By Jonathan Tobin, Jan. 6, 2016
For the full article go to: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0116/tobin010616.php3
This week is the anniversary of the attack on the
offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo as well as of
the assault on a Parisian kosher market by members of the same group of
Islamist terrorists. The publication is marking the occasion by issuing a
special edition that is reportedly full of its trademark
profanity and blasphemy mocking religion in general, and the faith of those who
slaughtered 11 of the magazine's staffers on January 7, 2015, in particular.
But one doesn't have to agree with everything in the 32-page cartoon-filled polemic
to accept that two assertions it makes are absolutely true. One is that, as its
cover states, "the assassin is still out there." The other is that,
as its editor writes, the world is
still waiting for an explanation from its leaders as to why a run-of-the-mill
Jewish target - the Hyper Cacher supermarket - was singled out along
with the Hebdo staff.
The assassin in question doesn't refer to the Islamist
cell that carried out the attacks since all of them were eventually killed.
Rather it refers to the threat of radical Islamist terrorism, which is still
flourishing in the form of an ISIS caliphate that controls much of Syria and
Iraq as well as the Hamas and Hezbollah groups in Gaza and Lebanon, not to
mention their Iranian sponsors. The Paris attacks in November carried out by
ISIS and the mass shooting in San Bernardino last month illustrated that the Charlie
Hebdo massacre wasn't a singular event but a warning that a war on the
West was just beginning.
But the article by editor Gerard Biard in which he
mentions the question about the Jews highlights another key element of the
story. By refusing to call the enemy by its right name and pretending that
religion doesn't play a key role in the threat, the United States is
undermining the effort to roll back the Islamist tide. But by refusing to
understand that the Jews are the canary in the coalmine, the Obama
administration is also signaling to the world that it isn't serious about
fighting the terrorists and what they stand for. Far from being tangential to
the question of how to beat Islamist terror, the fate of the Jews is integral
to the outcome.
It's worth recalling that in his initial reaction to
the Hebdo attacks and in subsequent comments about the
killings at the Hyper Cacher, President Obama demonstrated his unwillingness to
address the issue of anti-Semitism. By first ignoring the anti-Semitic nature
of the assault and then later still referring to the terrorists' decision to
target the market as "random," the president showed that he had a
blind spot when it came to Jew hatred.
This is critical since, as Biard notes, the Islamist
war against the Jews isn't so much symbolic as it is part of the worldview that
Jews represent the West. But since, as Biard writes, Westerners are so used to
Jews being killed, they don't stop and think about why it was important that a
run-of-the-mill kosher market would be singled out along with a magazine that specifically
sought to offend Muslims.
A rising tide of anti-Semitism has made life difficult
for Jews even in the capitals of Europe. But while elites and leftists have
formed a strange alliance with Muslim immigrants to try to isolate Israel and
stigmatize its Jewish supporters, they fail to understand that Islamist killers
get to decide who is and is not a Jew. As Biard notes, the November mass
attacks in Paris demonstrated that "the executioner had showed us that he
had decided we were all Jewish."
That's an astute observation that most Europeans and
even many Americans still haven't absorbed. They continue to treat the daily
terrorism against Jews in Israel such as the New Year's Day shooting in Tel
Aviv as somehow separate from the war against the West that we observed in
Paris and San Bernardino. They think that if Islamists slaughter Jews it has no
meaning for the West's own battle for survival against a fanatic foe. That's a
critical mistake.
One year after Charlie Hebdo, France is
fighting back against the enemy within its own borders. The French government
has initiated extraordinary measures aimed at cracking down on Islamist targets
to the point where liberals, like those that write the New
York Times editorial page, are crying foul. But this
determination not to be caught napping again is admirable and ought to be
applauded by Americans.
A willingness to address the core element of Islamist
theology and its relative popularity across the Muslim world doesn't require
the West to wage war on all Muslims. It's worth noting again that a Muslim
policeman was killed along with the Hebdo editors and it was a
Muslim who helped save some Jewish shoppers at the Hyper Cacher. But neither
can we ignore the power of Islamist ideology or fail to understand that its
popularity is driven by a sense that it is winning rather than as a reaction to
Western counterattacks, let alone the blasphemy of Charlie Hebdo or
the utterances of Donald Trump.
But so long as the West thinks that the Islamist war on
Israel and Jews is separate from the one they seek to wage against American and
Europe it will fail to adequately defend itself. An America that believes it
can insulate itself from more attacks by making deals with a terror-supporting
Iranian regime or by "leading from behind" against ISIS while
ignoring the anti-Semitism at the heart of its enemy's faith isn't one that can
defeat the forces of terror that threatens the liberties of Americans, Christian,
Jew or Muslim.
