OPINION ARTICLES

Terrorist attacks in Paris

We are all Charlie

We must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us. They have again shown it in the sangfroid crime to Charlie Hebdo.

2015-01-08 by Friends of Israel Initiative


The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo represents the freedom that the West has been fighting for the last centuries, and yesterday was savagely attacked by the Islamism. It was attacked by those who destroyed the Twin Towers, by those who bombed trains in Madrid and the London Underground; by those who today behead Western journalists in Iraq and by those who, for decades, have been killing Israeli civilians. Although they respond to different names, they are all branches of the same tree; they are enemies of freedom that represent the same totalitarian and anti-democratic ideology. An ideology that is determined to end with the Western civilization.

 

In Paris, in the heart of Europe, in the place where liberty, fraternity and equality were raised to be the cornerstone of the lives of their citizens, Islamism has murdered men who courageously faced it by publishing the Muhammad satiric cartoons, the same for which the Danish magazine Jyllands Posten was threatened in 2006. Charlie Hebdo’s staff did not yield to the enemies of freedom and have paid the highest price for it. The terrorists, by murdering Charlie Hebdo staff, intended to murder also the freedom of speech and the secularism, two pillars of Western democracy. The coldness with which the terrorists killed the legendary cartoonists Charb (Editor in chief of the magazine, and blacklisted by Al-Qaeda since 2013) Cabu, Wolinski, six more workers and two policemen, has showed the cruelty with Islamism wants to destroy our civilization. These twelve people will not fall into oblivion. Their names will be added in the list of people who gave their lives for having the right to say or to express what they want, without fear of repression.

 

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and our. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us. They have again shown it in the sangfroid crime to Charlie Hebdo. And they will again.


To this regard, Israel has been suffering Islamist swipe even before its establishment, and has been fighting since then to defend its precious civil liberties. The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: Never give up. Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation, as the Friend of Israel Initiative has been claiming during last lustrum. Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism. In this sense, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reminded the Israel’s commitment to work hand in hand to overcome this fight, regarding the Charlie Hebdo shooting: " If we stand together and if we are not divided, then we can defeat this tyranny that seeks to extinguish all our freedoms”.

 


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