Last week, EU officials made public a 2015 report, drafted and endorsed by most member states, on the ongoing terror attacks in Israel. To Evelyn Gordon, the document demonstrates why France was so unprepared for terrorism on its own soil:

[The report concluded that] the attacks were due to “the Israeli occupation . . . and a long-standing policy of political, economic, and social marginalization of Palestinians in Jerusalem,” to “deep frustration among Palestinians over the effects of the occupation, and a lack of hope that a negotiated solution can bring it to an end.” This, the report asserted, was “the heart of the matter”; factors like rampant Palestinian incitement and widespread Islamist sentiment, if they were mentioned at all, were evidently dismissed as unimportant.

The report’s first implication is obvious: if Palestinian attacks stem primarily from “the occupation,” there’s no reason to think anything similar could happen in Europe, which isn’t occupying anyone. Consequently, there’s also no need to learn from Israel’s methods of dealing with such attacks. . . .

[H]ad EU diplomats understood the major role played by Palestinian incitement—for instance, the endless Internet memes urging Palestinians to stab, run over, and otherwise kill Jews, complete with detailed instructions on how to do so—they might have realized that similar propaganda put out by Islamic State, urging people to use similar techniques against Westerners, could have a similar effect.