimed] that IDF forces who responded to the attack killed Arafa... [D]espite the fact that Arafa was killed in a blaze of gunfire rained down on vehicles by an Arab terrorist driving by, the Palestinian Authority (PA) buried him as a victim of Israel in a twisted perversion of the events... [T]he PA Health Ministry's claim was apparently good enough for the masses at Arafa's funeral on Friday, who were organized into a protest by Hamas activists that began the funeral march from a local mosque... Funerals of terrorists in Hevron have been frequently used in recent weeks to incite more terror... Arafa's funeral would seem to show that even Arab victims of Arab terror are being used to incite more attacks. ["Arab bystander in shooting attack buried as 'victim of Israel'", Israel National News, November 20, 2015] 

The official mouthpiece of the Palestinian Authority, WAFA, on Friday published a heart-rending account of Arafa's death at the hands of an Arab terrorist (though he is not mentioned once), focusing on the pain of his mother and his pregnant widow who became his bride only a few months before... and on Israeli culpability. The article quotes his brother:

"This is [because of] the occupation and the crimes against the martyrs... We will follow the legal procedures in order to hold them accountable and bring our case to international courts... " [WAFA]

And brazenly invents a bogus Israeli alibi:

"Israeli forces claimed that they "fired by mistake on the young Arafa during an operation in the area" [WAFA]

On Twitter [click to view], there's a bunch of Arabic-language tweets, many with accompanying photos, proclaiming Shadi Arafa's "martyrdom", laying it at the feet of the Israelis. There are hundreds of hits when you Google (in Arabic) "martyr Shadi Arafa" - try it.

These Arabic-language accounts, along with the rich resources of photos and videos, inevitably have limited impact on Western audiences like the good people reading our blog. But we need to be aware that Arabic-speaking audiences are daily incited to more and more acts of terror, vengeance and hatred by precisely this kind of cynical mis-reporting. The process is appropriately described  as Lethal Journalism. And it's high time the price of allowing its practitioners to keep doing it, and of ignoring the way it's ignored by the global news media channels, is better understood and stopped.

10-Oct-15: There has never been and never will be a war on terror, and why this matters so much

Mourning at the Henkin couple's graves in Jerusalem [Image Source]

We were not able to attend, but at the heart-breaking funeral of Naama and Eitam Henkin on Friday October 2, 2015, some powerful thoughts were shared by Dr Yagil Henkin in memory of his murdered brother and sister-in-law. The whole text is online here, and appears as a full-page paid notice on page 3 of yesterday's paper edition of Haaretz. 

We think these few paragraphs extracted from Yagil Henkin's eulogy below get right at the heart of why Israel's struggle with incitement and glorification of the perpetrators is producing so few tangible results.

There's nothing new in this, but most (by far) of the news reporting we have seen since the latest outbreak of malicious savagery directed principally at ordinary, non-uniformed Israelis is superficial, un-curious as to motivations or detail, and misleading. The same can be said for most of the observations about the wave of terror attacks expressed publicly by non-Israeli political figures.

The murdered Henkins pose for a family shot 
just before the onset of Yom Kippur, two 
and a half weeks ago [Image Source]

...Eitam and Naama became involuntary fighters in this struggle. Eitam and Naama are person slain by acts of hostility. They are not “terror victims.” Do not call them “terror victims”. Do not say that Israel has a war on terror. Israel has no war on terror. There was never a war on terror, and never will be such war. 

Bernard Lewis, the great Middle-East scholar, once said (regarding the US’s “Global War on Terror”), that to declare war on terror is comparable to imagining Churchill, in the dark days of 1940, declaring in his famous speech to parliament something along the lines of: “We are fighting against submarines and warplanes, against tanks, against bayonets, against guns and three inch mortars! We will fight them on the beaches…” 

Technically this would have been correct. It would have also been complete nonsense. 

It was not the planes who fought the battle of Britain, but the pilots – British and German – and the nations – Britain and Germany – who sent them. Britain was fighting Nazi Germany, not planes and not submarines. There is no such thing as “terror of stones,” just like there is no “terror by individuals,” no “car terror,” nor is Jerusalem “plagued by stone throwing”. And similarly Eitam and Naama were not murdered (in contrast to a headline on a certain media site) – by a passing car firing at them. 

These are all methods. Not enemies. Terror is a tool. The one who uses terror is the enemy. Terror is the enemy’s tactic, knives and bullets – its weapons at hand. To say “We fight terror” is to say “We do not know who the enemy is; or we are not willing to define them as such.” In other words, “We have no strategy.” 

Do not fight terror, fight those who dictate it. I don’t mean, God forbid, to call for acts of vengeance against innocent Arabs. I’m also not implying that we should give up on war ethics and laws of war. My intention is that we should not pretend that there is no hostility, hatred, ideology, or agencies who manage terror. Nor should we pretend that there is no widespread support for terror. We should not forget that there is a religious and national conflict that has laid and continues to lay the foundation for terrorism.

Behind those murderers there is a society who supports this kind of warfare. A society which supports targeting civilians, a society which supports finishing off a young couple.
We ourselves say, rightly, “We should not be like them.” Then why do we lie to ourselves and say that there are no “them,” that there is no enemy but only an abstract and faceless “terror”? If we are fighting “terror,” then who are those “them”?  Do not promise that our hands will reach the murderers. Behind those murderers there is a society who supports this kind of warfare. A society which supports targeting civilians, a society which supports finishing off a young couple. (Thanks to God their children were not hurt; but do not credit the murderers with “mercy.”) The murderers are the hangmen. 

But those who preach that ‘here is a Jew and therefore he deserves death,’ - they will not be imprisoned. And those who today will give candies to children in order to celebrate the murder in cold blood of two more Jews, will pay no price. 

Eitam and Naama were not killed by “terror.” They are victims of an act of hostility. It was hostility behind the murder. Human beings driven by hatred went out to the road in order to murder Jews, and they succeeded. They took my brother from me and from my siblings; from Yishai they took his sister Naama; from my parents and from Naama’s parents they took their children; from the children – Matan, Nitzan, Neta and Itamar – they took their parents, they took the right to grow up in a family, with the experiences and memories of a warm, unified, and loving family. They took from you, who stand here, a talented and optimistic couple, who were destined to greatness. And they continue to take from everyone the sense of security. They were Arab murderers, backed by a too-large segment of Arab society, with far too little principled opposition to murder. 

An enemy. An enemy who utilizes Terror. 

Do not degrade their memory by turning them into victims of a force of nature. Debate about policy, not about the murdered. Do not find justification and sympathy for murderers. Keep your empathy for the children who were left orphans, to the parents who were left bereft. And for the people of Israel, who still have a long way before being able to sit peacefully beneath their vines and fig trees.

The people who stand behind the terror, those who incite terror, those who glorify and excuse and explain away the terror - each of them is complicit in the terror attacks that have left inconsolable mourners and devastated lives in the wake of their sickening actions. These are people, with addresses and job titles and responsibilities. They depend for their power on the consent and support of ordinary citizens, paying customers, non-governmental organizations, foreign aid, public opinion.

Until terrorism is better understood, they will keep getting away with their evil.

04-Oct-15 Jerusalem Watch | The "moderates" of the Abbas-run Palestinian Authority condemn... the victims

Palestinian Authority spokesman Ihab Bseiso

Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations General Assembly on September 30, 2015 [full text here] that his regime sees itself as now no longer bound by the mutual undertakings of the mid-1990s Oslo Accords [text here]:

“We cannot continue to be bound by these signed agreements with Israel and Israel must assume fully all its responsibility as an occupying power.” [New York Times, September 30, 2015]

Nonetheless

We do not respond to the Israeli occupation’s hatred and brutality with the same. Instead, we are working on spreading the culture of peace and coexistence between our people and in our region... My hands remain outstretched for the just peace that will guarantee my people’s fights, freedom and human dignity. I say to our neighbors, the Israeli people that peace is in your interest, in our interest, and in the interest of our future generations. Narrow vision is destructive. I hope that you will consider the dangerous reality on the ground and look to the future... [Text of Abbas speech via Times of Israel]

What did he actually mean?, asked numerous commentators (like this one). Evidently the great man himself believes he made himself perfectly clear:

"I stand behind everything that I said on the UN stage, and will work to implement the decisions." [Abbas quoted in Ynet, October 2, 2015]

Today we have a slightly better sense of his intentions. Times of Israel reports that

After days of silence amid a string of terror attacks and skyrocketing tensions in Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority on Sunday condemned Israel for its “policy of escalation,” after two Palestinian assailants were killed as they carried out terror attacks. In a written communique published on the official news agency Wafa, PA government spokesman Ihab Bseiso called on the international community to intervene following “the killing of two young men in occupied Jerusalem and the series of incursions into cities and villages in the West Bank.” The statement made no mention of the fact that the two dead Palestinians had been killed while carrying out stabbing attacks against Israeli civilians... [and] did not condemn or mention the killings of Naama and Eitam Henkin, who were shot to death in a Palestinian terror attack on Thursday in the West Bank.

The PA's condemnation of Israel is especially galling when it's recalled who took responsibility for the murder-by-shooting of the Henkins on Thursday ["02-Oct-15: Google the name of the young Israeli parents murdered in their car last night..."].

A unit within Fatah’s armed wing assumed responsibility for the murder... The Abdel Qader al-Husseini Brigades, a group affiliated with Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, announced on Friday that its men on Thursday night opened fire on the car of Eitam and Naama Henkin, a couple in their 30s, while they were driving home with their four children, aged four months to nine... Fatah, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is the largest faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the governing body in West Bank areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. “With Allah’s help and in keeping with our right for resistance and our duty to sacred jihad, our forces on Thursday night carried out a necessary action in which they fired on a car of occupying settlers..." The statement, translated into Hebrew by the Ma’ariv daily, also warned “the enemy against taking revenge on civilians,” as “any war crimes would be severely retaliated against.” ["Fatah armed wing claims responsibility for terror attack", Times of Israel, October 2, 2015]

It's baffling to see how blood-curdling threats to murder in the name of jihad, and evidence that they do it and are proud to have done it, keep getting discounted by observers and politicians.

Odd, too, that no one seems terribly vexed by the way Fatah, which claims to be secular, invokes the doctrine of sacred jihad in explaining why Jews must die.

05-Oct-14: Graphic reminder of how wrong the news media often are when covering terrorism

Focusing attention on the victims of terror and not on those who use it and do it - seems obvious, even trite. 

But in today's beleagured news media - with (to name but a few aspects that affect many of them) their misplaced agenda-driven willingness to put objectivity on the back-burner; the inability of many reporters, photographers and editors to actually understand the issues in front of their faces and the history behind them and (as a result) their willingness to follow the pack; and the urge to sensationalize - as well as the competitive pressures under which they operate and the relentless threat from free news on the Web, it happens too rarely

The result is we get serious, responsible, fair analytic and objective news reporting much less than we ought to. 

8-May-14: Madrid moments

Two bereaved fathers with more
in common than the differing backgrounds might have
suggested: Michael Gallagher and Arnold Roth
at the Madrid photo exhibition

I visited Madrid for the first time (writes Arnold Roth) ten years ago. I was invited to go there as one of a small delegation of Israelis participating in a conference of terror victims, the first international gathering of its kind. In many ways, it was an extraordinary experience, mostly positive.

Three weeks later, on March 11, 2004 and after I was back home, Spain was shocked to discover that its terrorism problem involved more than just a decades-long conflict with its Basques, and that the curse of jihadism and of Islamist terror had other countries on its agenda beyond the US and Israel.

I have been invited back there several times since as an invited speaker addressing issues of terrorism. It's not surprising to me that Spanish audiences have real interest in the subject. But the political antipathy of large parts of Spanish society to Israel - among the worst in Europe - has remained a puzzle to me. Israel and Spain first established diplomatic ties in 1986. That's when Spain finally recognized an independent state of Israel (independent in fact since 1948).

Relations since then have been proper but (as far as I can tell) not especially warm. Israelis have noted how, in Pew Research Center’s 2008 Global Attitudes Project, an astounding 46% of Spaniards were found to hold an unfavorable view of Jews. (In 2005, it had been 21%.) Spain's Jewish community numbers about 12,000 making it roughly 0.03% of the Spanish total. Notwithstanding the microscopic presence, it's said to be the European nation with the poorest view of Jews.

Memorial mass: view of the cathedral entrance from the far side of the street

Two months ago, Spain observed the tenth anniversary of the Madrid train bombings. The European Union sponsored a project in which a dozen or so terror victims from Spain and beyond came to Madrid for the commemoration and to speak to the cameras about how they have dealt with life in the wake of their personal encounters with terror. I was invited to be one of the interviewees, and I traveled back to Madrid.

For me, Madrid is the most spectacularly beautiful city in Europe. My encounters with Spaniards, with some small exceptions (political figures, mostly), have been warm and rewarding.

But this time there were some mildly discordant notes too. A very moving photographic exhibition - to the opening of which our group was invited - sympathetically depicted victims of terror from many parts of the world - with one obvious exception which readers of this post will need no help in identifying. And at the Atocha railway station where a striking memorial to the 191 people killed, and the 1,800 injured in the terrorist bombing, incorporates hundreds of messages of support, solidarity and condolence in a large number of languages including Arabic, one particular language is not in evidence. No prizes for guessing which.

On the morning of March 11, the date Spaniards now call 11M, the anniversary of the train massacre was marked with a Mass in the Almudena cathedral next to the royal palace. I chose to remain outside on the street and watched as a small handful of protesters, placards at the ready, gathered on the boulevard under the watchful gaze of the police, while a stream of VIPs including the royal family arrived and eventually left the magnificent church.

Onlookers and protesters outside the 11M memorial
religious service

I overheard one of the protesters, standing right in front of me, being asked by an English-speaking tourist to explain what brought them there.

Two things, it turns out. One, they were offended by the fact that Spain's official religious commemoration of the jihadist attack had an entirely Catholic character, when it ought to have been more respectful of certain other religions.

And two: the evidence is that it was not the Islamists, as the government claims, but NATO that was the true culprit. He launched into a multi-point rationalization with some of the usual depressingly-familiar components of 21st century conspiracy theories.

At about that moment, a passing Spaniard gave me a close look and stopped right next to me. Here's trouble, I thought to myself. He spoke: Shalom, he said. Then said it again: Shalom. Instinctively, I responded in Hebrew but quickly saw that "shalom" was the only Hebrew he knew. He had evidently noticed the kippa on my head  as he walked by and wanted to share with me the one aspect of Jewish culture that he could summon up on a moment's notice. We ended up smiling pleasantly and a little stupidly at each other and then he went on his way.

The following evening, a Spanish friend who is a prominent lawyer in Madrid invited me out for drinks just before I had to leave to catch a midnight flight back to Tel Aviv. He chose a stunningly elegant venue for our conversation, the Villa Magna Hotel, across the street from the far more modest (but very adequate) hotel where we terror victims were accommodated.

Ricardo and I were deep in conversation in the gorgeous cocktail lounge when I became slowly aware of something that seemed somehow out of place. It took me some moments to figure out what. The piano in the background - the pianist was playing... Hatikva. I didn't recognize it immediately because he was interpreting it in dramatic fashion.

But that's what it was, and I asked my friend to pause while we both paid closer attention to the delightful music. Then the pianist, seated some way off at his grand piano, gave a small smile of acknowledgment and switched gear - playing Yerushalayim Shel Zahav. There was no sign among the business people in the vast lounge that anyone else was aware of the significance of either piece of music.

When it became possible to do so, I got up and walked over to the piano and thanked the young pianist. We exchanged business cards. His opening words in our brief conversation were "I love Israel" followed by a few seconds of explaining that after centuries of turbulent history many Spaniards have Jewish blood running through their veins and they know it. Then he moved on to his next piece and I returned to my host.

Members of the terror victims group in the Atocha
train station experience the "cylinder of light"
memorial to the victims of the March 11, 2004 Islamist atrocity

This week on Israel's Independence Day I received an email from the Spanish pianist, David Marín Ariza.

I have to say I am so sorry about that terror atact. I feel so closed to Israel in its fight against terror. My father is Guardia Civil (police man) in Spain, and we were always object of terrorists, we had just luck. I was as well born in 1985, and I am a musician, like Malki. I feld so sad while I was reading her story. I think there will be never enough tribute to victims of terror, they and their families are the most important value in open and free sociaties, they are, as well with our police and army, our heroes. It is what I think, and the reason because I tried always to go to demostrations of terror victims in Madrid, against negotiation with terrorist. I am no great pianist, but if you need some day one, for beneficial concert or whatever here in Spain, let me know. Here [click] is a version fo mine of Hatikvah, in a concert wich I played in Madrid one month ago. (The quality of the video is not very good)... Excuse my English, please... I am actually musicologist but I have worked as pianist at Villa Magna since I finished my studies. I would like to work actually as composer for video, films, etc, and music manager. But there are not many possibilities right now in Spain. So I want to go to the Unated [presumably means the United States] to practish English, look for a job and perhaps study music (film, management...) Do you live in Israel? I was there once, and loved it. I want to visit it again. I wished could soon.

Click below for his YouTube rendition of Hatikva. It's unfortunately captured in a rather ordinary cell-phone video but it conveys a taste of the music behind it. And if readers have some constructive ideas that might help David advance in his career, please drop us a line.

The human, individual response to terrorism always seems to me to be more interesting, more nuanced, more humane and generally more constructive than government statements and political declarations. 

20-Apr-14: World's "biggest victim of terrorism" is deeply concerned that accusing Iran of sponsoring terror threatens US legal system

BBC gives voice to Iran complaints [Image Source]

Iran's English-language propaganda machine is churning away furiously today in the wake of the US move, described here yesterday ["19-Apr-14: One small step for civilized society; one substantial leap in the fight against the terrorists"] to confiscate a series of Iranian-owned assets on US soil in order to satisfy legal judgments obtained by victims of Iranian terror. That welcome measure allows victims of several terrorist outrages for which responsibility was determined to be Iranian to recover damages against specific Iranian-regime assets in North America.

The FARS news agency, which calls itself "Iran's leading independent news agency" (for the acronym-challenged, its name is pronounced "Farce") quotes the Speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani whom it describes as having "lashed out at the US for its move". Larijani declared that the decision by an American court

can ruin the American judiciary system's competency and creditability... The US is escalating tension with Iran. [The court ruling is] in contradiction to realities, void of legal validity and even in breach of US commitments to guarantee religious freedom for its citizens. The top Iranian parliamentarian argued that the US court verdict brings the creditability of the US judiciary system into question. [FARS, today]

Iran's outrage, and its deep concern for the international standing of American justice, appear to stem from the belief, as their Foreign Ministry spokesperson says, that

Iran, itself, is a victim of terrorism and the baseless claims on Iran's involvement in supporting terrorism are fabricated and worthless. [FARS, today]

Most of the rest of the world sees Iran in a fairly different light. At Brookings, for instance, their researchers assert this about today's Iran:

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran has backed an array of terrorist groups. These groups have fostered unrest in Iraq and the oil-rich Gulf Kingdoms, killed Iran’s enemies in Europe, and struck at enemies like Israel and the United States. Most infamously for Americans, Iran has backed the Lebanese Hizballah, providing it with hundreds of millions of dollars, sophisticated arms, and advanced training. Among its many operations, Hizballah in 1983 bombed the U.S. embassy and the Marine barracks hosting U.S. peacekeepers in Beirut, killing 17 embassy officials and 241 Marines. Iran has also backed Hizballah in its numerous operations against Israel, including a 2012 bus bombing in Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists and the bus driver, and has given money and weapons to Hamas, which has used these to attack Israel in repeated clashes. Tehran has also quietly maintained links to Al Qaeda itself, hosting several important figures though also restricting their activities. ["Iran’s Terrorism Problem", Daniel L. Byman | November 21, 2013] 

A new Iranian postage stamp is unveiled in a solemn ceremony
at Iran's first congress of Iranian victims of terror, August 30, 2013
[Image Source]

Iran's victims of terrorism are organized into a body called Habilian Association, that refers to itself as

a Human Rights NGO comprising of a group of families who have lost their most beloved ones in terrorist operations during the early years of Iran after the Islamic Revolution... brutally killed by the western-supported terrorist groups, such as Mujahedin-e Khalq (a.k.a. MKO, MEK, PMOI, NCRI, Rajavis’ cult), which is a clear evidence on radical groups’ violence and a historic and unassailable document in order to prove the fact that Islamic Republic of Iran has been the biggest victim of terrorism." [Source]

It held a first major one-day gathering on August 30, 2013 under the title "1st National Congress of 17000 Iranian Terror Victims":

By bringing together experts across the country and all around the world, the one-day conference intends to provide a platform for exchanging ideas that will help to examine different aspects of terrorism, terror groups, and a bunch of relevant issues...  [The www.17000.ir website - the name refers to the number of terror victims Iran says it has.]

A major highlight of the congress was the unveiling of a new postage stamp honoring the 17,000 victims. If something else came out of it that reflected opposition to terrorism in all its hideous forms, we're not sure what that was.

The official report mentions the identities of some of illustrious participants: Iran’s Minister of Intelligence; the commander of Iran’s Basij Force (best known for its ongoing role in "the suppression of dissident gatherings"); a number of members of the Majlis; ambassadors to Iran from Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Jordan, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Palestine as well as the Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative at the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs. (Iran's Minister of Foreign Affairs was a last-minute no-show, but he sent his special assistant.) For an NGO allegedly un-connected to the regime, it's an impressive line-up of official figures opposed to terror. Seeing Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah in that category is especially memorable.

So too is the favorable attention paid by the organizers to a 'scientific' paper delivered by a German-Australian called Töben, notorious in several parts of the world for his energetic denials that the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews ever happened, and for the jail time he has served as a result.

5-Feb-14: Behind careless throw-away statements of politicians, the overlooked humans and their actual lives

The Borowski family before Evyatar's murder
[Image Source]

Over at The Washington Free Beacon, Senior Writer Adam Kredo has a fine article today that takes up where we left off a few days ago [see our earlier piece: "2-Feb-14: Reflecting on a momentary slip by the Secretary of State"]. It's entitled "Israeli Widow Blasts ‘Insensitive’ Kerry Claim | Kerry claim that no Israelis killed by terror shocks widow". 

We wish the moving words of Tsofia Borovsky, the young Israeli widow whom he interviews, would get the widest coverage. Some extracts:

During a controversial speech over the weekend in Germany, [Secretary of State John] Kerry threatened Israel with economic boycotts and claimed that the Jewish state is enjoying a respite from Palestinian terrorism. “There’s a momentary prosperity, there’s a momentary peace,” Kerry said. “Last year, not one Israeli was killed by a Palestinian from the West Bank.” However, this is untrue. At least five Israelis were murdered by West Bank Palestinians in 2013. Evyatar Borovsky is one of those victims. He was stabbed to death 10 months ago while hitchhiking in the West Bank. He left behind his wife, Tsofia, and five children. “It’s a feeling of carelessness and neglecting actual Israeli needs,” Tsofia Borovsky told the Free Beacon on Tuesday when asked about Kerry’s remarks. Borovsky said that Kerry’s comments reveal an inherent insensitivity and apathy to Israel’s security needs, particularly since the murders of Evyatar and others were so greatly publicized... Kerry is “living on a planet of his own,” she said...Other Israeli victims of terrorism also lashed out at Kerry following his remarks. “It’s an important statement that sums up the scale of human loss in numeric form and baldly asserts it didn’t occur,” wrote Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter Malki was killed when a Palestinian terrorist bombed a Jerusalem pizza shop.“He may not realize even now he did that, and he surely won’t lose sleep over it,” Roth stated on his blog, This OngoingWar. “But it’s distressing that a Secretary of State, with the resources that come with the job, doesn’t check. What does that tell us about the humanity that he invests in such matters?”Borovsky said that Israelis living in the West Bank just “want to live peacefully with whoever wants to accept us. We hope for good and better days.”

Please read and pass around the whole Adam Kredo article. It's a meaningful reminder that behind the hideous headlines and self-serving speeches of politicians... there are real people and their real lives.

12-Jan-14: Mr Abbas, some words to mark a little-noticed anniversary. You deserve at least this.

Manifestly sincere dedication to terror and the things it does
for one's career [Image Source] 

It's solemn commemoration time.

This week marks the fifth anniversary of January 9, 2009, the date on which the term of office of Mahmoud Abbas, frequently touted as the democratically-elected president of the Palestinian National Authority and of the self-proclaimed State of Palestine, actually came to an end.

January 9, 2009 also happens to be the date on which Mahmoud Abbas unilaterally extended his presidential term. He has continued to extend it ever since. (Alert readers might wonder why they don't read this sort of thing on the front page of the New York Times or the website of BBC World Service. We sort of have no idea.)

In honour of the anniversary, we want to take this opportunity to remind readers of how Abbas and the group of Palestinian Arab insiders who have made out like thieves (just an expression) while controlling the perpetually-crippled PA economy, view the actions of the people we mentioned in several blog posts of the past fortnight.

Which posts and which people? We mean the people mentioned here, all of them from the two weeks just ended:

• 12-Jan-14: Sabbath afternoon knifing attack in Jerusalem
• 11-Jan-14: Saturday night rocket fire on southern Israel 
• 6-Jan-14: Gaza rocket fired this morning into southern Israel
• 5-Jan-13: The terror not reported remains the real news 
• 3-Jan-14: Behind the bombing of an Israeli city bus
• 3-Jan-14: Thursday rocket attack from Gaza again but the living in southern Israel's Gaza-fringe communities remains good 
• 31-Dec-13: Reality-checking: are we closer to peace this morning or further away?
• 30-Dec-13: Rocket fired into Israel from Gaza 
• 29-Dec-13: Israel's north faces fresh round of terrorist rocket attacks
• 29-Dec-13: When Mahmoud Abbas raises their hands and cheers their heroic deeds, read this and shudder

Abbas, the self-proclaimed head of state of a nation that has demanded and gotten a seat in many of the world's global organizations including the UN, says this about people who (literally) hack, slash, knife, shoot and bomb innocent civilians:

They are "heroic brothers" whose return to the Palestinian Arab towns and villages is reason enough to "congratulate ourselves" for the "great celebration that unifies" the Palestinian Arabs. Their actions reflect the determination of the people at whose head he stands "not to lose their humanity, their highest, deeply-held moral values". Though a self-declared "man of peace", he holds that "if the Arabs want war – we are with them" but his side "cannot fight alone". "We tried military action during the Second Intifada". "Popular operations resisting settlement and the [security] fence (i.e. acts of terror directed at unarmed Israeli civilians) lead to clear positive results for the Palestinian cause". The people who murder and maim children, women, elderly survivors of the Holocaust, their own work-mates and employers - these "are human beings, who did what we, we, ordered them to do". 

Happy anniversary, Mr Abbas. If nothing else, the notable milestones of your career have caused thoughtful people (including us) to pay close attention to speeches of yours that would otherwise probably have been immediately consigned to the garbage.

It is rare to find a politician as unafraid as you of owning up to the unvarnished, though little reported truth: that you believe sincerely and deeply in terror: in its utility, in its effectiveness, in its redeeming power.

Perhaps one day we, together with some of the thousands of others who have suffered unspeakable loss and pain at your blood-drenched hands, might meet in a suitable place - perhaps an international court-room or, better yet, a prison where we can spend time with you reviewing what the words "hero" and "deeply-held moral values" mean in your lexicon.

16-Sep-13: Fifty years after a terror outrage, what can MLK teach Israel's leadership?

Dr Martin Luther King Jr [Image Source]

Frimet Roth, writing in the Times of Israel yesterday, refers back to a terribly painful episode in American history and the transcendent role played by a great leader. Here's an extract:

This is also an appropriate day to raise this issue because September 15 is the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham, Alabama, church bombing in which four young African-American girls perished and another was seriously wounded. That terror attack, perpetrated by four Ku Klux Klansmen, is remembered as “a moment that would change a nation“. Several months afterwards, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King wrote Christmas letters to the four grieving families in which he assured them: 

“Here in the midst of the Christmas season my thoughts have turned to you. This has been a difficult year for you. The coming Christmas, when the family bonds are normally more closely knit, makes the loss you have sustained even more painful…” 

Then he added 

“As you know, many of us are giving up our Christmas as a memorial for the great sacrifices made this year in the Freedom Struggle. I know there is nothing that can compensate for the vacant place in your family circle, but we did want to share a part of our sacrifice this year with you. Perhaps there is some small thing dear to your heart in which this gift can play a part.” 

King’s sensitive, delicate words moved me. They contrast starkly with the leaden silence that we, the parents of precious Jewish children who also perished in terror attacks, have received from our leaders.

Click to read her article ["What our prime minister can learn from the Birmingham church bombing"] in full; it appears currently in the Ops and Blogs section of Times of Israel.

10-Sep-13: Save the date: "Resisting terrorism" conference in Paris

Conference venue

Resisting terrorism: What Camus taught us

Date/Time: October 23, 2013 | 9.45 am to 6 pm

Conference organizer: Mouvement Pour la Paix et Contre le Terrorisme | Member of International Alliance Against Terrorism

Venue: Mairie du 3° arrondissement, 2, rue Eugène Spuller 75003 Paris

"Whatever cause one defends, it will be dishonored by resorting to the blind massacre of an innocent crowd..." - Albert Camus

PROGRAM 
[More details about the one-day conference are on the MPCT website here]

I Terrorism and resistance: With Camus, to know how to reject confusion 

• Gérard Rabinovitch, philosopher and researcher at CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research)
• Jean Monneret, historian, author of “Camus and Terrorism”

II Behind Islamist terrorism… Islamism

• Claire Brière Blanchet, writer and journalist
• Michael Prazan, author, producer of “A History of  Terrorism” and “The Brotherhood: An Inquiry into the Muslim Brotherhood”

III Picking up the gauntlet of terrorism today

• Saving children from terrorism
  Fazal Ur Rehman Afridi, Pakistani journalist, president of the Institute for Research and Strategic Studies, Khyber
• The jihad that is conquering AfricaFodé Sylla, former president - SOS Racism, patron of Collective Against Terrorism
• Tolerating terrorist organizations: The case of Hezbollah
  Mariam Abdo, Lebanese feminist

IV Victims of terrorism and civil society: Together in resisting terrorism

• Nicole Guiraud, Victim of the terrorist bombing of the Algiers Milk Bar Café
• Cherifa Kheddar, President - Djazairouna, The Association of Families and Victims of Islamist Terrorism, Algeria
• Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc, General Director of the French Association of Victims of Terror
• Arnold Roth, Chairman, Malki Foundation (a partner organization in the International Alliance Against Terrorism) - participating via video link from Israel
• May Chidiac, Lebanese television presenter and victim of Hezbollah terrorism - participating via video link

With the participation of the Collective Against Terrorism

• Annie Sugier, President - The League of Women’s International Rights
• Josiane Sberro, Representative of Primo Info
• Sobhy Gress, General Secretary - Coptic Solidarity

With our thanks to associated artists

• Diagne Chanel: Etudier fait grandir (Learning makes for growing up)
• Nicole Guiraud: Survivre (Surviving)

17-Aug-13: On the redness of certain kinds of Scandinavian blood

Screen shot of CNN's coverage of the Norwegian terror killing, July 22, 2011

Over the 12 years since we experienced the death by murder of our 15 year-old daughter Malka, we have tried, by writing and speaking as often as we can manage, to convey the message that her death at the hands of Hamas terrorists has implications for people living their lives far from where we are. 

We have wanted them to understand what the August 2001 massacre at the Sbarro restaurant does not stand for.

• Malki was not caught in any crossfire. She was not standing between desperate patriots and their goal of militarily defeating a hated enemy. As a schoolgirl, she was not some sort of collateral damage. In the literal sense of these words, she and the other children around her in that pizza shop that day were the killers' primary target.
• The agenda of the terrorists was not political. They are not freedom fighters. The inspiration behind the murders that day and since then is not that they lack a state. It's that we, our side, have one. 
• It was not something out of the blue. It happened in a context in which large numbers of non-uniformed people, whipped up by religious leaders and political demagogues acted (and continue to act) in the most violent and savage ways imaginable against an enemy they have demonized and accuse of every imaginable offence against them. 
• The terrorism and violence that so completely turned our lives upside down, and brought such bitterness and pain to us, is not a local phenomenon, limited say to Jerusalem, or to Israel. It's a global scourge, being done by people with global ambitions and global resources. It's a growing threat to almost everyone.

Over and again, we encounter people who hear what we say but insist the real victims of terrorism are the victims in their local community. Us Israelis? We and our children had it coming to us. The people who killed Malki and the thousand-plus Israelis killed by terrorist action since Sbarro - they're not terrorists. They're... something else. 

Some years ago, I (Arnold) was in a European capital city where I had just taken part in a conference of terror victims. For reasons I have explained elsewhere, all four of us members of the Israeli delegation were invited to share views with people from that government's foreign ministry the day after the event.

It started politely and pleasantly enough. But towards the end, the political head of the ministry told us that, for the next such gathering of terror victims, his government intended to take steps to bring a delegation of Palestinian victims of Israeli terror. In this way, he said with a degree of visible smugness, both sides of the argument would be presented, rather than just Israel's. I asked to be heard, and said I felt that if his ministry managed to bring along Palestinian Arabs who would link arms with the rest of the terror victims present, as we had all done a day earlier, and declare total rejection and opposition to terror in any form, then all of us would be the beneficiaries; Palestinian Arabs, Israelis and even the citizens of that European country.

This was not the response the politician wanted and my recollection is he grew red in the face. He retorted that we Israelis were not really suffering from terror at all but from a political situation that demanded a political solution. The real victims of terror, the innocent victims, were the people of his own country. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the perpetrators had nothing but hatred on their minds. He added that steps like Israel's building of a security barrier (he called it something else) and armed security checkpoints were making the situation in our country worse and not better. 

My response to the political gentleman was to point out that terror is no respecter of international boundaries and that the innocent of his country were neither more nor less innocent in the eyes of the terrorists than us Israelis are. This, again, was not a view he seemed to want to hear. The meeting, as I remember it, ended on a distinctly sour note.

This leads us to a sharp column written by Jonathan S. Tobin yesterday in Commentary Magazine. His article is called "Scandinavia: Jews Deserve Terror, Not Us". An extract:

In the view of many Europeans, and in particular Scandinavians, not all victims of terror are alike. If, for example, you are an innocent Norwegian child who is gunned down by a deranged right-wing fanatic, you are deserving of compassion and your killer must be punished to the fullest extent of the law. However, if you are a Jew who is gunned down or bombed by a Palestinian, you had it coming and your killer should be released and honored.That’s the only possible way to interpret the anger being expressed in the region this week in response to remarks made by Israel’s Ambassador to Sweden Isaac Buchman. The ambassador is under fire for asking listeners on Swedish Radio to think about how they would feel if Anders Breivik, the perpetrator of the Utoya Island massacre, were released. Buchman complained that Israel wasn’t getting credit for it’s freeing of 26 Palestinian terrorist murderers in order to entice the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table. But rather than sympathize with the families of Israelis victimized by Palestinian murderers, people in Norway and Sweden are angry about any comparison between their sorrow and that of Jews killed by Arabs. Indeed, as one Swedish paper put it, the families of the Utoya incident are “seething” about the ambassador’s analogy.

Tobin believes this speaks to “some sort of consensus that Breivik’s crimes are beyond the pale while the Jews have it coming when Palestinians kill them”. 

We think he's right. And it's highly appropriate that he relates this to the events of this past week in which we have been deeply involved in protesting the release of a first roundof convicted terrorists, all of them murderers, from an Israeli prison at the behest of the United States and under pressure from the leadership of the PA. 

Concerning this, Tobin writes:

Contrary to the belief of the Utoya families, the blood of the Jews slaughtered in cold blood by the Palestinians that were acclaimed as heroes this week after their release was no less red than that of Breivik’s victims. The grief of their families was no less profound. The outrage of the people of Israel—and all decent people everywhere—about these wanton acts of murder carried out by Palestinians was no less justified. The Utoya families view Breivik’s actions as “unreal” and therefore a random act of madness that must somehow be seen as on a different moral plane from Palestinian killings of Jews. But the rationale of each of those Palestinian murderers—some of whom were personally embraced by Israel’s peace partner, Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas—was no less mad or random… By treating terror carried out by Palestinians against Jews as legitimate, Europeans are signaling not only that they approve of this cause but also that Jewish lives are less precious than their own. The families of the Utoya victims deserve our sympathy in their grief. But they, and other Europeans who are “seething” about any comparison between their children and dead Jews, have crossed the line into anti-Semitism. [Jonathan Tobin in Commentary Magazine]

Some Scandinavians will likely seeth with anger (again) at the suggestion that their views point to a belief that their blood is redder than that of others (i.e. ours and our children's). 

But until Swedes and Norwegians like those quoted in the Tobin piece get to a better understanding of how terrorism works, who does it and at whom it's directed, they are going to remain prisoners of a dangerous misconception. 

Scandinavians are, of course, not alone in this.