Europe has been gleefully accepting scores of Islamic refugees, in numbers much higher than the United States. And a constant defense of this has been to compare these refugees to Jews trying to escape the Nazis, with liberals saying that these are just innocent people trying to get away from homicidal maniacs intent on killing them. That analogy can at least sort of, kind of make sense. But what Jan Jambon, the Belgian interior minister, just came up with is so offensive and awful that it has people all over the world angry. According to Jambon, Muslim terrorists who hid in Brussels before launching their terrorist attack are just like Jews who hid in Brussels when it was occupied by the Nazis.

Jan Jambon, the Belgian interior minister, aroused a storm of controversy in the country Wednesday when, in a television interview, he compared the Muslim terrorists who hid in Brussels for months to “the Jews who hid here during the Nazi occupation,” later clarifying that his comments pertained to “the mechanism of hiding.”

Jambon, a member of the right-wing Flemish party N-VA (New Flemish Alliance), spoke on a news program of the Flemish VTM channel in Antwerp. At first his words attracted no attention, but when Antwerp City Council member Claude Marinower learned of them, he posted them on social networks and the reactions began.

Marinower, a former MP, told the Jewish news website Regards: “At first when they told me about it I didn’t believe it was possible. I asked to watch the video – and realized that Jambon really did make this dubious comparison… It’s inconceivable, it’s shocking for all those who hid Jews during the occupation while endangering their lives. How can you compare the jihadist criminals who are hiding today with the innocent Jews who wanted to flee from the Nazi manhunt?”

In an initial response Wednesday, the interior minister’s spokesperson said, “Jambon had no intention of offending the Belgian Jews, on the contrary. He isn’t comparing Jews and terrorists, he was only referring to a factual element of Belgian history: that providing a refuge, hiding people, was something positive, but what is happening today in Brussels is not. Jambon’s statement refers only to the technical aspect of finding the refuge.”

Right, because terrorists hiding so they can plan homicidal plots are exactly the same as Jews hiding from genocidal maniacs intent on completely eradicating them. That in and of itself is insane enough to say, but considering that Islamic terrorists quite often target Jews for their attacks, it becomes flat-out reprehensible.

But then, Europe is known for its thriving anti-Semitism. So perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised to hear a European politician comparing Jews that were victims of the Nazis to homicidal Islamic terrorists.