The terrorist threats leading Taylor Swift to cancel her concerts in Vienna is part of a spike in Islamic terrorism since Hamas attacked Israel last year, Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said in a press conference on Thursday.

Austrian authorities arrested two suspects on Wednesday for planning an attack on one of the three concerts set to be held in the Ernst Happel Stadium on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The concerts’ organizer, Barracuda Music, announced soon after: “With confirmation from government officials of a planned terrorist attack at Ernst Happel Stadium, we have no choice but to cancel the three scheduled shows for everyone’s safety.” 

In a press conference the following day, Karner and the heads of Austria’s state police and domestic intelligence said that one suspect was a 19-year-old who swore allegiance to ISIS’ new leader and confessed to planning the attack on a Taylor Swift concert. He was reportedly the son of ethnic Albanian immigrants from Macedonia. He quit his job last month, saying he was “planning something big.” Police found bomb-making chemicals, explosives and machetes in his home.

The second suspect was a 17-year-old who worked at the concert site. A third person was detained for questioning, and police suspect that there were others involved.

“The situation was serious; the situation continues to be serious,” Karner said. “The threat of Islamic terrorism in Europe is on the rise after the attack by Hamas in Israel. Austria is no exception.”

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer posted on X that “we live in a time in which violent means are being used to attack our Western way of life. Islamist terrorism threatens security and freedom in many Western countries. This is precisely why we will not give up our values such as freedom and democracy, but will defend them even more vehemently.” 

Though Karner tied a rise in Islamist terrorist threats to Europe with the war in Gaza, Austrian lawmaker Martin Engelberg told Jewish Insider that “this has already been going on for several years.”

Engelberg pointed to the recent riots in the U.K. and Geert Wilders’ success in the elections in the Netherlands, as well as the Marine Le Pen-led National Rally’s near-win in France, as reactions to that threat.

Bill Roggio, a Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow, told JI that the attack is likely not directly related to the war in Gaza, except that “with the war in Israel, the war in Ukraine, concern about the rising threat of China, Western countries’ focus is split…All of these various threats are diverting focus and understandably so from dealing with these Islamic terror threats.”

At the same time, he noted that, like Austria’s interior minister, FBI Director Christopher Wray said in June that foreign terrorist threats rose precipitously since Oct. 7. 

One radicalizing factor has been the anti-Israel demonstrations in major cities and campuses across the Western world, which Roggio said that Al-Qaida has used in its messaging.

“There are places where, if you’re a Muslim who has a propensity for wanting to strike back at the West or Israel, you could turn to these groups in Western countries and use them to launch attacks,” Roggio said. “Israel’s war with Hamas, Hezbollah and the others can be an impetus for potential jihadists to take action, to get revenge and strike back.” 

Vienna has had fewer terrorist attacks than other major European cities, Engelberg noted, and “after Oct. 7 we really did not see a lot of demonstrations, and if there were any, they were very small. We were actually very happy not to see pictures like you saw in London, Paris and Germany. We feel Austria was rather on the good side since Oct. 7.”

Though Engelberg did not think the threat to the Taylor Swift concerts was related to the war in Gaza, he emphasized that “Israel is on the forefront of this fight against Islamist terrorists and extremists, and at the end, it’s a fight [in which] the whole Western World is under attack.”

Swift did not comment or post on social media about the terrorism threat, but in an essay for Elle in 2019, the singer said that after the 2017 bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, terrorism and gun violence were her biggest fears.

“I didn’t know how we were going to keep 3 million fans safe over seven months. There was a tremendous amount of planning, expense, and effort put into keeping my fans safe. My fear of violence has continued into my personal life,” she said.

At the same time, Swift added: “Every day I try to remind myself of the good in the world, the love I’ve witnessed and the faith I have in humanity. We have to live bravely in order to truly feel alive, and that means not being ruled by our greatest fears.”

One Jewish Taylor Swift fan, Ariella Kimmel, flew to Vienna for the concert and posted on X: “On Monday I came to Vienna where my grandmother is from to see Taylor Swift.

I spent the day yesterday walking everywhere I could connected to her before she fled the Nazis, only to today have the new Nazis target our way of life.”