The Gaza Syndrome

Geert Wilders, the controversial Dutch politician, in a recent address to the Dutch parliament, claimed that Europe was falling victim to the Stockholm Syndrome, where a grateful captive identifies with the captors. He illustrated this by the case of a left-wing Dutch journalist, Joanie de Rijke, who in November 2008 was abducted by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. She was held captive, raped repeatedly, and released after six days for a ransom of 100,000 euros. After her ordeal, she acknowledged that her captors “did horrible things to me,” but added in several media interviews “They also respected me,” and emphasized “They are not monsters.” The efforts made by European leftist elites to “understand” Islamists – in spite of atrocities committed in cities from London to Madrid, seems to Wilders to be symptomatic of a sort of pan-national Stockholm Syndrome. Effectively, the Islamists can do no wrong; this is their culture, this is how they are.

Much as a paedophile grooms his victim, so have many media in Europe groomed their audiences towards a type of inverse phenomenon, a notable example being the BBC during the recent Gaza campaign, in which the Israelis can do no right. We might call this the Gaza Syndrome. For example, we read during that campaign that the Israelis were allowing only “minimal” amounts of aid into Gaza, instead of wondering why an army should be supplying its enemy during a war. And complaints about injured Gazans (even combatants) having to queue at the border to be allowed to enter Israel for hospital treatment; instead of wonderment that an enemy power was putting its medical facilities at the disposal of its adversaries.

The recent Amnesty Report on Gaza – equating the IDF actions in defence of its citizens with the Hamas aggression - was only too predictable. Now we will shortly have a further opportunity to see the Gaza Syndrome in action with the forthcoming Goldstone report, which Alan Dershowitz has sceptically described as a Kangaroo Investigation.

And so it goes on.