01.16.2015
Many European countries decided they would have nothing to do with the war on terror. Of course, they made the argument for not intervening in the Middle East on moral and legal grounds, but no doubt they also wagered that they would be safer at home if they kept out of it and left the unpleasant work to others. Yet as the events of recent weeks have demonstrated, none of this has kept Europeans any safer, and now Europe is rapidly turning into a flashpoint in radical Islam’s war with the West.
Following last week’s four terror incidents in France (the shooting at the Charlie Hebdo offices, the shooting of a female police officer in Paris, the hostage taking at the printing works, and the attack on the kosher supermarket), there have now been a series of terror raids across Europe. Most dramatic were the events in the small Belgian town of Verviers. There the police intervened to prevent an imminent attack—what some have called a “second Paris”—and a gun battle ensued in which two of the terror suspects were killed and a third was injured and arrested.
Meanwhile in Germany a whole series of anti-terror raids took place. Already on Saturday night there had been the firebombing of the Hamburger Morgenpost, when once again Islamist extremists moved to shut down the free press. Now the German authorities have arrested several with alleged links to ISIS, with 250 police being involved in raids on eleven residences in Berlin, and a further unrelated raid and arrest of a man linked to ISIS in Wolfsburg, west of Berlin. Back in France, twelve people were detained by police for their association with Amedy Coulibaly, the kosher supermarket attacker. Additionally, French police also closed the Gare de l’Est station in Paris on account of a bomb scare there.
There can be little doubt that the terror war has come to Europe, in spite of—and perhaps even because of—Europe’s refusal to play a significant role in the war against radical Islam. For while most European countries have attempted to avoid getting involved in the wars of the Middle East, the turmoil currently rocking the Islamic world has come to the streets of Europe nonetheless. As Simon Gordon remarks in an important new piece for Mosaic, “rather than the West exporting liberal democracy to the Middle East, as many had fantasized during the late lamented ‘Arab Spring,’ it is the Middle East that is exporting Islamism to the free world.”
As Islamism has increasingly gained a foothold in Europe, so the future of Europe’s Jews has become increasingly imperiled. France may have resisted deploying troops to Iraq, but now in a ridiculous and unsustainable move it has been forced to put boots on the ground in Jewish schools. And following last night’s incident in Belgium, Jewish schools across Brussels and Antwerp have been closed for the time being, as have a synagogue and a Jewish school in Amsterdam. In Sweden, Jewish communal leaders are reporting that the already high threat to Jews there has now doubled in the wake of Paris; apparently these attacks have galvanized radicals, rather than convincing them of the horror that their extremism unleashes. It is also noteworthy that in Britain a reportreleased this week by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism found that 45 percent of Jews there believe they and their families are at risk from Islamists.
Just like Nazism and Communism before it, the nihilistic and anti-Western forces of radical Islam know that ending the Jews must be a core pillar of their efforts to turn the world upside-down. Understanding where Jews fit into the Islamist worldview is an essential part to understanding their war with the West and current events in Europe. Yet maddeningly, while Jews are being murdered in Europe, the left-liberal media is primarily concerned with handwringing over a possible anti-Muslim backlash. A backlash which apparently, and thankfully, never seems to come. Yet somehow Europe’s Muslims have gained the status of victims in waiting. So while extremists from their community terrorize society and specifically target the Jews, publications such as the New York Times have prioritized coverage of fears among European Muslims, as Liel Leibovitz has exposed so brilliantly.
Once again in Europe, Western democracy is under attack. Indeed, one cannot help but wonder if that continent hasn’t been identified by Islamists as a soft target, as the West’s weakest link. Europe’s security services are now springing into belated action, but they have let radical Islam fester in their cities for so long that they have a lot of catching up to do. And more than anything, it is not at all clear that Europeans and their politicians even fully recognize the battlefield that they are on. Yes, freedom and democracy are valued by many in Europe. But the values of wealth redistribution, multicultural tolerance, and even pacifistic dialogue are still so strong in Europe that it remains unclear whether these societies can even muster the willpower to have this fight.
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