Europe is under siege

I visited the Brussels Jewish Museum on Tuesday and got a glimpse of Europe’s future: Entering the museum is a bit like breaking into a prison. Barricades and unfriendly police outside; suspicious looks and CCTV surveillance; wanding and bag checks. All necessary, and, to be sure, Europe’s Jews, and its Jewish institutions, have been living in a semi-besieged manner for some time. But these measures will spread, by necessity.

The Brussels attack presaged the Charlie Hebdo attack in certain ways: They were both executed by trained gunmen (though today’s attackers seemed more skilled, in the al Qaeda manner, than what we’ve seen so far from ISIS-inspired jihadists) who chose as their targets institutions that could not have even semi-plausibly sparked rage in Muslims who claim to be angered solely by U.S. drone policy, or by the participation of European governments in the war in Afghanistan. In other words, both attacks seem to have been motivated more by a hatred of deeply held Western beliefs, rather than by specific actions of Western governments…

The French president, Francois Hollande, said earlier today that, “No barbaric act will ever extinguish freedom of the press.” This statement is, as Claire Berlinski has pointed out, self-falsifying. This barbaric act, she notes, literally extinguished the press. The most recent iteration of the Islamist terror campaign in Europe has focused on Jews and cartoonists, but it will not end with Jews and cartoonists, unless it is comprehensively defeated.