MURDER AT THE JEWISH MUSEUM IN BRUSSELS.

Emanuel and Mira Riva, a couple from Tel Aviv, have orphaned two teenage daughters of 15 and 17 years after being shot at the Jewish Museum in Brussels on 24 May. An official spokesman and a volunteer at the museum have also been killed in this attack. Although the media has not given too much coverage to the event, perhaps due to its coincidence with the European elections, the killings raise enough questions to think very seriously about them. Are they the symptom of a transnational underlying problem that we refuse to see or simply the consequence of a political and security issue which should only be read internally in Israel? Or, what is the same was one or more of the murdered specific and targeted objectives or only the unfortunate victims at the wrong place and time? Did the murderer choose on purpose to commit these murders in such an emblematic place as the Jewish Museum in Brussels, not only the Belgian capital but also the European Union, on the day on which the new parliament was being elected or did it happened just because the target was there? It is clear that there are many possible theories about the reason or reasons for the crime.

Till now, the official version of the Belgian authorities is that it was a terrorist act. The official caution is quite understandable since discretion is essential to carry out an effective criminal investigation. This does not preclude the paucity of information that encourages further speculation.

Some sources claim that the two members of the Israeli marriage worked several years for a Jewish government agency, an "euphemistic" way of referring to the intelligence services which some name: Nativ, the institution responsible for facilitating the immigration of Russian Jews to Israel. This point certainly complicates the spectrum of investigations and hypotheses that can be developed.

As expected the Israeli authorities have qualified this sad event as an anti-Semitic act. The ideological evolution that is being experienced in Europe in recent years , or perhaps the clearer manifestation of a latent feeling in the minds of many, which has been kept secret by shame, namely the Nazi Holocaust, support this theory . The exponential increase of votes given to xenophobic parties in European elections confirms this. The fact that, for example, the National Front party in France, of Marine Le Pen, has obtained a third of the votes cast in the country involves more than a note of attention of the electorate drift, which obviously, has endorsed its economic program in a time of crisis like the present, perhaps without paying much attention to their xenophobia that should be followed with extreme care.

Nor can the Islamist terrorism factor be minimize. The long Arab - Israeli conflict, the cause par excellence of the most radical and fanatical terrorists, despite having lost relevance in the headlines after the uprisings of 2011, the Libyan civil war, the Syrian civil war, the sectarian war in Iraq and the instability in Tunisia and Egypt, is still valid and therefore could be behind any attack on the Jews in the world. The rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas, or what is the same, between those who run the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza shortly after yet another failure of the Arab - Israeli negotiations, is a manoeuvre to regain some prominence within the Arab political sphere and also support the authorship of the attacks on Jews outside the Holy Land. This, not to mention the different deranged jihadists and al Qaeda- related groups for which shedding the blood of others is its "leitmotiv".

However, it should not be ruled out as a factor, the simplistic blame, in tough times like the present, borne by the Jewish lobby. The Jewish leadership on the global financial and economic sector has arisen much envy and resentment and given a perfect excuse to carry out any attack on a community that has for centuries, if not millennia, been living within our societies. To stigmatize a social group because of its religion, ethnicity, race or skin colour is the simplistic appeal of those who can not or will not assume their guilt and incompetence. It is a selective deafness resource that works in times like these.

Certainly the alertness and ruthlessness of actions of the security forces and the Israeli state have earned them respect and hatred in equal measure, but in this as in most, the key question is too difficult if not impossible to answer as, which came first the chicken or the egg? Is the ancient animosity against Jews, due to the abuse inflicted on Jesus according to the biblical texts, the inhuman persecution they have suffered at the hands of all societies for millennia and the Nazi genocide the cause of the fierce political self-defense and tenacious Jewish resistance and of the survival in the harshest conditions which causes so much aggressions?

In any case, what really should concern us is how the populist speeches have captured the discontent of the European population and channelled its frustration towards racism, xenophobia  and hatred. A worrying movement which is spreading every day as the commemoration of the First World War gets closer.