'Focus on cartoons as explanation of massacre is refuge of people refusing to open their eyes'
Photo: EPA
Islam vs. West: An ongoing clash of civilizations
Op-ed: Journalists murdered in Paris were not victims of a battle over freedom of press; they were victims of a war between radical Islam's world view and Western liberalism's world view.
It would be a big mistake to see the terror attack in Paris
as an attack on the freedom of the press. Such a statement puts the massacre in the French capital in line with attacks against journalists by members of a Colombian drug cartel or the Chechen mafia.
This is a clash of civilizations, not a gang's intimidation campaign.
That's not the case. The goal of the attack on the office of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was not to frighten newspaper editors so that they would not publish one cartoon or another. The goal was to show and prove who controls the streets and consciousness of the French Republic: The Western liberalism or the fanatical Islam.
Europe's Dilemma
Ben-Dror Yemini
Op-ed: Millions of Muslims have nothing to do with terror but hundreds of thousands support jihad, suicide bombings and even the Islamic State. So what can Europe do about it?
Many in Europe are finding it difficult to accept this perspective, let alone agree with it. As far as they are concerned, the Muslim terror in the continent has no supreme goal apart from just sowing terror.
And it's not so complicated to buy those who have no ideological urges with economic means: We'll renovate a few housing blocks, fix a few pavements, open a few kindergartens – and voila! There goes terror, along with the threat to the freedom of the press. How convenient.
Scene of attack against Charlie Hebdo newspaper. 'Terror must be countered with a clear alternative: The ethical liberal system, which is prepared to fight for its future with all its might' (Photo: AFP)
It hasn't gone, and it won't go. In order to defeat the Islamic terror in Europe, it's not enough to invest in the security and intelligence services and train police officers to so that they will at least know how to shoot. It must be countered with a clear alternative: The ethical liberal system, which is prepared to fight for its future with all its might, not to give up and not to capitulate.
It only sounds simple. The Western popular culture is filled today with half truths, blurred facts and a wrong use of language which is politically correct and objectively false.
The complete exclusion of the Muslim-liberal conflict from the popular discourse in Europe is leading, naturally, to its powerful appearance in other places and in different forms.
When the elite shamelessly lies to the citizens, saying that "there is no problem of Islam here," it is singlehandedly brining about the outburst and reinforcement of the racist, demagogic, neo-fascist moments, which put democracy in danger.
The great Winston Churchill recruited the entire British nation to a war of "blood, toil, tears and sweat" against the Nazis, turning a conflict between powers over Europe's border into an uncompromising battle over the continent's character, values and future.
The current focus on certain cartoons published by the targeted newspaper, as if they can explain the massacre, is the refuge of people who are refusing to open their eyes. They believe that they are better off not seeing reality, in the sense of "if I don't see the evil, perhaps it will go away on its own." Perhaps, but the chance of that happening is close to zero.
The journalists who were murdered in Paris on Wednesday were therefore not victims of a battle over the freedom of the press. They were victims of a war between the world view of the radical Islam and the world view of Western humanism, a war which will go on and increase and claim victims until it is won by one side.
