Alan Dershowitz: France ‘Reaped What It Sowed’ in Paris Attack

Newsmax

While France is reeling from the terrorist massacre of 12 people at the Paris offices of a satirical magazine, the country is also “one of the worst … when it comes to rewarding terrorism,” lawyer and author Alan Dershowitz told “MidPoint” host Ed Berliner on Newsmax TV Wednesday.

“They play with everybody. They reward every terrorist,” Dershowitz said of the French.

“They’ve never been part of the international campaign against terrorism. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

“I hate to pile on when they’re suffering like this, but you have to understand how bad France has been historically in the war against terrorism,” he said.

France has endured a string of small-scale attacks since joining the military campaign against the Islamic State. But the violence level surged on Wednesday, when gunmen stormed the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo shortly after it tweeted a cartoon of Islamic State (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The magazine, which was firebombed in 2011, has mocked radical Islamists in the past, but has also belittled some critics of Muslim religion and culture as Islamophobes and fearmongers.

Dershowitz said that the attack should come as no surprise, given Europe’s history of tolerating Islamic terrorism.

“We have tolerated extreme Islamic terrorism from the very beginning,” he said, describing the Palestinian state as “born in terrorism,” with the assent of governments including France and Germany.

“When the Israeli athletes were murdered in Munich [in 1972], most European countries freed them when they came to their country,” said Dershowitz. “Germany let them go, and most European countries have freed terrorists. It shouldn’t surprise anybody. In Europe, they’ve never fought terror.”

It is not clear what kind of attack or carnage it will take for Europe to say, in effect, this time is different, and commit fully to fighting violent Islamic extremism, said Dershowitz.

“We’ve said that every time there’s been a terrorist attack and it just doesn’t happen,” he said.

Dershowitz also said that radical Islam enjoys support from “millions of people” in the Muslim world “who support terrorism, who will be applauding what happened today.”

“Not tens, hundreds or thousands,” he said, “but millions will be supporting what happened today. It’s very, very big problem. The reason it has so many supporters is because it works. Terrorism works. It achieves the goals and results. Palestinians would not be getting a state today if it wasn’t for their terrorists.”