In the wake of any major terrorist event, it\u2019s generally worth noting who is especially quick off the mark to exploit the tragedy.<\/span><\/p>\n Within hours of planes striking the World Trade Center on 9\/11, the then former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak was in the BBC\u2019s London studios <\/span>calling for a \u201cwar on terror<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u201d<\/strong> against \u201crogue states\u201d which just happened to be enemies of Israel (none of whose agents, <\/strong><\/span>unlike Israel\u2019s<\/span><\/strong><\/a>, were seen filming and celebrating as the twin towers collapsed into their own footprint). And two years ago, soon after ICTS International, an Israeli security firm established by former intelligence officers, allowed a young Nigerian without a passport to \u201c<\/strong><\/span>slip through<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u201d<\/strong> Amsterdam\u2019s Schiphol Airport to board Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day, former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, the son of a suspected Mossad operative, was on CNN <\/span>touting<\/span><\/strong><\/a> one of his client\u2019s full-body scanners as the answer to America\u2019s airline security problems.<\/span><\/p>\n In the case of the July 22 twin terror attacks in Oslo and on Ut\u00f8ya Island, however, some of Israel\u2019s more provocative propagandists <\/span>appear to have been wrong-footed<\/span><\/strong><\/a> by Anders Behring Breivik\u2019s apparent admiration for their Islamophobic rants. While the likes of <\/strong><\/span>Bat Ye\u2019or<\/span><\/strong><\/a>, <\/span>Daniel Pipes<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span>and <\/span>Pamela Geller<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span>were seen scrambling to distance themselves from Breivik, Norway\u2019s massacre has indeed been seized upon by others with their own, albeit less transparent, ties to the Jewish state.<\/span><\/p>\n During visits to two European capitals over the following week, Poland\u2019s <\/span>staunchly pro-Israel<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span>foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, appeared to be particularly exercised by the tragedy. While <\/span><\/span>in London<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span>for discussions about the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union and the EU\u2019s Eastern European policy, Sikorski took a swipe at some of his critics in Poland, where he claimed \u201cthere is no lack of people who think like Behring Breivik, a man who shot at his own people in order to bring down a government he believed had lost its political and legal right to govern.\u201d The foreign minister, one of the highest-ranking Polish leaders <\/span>not on board<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span>the plane that crashed killing much of Warsaw\u2019s political and military leadership last year, said that his country also has \u201cgroups who believe that the democratically elected president and government are traitors who have no real interest in Poland or the Polish people. These are very dangerous emotions which, if stoked, could have unpredictable consequences.\u201d As an example of such \u201cdangerous emotions,\u201d Sikorski cited an ongoing court case in which he is suing a couple of Polish newspapers for failing to remove readers\u2019 anti-Semitic comments about his wife, Anne Applebaum.<\/span><\/p>\n Later <\/span><\/span>in Brussels<\/span><\/strong><\/a>, before an emergency meeting of counter-terrorism officials on how to combat attacks such as Norway\u2019s, the Polish foreign minister repeated his allegations during a press conference with his British counterpart, William Hague. Claiming that \u201ccertain political parties had expressed their approval of the terrorist,\u201d Sikorski went on to cite the internet as \u201ca potentially sinister tool for those bent on propagating agendas of hate.\u201d Referring again to the remarks made online about his wife, he described the net as a \u201ccesspool.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The Polish foreign minister\u2019s legal crusade against \u201cdangerous emotions\u201d had already received a <\/span>significant endorsement<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span>in a May 11 op-ed piece in The Economist<\/em> magazine from someone writing under the pseudonym \u201cE.L.,\u201d who described Sikorski as \u201can old friend of mine.\u201d Reproducing one such comment in Polish which was considered \u201csimply too unpleasant to translate,\u201d E.L. cited \u201canother rather milder one\u201d which \u201cmerely accuses Mr Sikorski of being the \u2018husband of an orthodox Jew, an enemy of Poland controlled by his father-in-law,\u2019 bent on the \u2018the destruction and destabilisation of Poland\u2019 and a \u2018hidden, ruthless traitor.\u2019\u201d Having disclosed that Sikorski was an \u201cold friend,\u201d E.L. somehow neglected to mention that the Polish foreign minister\u2019s wife accused of betraying Poland to foreign interests is a former editor of The Economist<\/em>. As for the op-ed writer\u2019s own identity, it may be more than a coincidence that the name of the holding company owned by Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and his wife, Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, which manages its investments in The Economist Group, owner of The Economist<\/em> magazine, is E.L. Rothschild.<\/span><\/p>\n Sikorski\u2019s allegedly influential father-in-law, Harvey Applebaum, is a partner in <\/span><\/span>Covington and Burling<\/span><\/strong><\/a>, an international law firm which advises multinational corporations on significant transactional, litigation, regulatory, and public policy matters. Among its more controversial clients are Chiquita, the first major U.S. corporation to be convicted of financing terrorism; and Halliburton and Xe Services (formerly Blackwater), two of the biggest beneficiaries of the \u201cwar on terror.\u201d Its current and former attorneys include such proficient pro-Israeli warmongers as John Bolton, senior fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (a <\/span>former employer<\/span><\/strong><\/a> of both Mr. and Mrs. Sikorski); Stuart Eizenstat, Special U.S. Envoy for Holocaust Issues during the Clinton administrations; and the aforementioned Michael Chertoff.<\/span><\/p>\n Having covered the demise of the Soviet Union as a Warsaw-based correspondent for The Economist<\/em> during the late 1980s, Anne Applebaum has long been one of the <\/strong><\/span>most prominent<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span><\/strong>anti-Russian<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span>advocates of economic and political \u201c<\/span>liberalisation<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u201d in the former Soviet Bloc <\/strong><\/span>and beyond<\/span><\/strong><\/a>. In a 2004 op-ed in The Washington Post<\/em>, she dismissed as \u201c<\/span>Freedom Haters<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u201d those who saw \u201cinsidious neocon plots\u201d behind the supposedly disinterested \u201cdemocracy promotion\u201d of George Soros and what she sarcastically referred to as \u201cthe evil triumvirate\u201d of the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and Freedom House, which she praised for \u201cdiligently training judges, helping election monitors and funding human rights groups around the world for decades, much of the time without getting much attention for it.\u201d Prefiguring her husband\u2019s current concerns, Applebaum bemoaned \u201cthe international echo chamber that the Internet has become\u201d in which such cynical ideas \u201chave traction.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In the wake of Norway\u2019s terror, Anne Applebaum\u2019s response was as swift as it was revealing. Within 48 hours, she had an <\/span>op-ed piece<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span>in The Washington Post<\/em> entitled \u201cNorway massacre and anti-government obsession.\u201d Sounding a similar note to Sikorski, she opined that Breivik\u2019s obsessions \u201csprang from an insane conviction that his own government was illegitimate.\u201d Applebaum, however, seemed more concerned about Americans who might think like Breivik. Coining the term \u201cillegitimists\u201d to describe Breivik\u2019s supposed American analogues, she cited Birthers, who claim that Barack Obama isn\u2019t American-born, as the contemporary right-wing manifestation. \u201cIt is not accidental,\u201d Applebaum observed, \u201cthat the one note of sympathy for Breivik in the U.S. media came from the birtherist and illegitimist Glenn Beck, who helpfully compared the young Norwegians murdered by Breivik to Hitler youth. Presumably\u00a0if they are Hitler youth, then they deserved to die?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It is hardly accidental either that Applebaum, who has lauded Daniel Pipes as \u201cone of the best\u201d American analysts of the Middle East, omitted to mention that the Birther movement is <\/span>spearheaded by Orly Taitz<\/span><\/strong><\/a>, a Soviet Jewish emigr\u00e9 and pro-Israel activist who had lived in Israel for years prior to her inciting Americans against their president; or that Glenn Beck \u2014 whose over-the-top expos\u00e9s of influential figures such as George Soros <\/span>conveniently serve to discredit<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span><\/strong>more measured critiques<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span>\u2014 is engaged in a mutual love affair with the <\/span>Israeli right-wing<\/span><\/strong><\/a>, whose <\/strong><\/span>backing has been crucial<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span>to his lucrative career of demagoguery.<\/span><\/p>\n After the Norway massacre, of course, it\u2019s going be even harder for genuine critics of government to publicly express their displeasure. From now on, anyone who questions the bona fides of such avid \u201cfreedom lovers\u201d as the Sikorskis and their <\/span>powerful transnational associates<\/span><\/strong><\/a> <\/span>risks being labelled a potential \u201cBreivik\u201d whose \u201cdangerous emotions\u201d need to be kept in check.<\/span><\/p>\n Maidhc \u00d3 Cathail is an <\/strong><\/span>investigative journalist<\/span><\/strong><\/a> and <\/span>Middle East analyst<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n