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| Mass protest rally in Copenhagen February 16, 2015 [Image Source] |
As parents of a child murdered in a terrorist outrage, we have received a great many letters and cards (and their electronic
equivalents) expressing sympathy and support. Coming from places
and people not always known to us personally, they provided comfort especially in the earliest part of our experience of loss. We learned to appreciate the bonds of humanity and
shared decency that sometimes get overlooked in ordinary life.
Dealing with grief's multi-layered
impact on our lives, we have also grown familiar with expressions of Solidarity (with a capital S) directed at
us by politicians and government officials... and
Everyone knows, of course, that people in public positions tend to express themselves in formulaic ways. Most of us accept there are limits to how sincere and creative a busy person can be. But it's also because what they say sometimes reflects a superficial, even wrong, understanding of what it means to lose
a loved one to violent hatred. But if you have no personal experience of it,
how can you know? And it’s a hard subject about which to learn from books. Far
too little has been written, or even said, about coping with the death of
a child or partner at the hands of terrorists.
The most disturbing aspect however has been
the chasm between the clichéd slogans offered to terror victims like us in
the immediate aftermath of the attack and the little/nothing that is done later. No
public figure wants to sound indecisive on something as headline-grabbing as
terror. Our experience is it’s rare for them to back up those supportive
statements with policy decisions and actions later. And later, in public life, is when it really counts.
A powerful leader in yesterday’s The Times of
London, reflecting on lessons to be learned from the lethal events in Copenhagen this week ["15-Feb-15: In Denmark, they may be thinking hard about Charlie Hebdo this morning"], resonates for us with the bitterness of our experiences. The title starts
in Danish:
Vi er Jøder: Jews in Denmark have been targeted with lethal violence. Western governments need to declare their unreserved solidarity
An extract (it’s unfortunately behind a
paywall):
...In the heart of civilised, democratic and tolerant western Europe, Jews are under lethal assault. They need not just sympathy but solidarity and support. A month after the terrorist attacks in Paris, a gunman in Copenhagen fired shots at an event discussing freedom of speech and then at a synagogue on Saturday night. He killed two men and wounded five police officers, and was himself shot dead as he began firing on police who were trying to apprehend him. These barbarous murders exemplify a sickness and a stubborn social pathology whose virulence is easy to overlook. Faced with such barbarism, there is a serious risk that European governments will underreact. They must not; not this time. It is not enough to condemn them as savagery, bigotry and barbarism, though they are all of those things. Antisemitism, it has been often remarked, is a light sleeper. Western democracies have a moral obligation and a pragmatic interest in declaring their solidarity and not only sympathy with Danish Jews. Western leaders should have no hesitation in declaring: Vi er jøder (We are Jews). [Times UK, February 16, 2015]
The message that
To win in war, you must know who the enemy is, and the steps that need to be taken to prevent further losses and to achieve the other side's defeat. Defending freedom of expression is part of this - among numerous human rights that our societies absolutely must safeguard. But no right takes greater precedence than the right to not be murdered - the right to live.
As difficult as this is to protect, relegating it to a secondary goal plays into the hands of those who dispatch the human bombs and the men and women armed with meat cleavers.
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