A Week of Diversity and Terror
By Daniel Greenfield
SultanKnish.Blogspot.com
On Saturday, Ziyed Ben Belgacem pays a visit to Orly
Airport in Paris. He grabs a female soldier from
behind and grapples for her rifle while holding a
pellet gun to her head. He warns the other soldiers
to drop their rifles and raise their hands.
He shouts, "I am here to die in the name of Allah
... There will be deaths."
He’s
mostly right. It’s the plural part he gets wrong.
The soldier goes low. Her friends shoot him dead.
But he’s not entirely wrong either. There will be
deaths. Even if they aren’t at Orly Airport.
French Police go on to investigate the motive of the
Tunisian Muslim settler. His father insists that he
wasn’t a terrorist. The media rushes to blame drugs
for his attack. It reports widely on the drugs in
his system rather than the Koran found on his body.
No one asks if he was on drugs or on Jihad.
Ziyed Ben Belgacem had been in and out of prison. He
was known to the authorities as a potential Jihadist
and had been investigated for “radicalization” back
in 2015. He had been suspected of burglaries last
year and had been paroled in the fall. The system
had failed all over again.
Prince William and Kate had been in Paris meeting
with victims of the Bataclan Islamic terror attack.
They returned to the UK, but media reports emphasize
that the latest attack wouldn’t change their plans.
But the UK was no refuge from Islamic terror. Not
even Westminster Palace was.
On Wednesday, Khalid Masood, a Muslim convert, rents
a car in a town near Birmingham from an Enterprise
rent-a-car shop sandwiched between a Staples and a
beauty salon offering walk-in eyebrow waxing. Over a
fifth of Birmingham is Muslim and by the time the
bloodshed was over and Masood was in the hospital,
police raided a flat over a restaurant advertising
“A Taste of Persia”.
Because diversity is our strength.
Masood’s victims were certainly diverse. The men and
women he ran over or pushed off Westminster Bridge
included Brits, Americans, Romanians, Greeks,
Chinese, South Koreans, Italians, Irish, Portuguese,
Polish and French. That is the new form that
diversity takes in the more multicultural cities.
The victims are diverse. The killers are Muslim.
Prime Minister May spoke of it as a place where
“people of all nationalities and cultures gather to
celebrate what it means to be free.” But not all
nationalities and cultures. Some come there to
celebrate what it means to kill infidels for the
greater glory of Allah. Just as some pray for London
and others pray for the flag of Islam to fly over
Westminster Palace.
Khalid Masood, like Ziyed Ben Belgacem, had been in
and out of prison. Like France’s Tunisian Muslim
terror settler, the UK’s Muslim terror convert had
been investigated for “violent extremism”.
Nothing came of it.
For thirty years, Masood went in and out of prison.
And one fine day he rented a car and began killing.
He was on the radar, but nothing was done. And now
some are dead and others are wounded. And the
politicians who could have prevented it give their
speeches and celebrate the magnificent diversity
that filled hospitals with the citizens of a dozen
nations.
"As I speak, millions will be boarding trains and
aeroplanes to travel to London, and to see for
themselves the greatest city on Earth,” Prime
Minister May declared, throwing in a pitch for
tourism. “It is in these actions - millions of acts
of normality - that we find the best response to
terrorism."
Come to London. Stroll and see the sights. You
probably won’t get Allahuakbared to death. And if
you do, the best response is a million acts of
normality, apathy and denial.
Mayor Sadiq Khan vowed that after a brief vigil, it
would be "business as usual".
He was right.
On Thursday, Mohammed, a Tunisian Muslim tries to
drive a car through a pedestrian mall on a major
shopping street in Antwerp. It was right around the
anniversary of the Brussels bombings in which
Moroccan Muslim settler terrorists had killed 32
people and wounded 300.
And a year later it was business as usual.
On Wednesday, King Philippe had dedicated a memorial
in Brussels titled, ‘Wounded But Still Standing in
Front of the Inconceivable’. "We have to stand up
and say 'no' to those acts that are not believable,
that are not bearable," its sculptor insisted.
But the seventh King of the Belgians had a somewhat
different message. “It’s the responsibility of each
and every one of us to make our society more humane,
and more just. Let’s learn to listen to each other
again, to respect each other’s weaknesses,” he said.
“Above all, let us dare to be tender.”
The Tunisian Muslim driving into a pedestrian mall
did not dare to be “tender”. He didn’t respect the
weaknesses of a society that tolerated him.
Belgian soldiers deployed for the anniversary
spotted him. The police gave chase. Pedestrians
scurried out of the way. The Muslim settler from
France was taken into custody for endangering the
public. It is hoped that the arrest was made in a
properly tender fashion.
Police found a riot gun, knives and fake passports
in his car.
The Antwerp police chief said that Mohammed had been
known to the police and had been involved in the
illegal possession of weapons in France. But
official reports blamed the drugs and alcohol in his
system. Like fellow Tunisian Ziyed Ben Belgacem, he
wasn’t a terrorist, just a drunk and a junkie.
The police urged everyone to keep calm and return to
normalcy. Everything was being done to ensure the
safety of Antwerp residents and tourists.
Business as usual.
Meanwhile the Antwerp Town Hall had gone from flying
British colors in solidarity with the victims of the
London attack to worrying over an attack at home.
Just as William and Kate had come from terror in
France to terror at home.
British authorities claimed that they foiled a dozen
terror attacks last year. There are arrests for
terror plots in France and Germany. Every week there
is either a terror plot or a memorial for the last
terror attack before we are told to go on with our
million acts of normalcy.
Some days the terrorists screw up. They pick what
they think is an easy target, but she refuses to let
go of the rifle. Or they overestimate how much
alcohol and cocaine they need to nerve themselves up
to kill and die. Other times they get it right. Or
right enough. And the news flashes around the world.
Somewhere along the way it wasn’t life that became
normal, but terror. And the insistence on normalcy
just normalizes the terror. A week with three terror
attacks across Europe is no longer extraordinary. We
have come to expect that there will be men trying to
stab and run us over from Paris to Antwerp to
London. And we have come to expect another Islamic
terror plot targeting Kansas City, Miami, Columbia,
New York, San Bernardino, Boston, Tampa, Dallas,
Rochester, Springfield and any city.
We don’t know when or where the next attack will
come. But we know whom it will come from.
The question is what are we going to do about it? We
can pretend to be baffled the next time some Jihadi
with a rap sheet taller than the London Eye and
longer than London Bridge goes on a killing spree.
We can nod our heads while the politicians throw a
vigil and encourage a million acts of apathy.
Or we can end the flow of future terrorists and
deport the existing ones.
Because they can’t run us over if we don’t let them
in. They can’t bomb us if we don’t let them stay.
We can listen to King Philippe and “dare to be
tender”. Decades of such tenderness are what led us
here. Or we can dare to make the hard choices that
will make us and our children safe for generations.
Saturday. Wednesday. Thursday. How many more days
will it take?