13-Jan-15: Is victory in the struggle with Islamist extremism now closer?

Boulevard Voltaire, Paris, Sunday: Did millions on French
streets bring about a change? [Image Source]

Extract from a passionate op-ed by The Times of Israel's editor, David Horovitz:

France rallied on Sunday like its life depended on it. Three and a half million people took to the streets in an unprecedented show of solidarity with the 17 victims murdered by three Islamist gunmen last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. “I am Charlie,” “I am a police officer,” “I am a Jew,” their placards asserted, identifying in turn with each category of victim — the journalists, the cops, the Jews. “We will not be divided,” “We will not be terrorized,” “We will not give up our freedom,” they declared.
We will fight Islamist terrorism with every sinew of our being, in order to ensure the protection of the freedoms that we cherish and that it seeks to destroy? That, they didn’t say.

He asks whether people seriously believe

that France is about to launch a crackdown on Islamist groupings at its higher-education institutions, or devote serious resources to investigating potential incitement at local mosques? Are France and the rest of Europe about to introduce passenger profiling at EU entry points, in the way that Israel does? Is the EU set to sanction Turkey for facilitating the flow of radicalized European Muslims to and from the Islamic State terror group in Syria and Iraq?
Not terribly likely, is it, when the French president declares that “these terrorists and fanatics have nothing to do with the Islamic religion”? Not terribly likely, is it, when the French president, reportedly, didn’t want his day of dignified identification with the victims of terrorism spoiled by the presence of those, like Netanyahu, who might distract from the solemn harmony and focus furious attention, instead, on the specific cause, that great big elephant stuck in among the masses in central Paris: Islamic extremism?
Three and a half million people took to the streets of France on Sunday in a show of solidarity for the latest fatalities of a ruthless ideology. But they couldn’t bring themselves to call that death-cult by its name.
Do the last few days of Islamist murder in France constitute a watershed moment for one of the Diaspora’s largest communities? The beginning of the end? I rather think so.
A watershed moment in the Western battle against Islamic extremism? I fear not. [The death-cult ideology that France prefers not to name | The Times of Israel, January 12, 2015]

 Unless you know you are in a war, there is little chance of winning.