The Dutch will go to the polls for a general election later this year – November to be precise - and one party in particular is projected to do well, namely the Socialist Party, a more radical and doctrinaire Labour Party offshoot. Its leader, Jan Marijnissen, made headlines last week by comparing jihadist terrorism to the Dutch resistance during World War II:

" Terrorism is a recurring thing throughout history and often has the intention to make life for an occupying power as difficult as possible. The Dutch have, during the Second World War here blown up city halls in order to disrupt Nazi Germany’s machine of destruction – most city halls kept registries with names of Jewish citizens. In the Middle East, things are not that different. Islamic fundamentalism, including its terrorist subsidiary, is a reaction to the occupation of Palestine by Israel, the American presence in the Middle East and the support of undemocratic regimes in the Middle East by the west "

Not only a false and to some highly insulting analogy, Marijnissen also fails to note that radical Islam is driven by religion and not by politics, a point that is not often understood in Europe's secular circles. As we have seen over the past few weeks, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is merely a useful conduit to expand the radical Islamic franchise as is so eloquently explained by Amir Taheri in the Times today:

The problem is that since the Iranian regime is Shi’ite it would not be easy to sell it to most Arabs, who are Sunni. To overcome that hurdle, it is necessary to persuade the Arabs that only Iran is sincere in its desire and capacity to wipe Israel off the map. Once that claim is sold to the Arabs, so Ahmadinejad hopes, they would rally behind his vision of the Middle East instead of the “American vision”.

The jury is out on whether the Palestinians would really enjoy life under Ahmadinejad’s Shi’ite umbrella, but that’s a topic for a very different discussion.

In the meantime Marijnissen has hurried to tone down his original comment on his own weblog as Dutch pollsters predict that he will pick up some 10% of the vote if an election were held today. If he does indeed manage that in November, the Socialist Party may become a player in parliament, possibly holding the balance of power. I will leave it to your imagination as to how that would affect the Dutch, and to some extent the European, debate over waging war on terror.