The Paris attacks have sparked the resurgence of a pro-Israel talking point that was an important part of the discourse after 9/11: the west’s war with terrorism is just an extension of Israel’s war. It appears that these ideologues would gladly trade a world war for the sake of Israeli security.

Senator Chuck Schumer made the equation in the crudest fashion last night in an address to a Jewish education foundation in New York in which he asserted that the west had abandoned Israel during its fight against terrorism, and so the terrorism had metastasized to the west. Jacob Kornbluh reported for Jewish Insider, quoting Schumer:

“Israel and the Jewish people have been subject to the same type of terrorism since the 70s. And for so long, when it just happened to Israel, the world condoned it. They [may have not] condoned it, but maybe didn’t do much about it, and Israel had to fight terrorism on her own. And, because the world did not rise up, this terrorism, like a cancer, has spread throughout the world.” “Had the world come down when the terrorists shot the Israeli athletes at the Olympics (in Munich 1972), or hijacked El AL planes, and come down on them hard, we wouldn’t have had what happened in Paris, today.”

It’s hard to believe that someone so smart could be so thoughtless, but Schumer is up for reelection and this must be seen as pandering. Though he is a devoted Zionist who often says that his name means Guardian in Hebrew and he is the guardian of Israel. And it is impossible for such fervent advocates to see any political basis in the terrorism, let alone perceive any real source of resentment in Israel’s actions.

Israeli PM Netanyahu made similar comments in Israel today, per Allison Deger:

“The time has come for the world to wake up and unite in order to defeat terrorism. The time has come for countries to condemn terrorism against us to the same degree that they condemn terrorism everywhere else in the world,” Netanyahu said at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.

Schumer’s declaration makes him a full-on neoconservative; and the neoconservatives gathered by William Kristol and Robert Kagan and Norman Podhoretz as the Project for a New American Century tried to conflate Israel’s interests and American ones repeatedly after 9/11. The terrorists hate Israel because of Israeli freedom: “an island of liberal, democratic principles — American principles — in a sea of tyranny, intolerance, and hatred.” Podhoretz said it was World War 3, or 4 (it’s hard to keep count with these guys).

In this letter to George W. Bush immediately after the 2001 attacks , PNAC said that Israel’s war against Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorism was part of our war with Al Qaeda, and Iraq too.