Yisrael Beytenu chairman MK Avigdor Liberman on Monday denounced Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, after she appeared to link ISIS's attacks on Paris with "Palestinian frustration" with Israel.
The attempt by the Foreign Minister of Sweden, Margot Wallstrom, to connect between the ISIS attack in Paris and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a cynical, unacceptable and hypocritical act reminiscent of the behavior of Sweden during World War II when it continued to trade with Nazi Germany and provided it with iron and steel, despite knowing that they were meant to strengthen the Wehrmacht in the war against the Allies and with the full knowledge that the crematoriums in Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Mauthausen and other camps were continuing to work at full speed,” Liberman wrote on Facebook.
“The relationship between Sweden of then and the Sweden of today is much bigger that the connection the Foreign Minister of Sweden tried to make,” he added.
Wallstrom provoked a firestorm of criticism Monday, when she appeared to blame the attacks on "Palestinian frustration" with Israel, and Foreign Ministry Director General Dr. Dore Gold later summoned Swedish ambassador Carl Magnus-Nesser to give him a reprimand following the comments.
"To counteract the radicalization we must go back to the situation such as the one in the Middle East of which not the least the Palestinians see that there is no future: we must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence,” she stated in a Swedish-language TV interview.
In an official statement the Israeli foreign ministry reacted by branding her comments "impudent."
Liberman is widely remembered for his back and forth with Wallstrom a year ago when he was Israel’s Foreign Minister. Liberman, in denouncing Sweden’s decision to recognize the Palestinian Authority (PA) as "the State of Palestine," said that “relations in the Middle East are a lot more complex than the self-assembly furniture of IKEA”.
Wallstrom later replied and said she would be “happy” to send Liberman some IKEA furniture “and he will also see that what you need to put that together is, first of all, a partner.”