Blame Israel

The Washington Post reports:

Bangladesh has been in the grips of a hideous spate of assassinations and attacks on secularist intellectuals, academics and non-Muslims and others in the crosshairs of Islamist militants. The latest killing took place on Sunday, when the wife of an anti-terrorism police officer was brutally stabbed to death and shot by unidentified assailants in the port city of Chittagong.

On the same day, a Christian grocer was butchered in a village in the north of the country–a media wing linked to the Islamic State took credit, though it’s still unclear what actual tactical abilities the extremist organization based in Syria and Iraq has in South Asia.

Yes Islamic militants are killing people just because they don’t believe in Islam and write of the values of secularism.

But they are of course not to blame. Who is?

One senior official, though, suggested the root of the problem lay far away.

“Bangladesh has become the target of an international conspiracy. And a foreign intelligence agency has joined the conspiracy,” Asaduzzaman Khan, the country’s home minister, said on Monday.

He went on and referenced an earlier meeting between an opposition parliamentarian and an Israeli government adviser in neighboring India.

The gesture to link any domestic woe to a foreign plot, especially one with the imprint of American or Israeli meddling, is a common trope in South Asian politics. An Israeli government spokesman deemed Khan’s remarks “utter drivel” when they were put to him by the BBC.

Blame Israel!