The choices for the West are clear: win or die.
March 28, 2016
Tuesday’s (March 22, 2016) Islamic State (IS) terrorist attack in Brussels airport and metro station, which killed at least 31 people and injured hundreds, is a wake-up call for Belgium and Europe. The 28-states that make up the European Union (EU) must understand that they are at war. It might not be their choosing, but for IS and Al-Qaeda, infidel-Europe is the enemy, and its promiscuous civilization and way of life must be destroyed.
Following the Paris attack last November, it appeared for a while that French President Hollande got the message that something in Europe has changed. But, the France that released Abu-Daoud in 1977, (the Palestinian Black September terrorist group operations leader, who planned the 1972 attack on the Israeli Olympic team in Munich, in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed), to appease and buy off Palestinian terrorism, is still at it. And, it has done little to combat Islamic terror in France itself.
Political correctness (PC) throughout Europe has been of greater value to the administrators and elites of the EU than the protection of its citizenry. PC has motivated Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel to allow over a million refugees from the Middle East, most of them Muslims from Syria and Iraq, to enter Germany, despite the risk of IS killers infiltrating the ranks of refugees. Sweden also has followed Germany in this suicide pact.
The terror attacks on European soil will not be prevented by merely increasing the number of security forces in major gathering places throughout Europe. European legislators and individual states must enact legislation that would allow police and security forces entry into Majority Muslim neighborhoods, where the likely suspects can find shelter, and thus prevent the next attack in a European city.
On a visit to Stockholm a few years ago, this reporter was stunned by the revelation intimated to him by Kurdish Muslim friends that the Swedish police dare not enter Muslim neighborhoods. This reality prevails throughout the EU states.
It takes time to wake up to the reality of terror in your neighborhood, your city, or your country, and alertness does not come easy, especially when having to contend with self-denial. Self-denial is to see reality in front of you, and deliberately misinterpreted its meaning.
U.S. President Barack Obama set the example for European self-denial when he stated
“We are not fighting Islamic terror but violent extremism.” Among the leftist-elites of Europe, self-denial is common, and furthermore, the illusion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict feeds Islamic terror is another way of “burying ones head in the sand.” The phenomenon of IS and Al-Qaeda have nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and everything to do with the Sunni-Shia conflict, which is more than a millennium old. Today, this conflict is exemplified by the violent competition through proxies between Shia-Iran and Sunni-Saudi Arabia for dominance in the Islamic world, and especially in the Middle East.
Europe has absorbed millions of Muslims from the Middle East and the Maghreb (North Africa) in recent decades. The failure of the European states to integrate them, by not insisting on their conforming to European culture, created alienation. Generous welfare payments, and lack of jobs, especially for Muslim youth, fostered resentment and violence. The PC elites in Europe valued multi-culturalism over integration, and the people of Europe are paying the price today.
Europe is at war with the Islamist-jihadists, but most of the leaders are failing to see it. It is a war that will last a long time, and it requires full mobilization of national and EU resources to combat Islamism at home and at its source in the Middle East. Reacting to the Brussels terror attack, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared “We are at war. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war.” French President Francois Hollande added, “Terrorists struck Brussels, but it was Europe that was targeted, and it is all the world which is concerned by this.” But, much like President Obama, Hollande refrained from calling the terrorists by their name: Islamic terrorists. The rhetoric hitherto has not been translated into aggressive action on French soil.
It also behooves the Europeans to recognize Israel’s role as the front-line combatant against radical Islamic terrorism. Appeasement of the Palestinians won’t help Europe’s fight against the same terror Israel is struggling with. Putting labels on Israeli products from Judea and Samaria will not stop Islamic terror. Addressing the AIPAC delegates on Tuesday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that, “The terrorists who struck in Brussels, like those who attacked in Paris, San Bernardino, Istanbul, the Ivory Coast and in daily attacks in Israel, have no “resolvable grievances.” He added, “It’s not as if we could offer them Brussels, or Istanbul or California, or even the West Bank. That won’t satisfy their grievances. Because what they seek is our utter destruction and their total domination.”
It is not sufficient for Europeans to express solidarity with France and Belgium following a terror attack. European authorities must recognize that they have to deal with enemies within. Elements within the Muslim community who speak their language and carry their passports, and who are able to move freely throughout the continent without control. Some have and will travel to Syria to join IS and later return to do IS’s bidding in their European countries.
It would be unfair, even unjust, to malign all Muslim residents/citizens of Europe, many have integrated into their European societies, many more are secular who seek a better life, and the freedom to choose their way of life. However, the mosques that incite hatred of the “other,” violence, and militate against integration, must be shutdown or forcefully monitored. Without stringent new laws that would enable the security services to freely enter and monitor potential terrorist cells in the huge Muslim majority suburbs (banlieues) around cities like Paris and Brussels, terrorist attacks will reoccur. Currently, local police forces do not enter these large Muslim suburbs, and as a result, security forces lack the intelligence that might be able to prevent IS or al-Qaeda inspired attacks.
In France, it is illegal to profile a person who might be a potential terrorist. To protect the citizenry, it is time to create such a profile. Identifying potential terrorists and monitoring them through the internet and telephone conversations is a necessity, albeit, it may not be politically-correct.
The prime responsibility of governments is to insure the safety of their citizenry, and not necessarily the commercial interests of a few, or the ideology of some elitists. Bringing into the EU millions of Middle Eastern refugees or economic migrants is not only a demographic disaster, it is a security catastrophe. In the war IS has declared on the West now being waged in Europe, PC will not do. European resolve to dedicate all its resources to win the war on terror, by attacking and defeating IS and other Islamic jihadists in the battlefield, is necessary. Equally important is expressing pride and conviction in the Judeo-Christian values and way of life, and the rejection of multiculturalism, which is responsible for much of the European ills.
Europe will not prevail by appeasement of its Islamic radicals at home, or by criticizing Israel’s war on terror. As PM Netanyahu pointed out, the Islamic radical terrorists have “no resolvable grievances,” only the determination to destroy western civilization and replace it with an Islamic Caliphate. The choices for the West are clear - win or die.
