The Black Flag of Jihad Stalks La République by Nidra Poller
July 13, 2014, the storming of the Bastille was “re-enacted” by enraged mobs shouting Death to the Jews. Trampling the protest march tradition, they stomped down boulevard Beaumarchais, fanned out into the Marais, and massed in front of synagogues, armed with baseball bats, iron bars, rocks, and blood-curdling screams of Slaughter the Jews. They clashed with Jews defending the synagogue on rue de la Roquette and fought with the police that finally arrived to restore order. Six days later, the mobs occupied Place de la République in defiance of a ban against their demonstration. They climbed onto the pedestal of the Marianne statue, symbol of the French Republic and made a mockery of revolutionary iconography. “Pro-Palestinians” proclaimed love for Gaza and unconditional support for la Résistance, burned the Israeli flag, and waved the black flag of jihad.
Israel was fighting back against a constant barrage of rockets launched from Gaza, one more episode in a genocidal war disguised as a national liberation movement. Hamas résistance, Jihad résistance—that’s the program chanted in the heart of the French Republic in the summer of 2014. Demonstrations, banned or authorized, exploded in violence against Jewish shops, synagogues, citizens, and the French police, duty-bound to protect them.
Public opinion was modeled to perceive this unbridled rage as solidarity with civilians in Gaza, victims of “excessive force” and dying in unfair numbers compared to the Jews of Israel protected by an efficient civil defense system. Who thought to warn them of the ominous portent of the jihad flag brandished at the feet of Marianne?
Five months later, in January 2015, the word “jihad” finally took its rightful place in the vocabulary of current events. Jihadis decimated the staff of Charlie Hebdo, executed policemen, assassinated Jews in a kosher grocery store.
In Syria and Iraq, jihadis, more exactly mujahidin, raging under that black flag behead journalists, conquer territory, destroy treasures of humanity, persecute Christians, enslave Yazidi women. “Moderate” rebels armed and trained by Western forces defect to the Islamic State or other jihad factions. European Muslims join the ranks of Daesh, learn the skills of decapitation and plot against the lands of their birth. And the free world snuggles up to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The democracies fight their sworn enemies by pouring oil on the fire. Payback comes in the shape of millions of “refugees” poured into Europe, pounding on its borders, flooding its institutions.
It takes the skills of a scrupulous journalist combined with the eloquence of an inspired novelist to capture the ongoing narrative in the fullness of its living dimensions.
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