Bombings in Brussels, terror in Tel Aviv — are they the same?

Another major European city has been struck by Islamic State terrorists and the increasingly familiar scenes of carnage and destruction once again top the Hebrew-language media’s agenda, as suicide bombings ripped through the Brussels airport and a metro train, killing at least 34 people and wounding dozens more.

Emotions of fear, sorrow, and uncertainty are clearly evident between the lines of pieces written by Israeli analysts in the aftermath of the deadly attacks, though another sentiment is expressed by many Hebrew-language contributors as well — perhaps the twin suicide bombings will shake Europe from its perceived slumber and force the Continent’s leaders to take concrete measures in order to address and quell the threat posed to the West by radical jihadists.

Nowhere is this trend more noticeable than in the right-leaning Israel Hayom. Smack on its front page, the daily determines that “Europe is at war,” echoing remarks made by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who said that the recent events are part of “a third world war.”

Almost all of the paper’s op-eds dealing with the Brussels bombings note that the Israeli people and Jews around the world have for years been the target of similar attacks, before reaching the crux of their argument — namely, that the string of terrorist acts hitting at the heart of Europe proves the Palestinian issue is not at the core of the extremist Islamist resentment for the West. Contributor Dan Margalit, for example, explains that democratic and liberal values are anathema to the radical ideology of the terrorists, and goes on to posit that Palestinian attacks against Israelis are primarily motivated by Islamist ideas rather than the Jewish state’s policies in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.

Israel Hayom analyst Boaz Bismuth is even more decisive in his comments regarding the attacks on Brussels, stating that “occupation” or “oppression” (the quotation marks are included in his piece) of Palestinians have nothing to do with terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims, since the motivation for such attacks is simply “jihad.” Bismuth accuses the Belgian and French governments, as well as US President Barack Obama, of shying away from confrontation with Muslim radicals, though he conveniently ignores the fact that the entities mentioned above have all contributed militarily and financially to the fight against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

“How comfortable and romantic it is to live in denial, in a world where everyone loves everyone and there are no wars,” Bismuth writes sarcastically. “And after all that came the explosion yesterday that will, maybe, wake the Continent from its dream.”

In Yedioth Ahronoth, writer Ben-Dror Yemini similarly warns Europe’s leaders that they can no longer afford to dismiss radical Islamism as a minor threat, but he tackles the issue from the opposite direction of his peers at Israel Hayom, seemingly implying that the Palestinian issue is in fact the underlying reason for attacks on the West. Policymakers’ over-focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Yemini writes, have contributed to the strengthening of extremist Muslim elements, as, he assesses, Islamist terrorists hold European authorities responsible for the poor state of the Palestinian people. Yemini points to instances of extreme anti-Israel bias in official European textbooks, giving the example of a cartoon equating Nazi persecution of the Jews to the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians. The Yedioth writer seems to suggest that since the Belgian government trades with Israel, and Israel is seen as a Nazi entity, terrorists conclude that the European country is a fair target, as after all, it is allied with the Jewish state. “The Europeans, including the Belgians, are having a difficult time drawing conclusions,” he writes. “They do not understand that sucking up to Muslims will not help. They do not understand that incitement against the Jewish state encourages attacks against the Belgians.”

Haaretz Middle Eastern affairs analyst Zvi Bar’el points to the similarities, and differences, between the Islamic State’s course of action against the West and al-Qaeda’s attacks under the leadership of Osama Bin Laden. Bar’el makes a distinction between global and local jihad, and explains that the Islamic State has set out to conquer vast regions of the Middle East, while at the same time it does not plan to take over Europe and other Western countries. Instead, the group intends to wreak havoc through a series of contained attacks carried out by local surrogates. In that light, Bar’el goes on to explain, there must be a difference in the treatment of Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq, and local operatives in the West. “The use of ‘global jihad’ and attributing responsibility to Islamic State and al-Qaeda blur the identity of local terrorist organizations, which are the main vehicles of terror.”

In an analysis unrelated to the terror attacks in Brussels, Haaretz writer Chemi Shalev says that Republican party front-runner Donald Trump’s address to America’s largest pro-Israel gathering proves the billionaire businessman may yet become president of the US, as he was able to successfully push all the right buttons during his speech. Trump’s speech was well received at the AIPAC gathering after Trump’s opening lines: “I speak to you today as a lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel. I’m a newcomer to politics but not to backing the Jewish state.” Shalev argues that following the speech, Trump was labeled “kosher” by the pro-Israel community, as he was able to pander to the participants of the gathering and speak to them in a seemingly concerned manner about the issues they care about. The Republican front-runner’s conduct at the AIPAC convention, Shalev writes, showed that Trump, perhaps surprisingly, knows how to deal with completely different crowds, and win over the hearts of various groups without much difficulty.