05-Mar-15: Remembering those who stand silently outside

Volunteer security personnel patrolling the perimeter of a Jewish
community building... that could be almost anywhere (Shomrim is the
Hebrew word for guards) [Image Source]

The killing of a Danish volunteer standing guard outside a Copenhagen synagogue by a terrorist gunman of Palestinian Arab "origin" who, in the opaque language favoured by many news editors, had become "radicalized" while serving prison time for stabbing someone, has thrown some light on the phenomenon of Jewish communities more and more required - and determined - to protect their lives from similar malevolents.

Dan Uzan's murder on the night of February 14-15, 2015 came as he patrolled a Jewish facility in sub-freezing temperatures while a family celebration - a bat mitzvah with dozens of children taking part - was happening inside. Finn Norgaard, a 55-year-old Danish documentary maker, was shot dead and three police officers were wounded in a nearby attack some hours earlier executed by the same perpetrator.

It's striking to us how Denmark's Jewish community, alive to the danger, had asked that the police raise the level of their alertness to attacks like the one that eventuated - but were rebuffed. Associated Press reported a month before the lethal attacks that:

Denmark's Jewish community has asked for a police presence outside the Copenhagen synagogue during services and when students arrive and leave the city's Jewish school following the terror attacks in Paris. Community chairman Dan Rosenberg Asmussen says he made the request Wednesday to Justice Minister Mette Frederiksen who stopped short of making any promises to the country's 7,000-strong Jewish community. She said Denmark's security agency would make reconsider security at Jewish institutions. Frederiksen said the attacks in Paris made "us painfully aware of the importance that our Jewish fellow citizens can feel safe." [NY Times, "Danish Jews Want Police Outside Synagogue, School", January 14, 2015]

Volunteer security people, like Dan Uzan (and like groups in Melbourne, Sydney, Brooklyn, Southern California, throughout the United Kingdom and many other places), are part of the answer, and regularly place their lives and well-being at risk in Jewish communities throughout the world today. The reasons why are sadly obvious to anyone alert to the rising threats.

In the Australian parliament earlier today (Thursday), Michael Danby MP paid tribute to the hundreds of volunteer guards who do this in his country, and elsewhere, every day. In an email this morning, he noted that

There is a vast program in our country called the Secure Schools Programme, which I convinced the previous Labor Government to adopt. The programme funds the protection of Australia Jewish institutions, particularly so that events like Copenhagen, the attacks in Brussels and France, as well as the earlier jihadist murders at the Chabad school in Toulouse, might be prevented. The current Government continued this program and, matching a Labor election commitment, has extended this program to funding security guards and I’m relieved that the Government has finally adopted that. 

An audio track of his speech is online here. In an accompanying press release yesterday, he wrote of how Australia had recognized by 2007 that schools, in particular, were "at risk of terrorist or hate-crime attacks" and needed "to build infrastructure to protect themselves." He was instrumental in moving the Labor government of the day to provide $35 million to fund the investment.

One of Michael Danby's key points is that the news media (he focused on Australia's ABC, but the problem extends well beyond Australia's shores) fail to humanize the victims. The lives of the perpetrators, by contrast, routinely get under-the-skin scrutiny amid the regulation search for "root causes" and a deeper understanding of the mysterious factors that turned a quiet law-abiding slob into a gun-toting, religion-spouting killer.

The effects are not hard to divine. In the case of the Danish terror murders, they include the fact that when the Jewish victim of the Copenhagen shooting attack was buried, 

"Security was tight... with police out in force with sniffer dogs and snipers posted on nearby rooftops." [Telegraph UK, February 18, 2015]

That was the Jewish funeral. The murdering gunman, killed by Danish police in an early-morning shoot-out, was given a respectful Islamic funeral. Newsweek reported that

700 to 1,000 mourners attended the funeral of [Omar El-Hussein,] the gunman who shot dead two and injured five others in the Danish capital earlier this month, prompting concern and anger among Danes and Danish Jews... The ceremony took place at the Islamic Society of Denmark in Copenhagen following Friday prayers and was followed by the burial outside the city at a Muslim cemetery in the suburb of Brøndby... The funeral was open to the public, although witnesses described the attendees to local Danish media as mostly Muslim young men, with many “wearing large black coats, having covered their faces”. The Copenhagen Police sent a press release before the event urging attendees to show due respect.

Flowers had earlier been placed at the spot where the killer was stopped. Here's a photo. Given the clear message they convey, it makes one wonder whether hate-language and incitement to racism and murder ought to include the placing of bouquets.

17-Feb-15: In Denmark, some changes to the way life has been lived till now

Grimhøj Mosque, Aarhus, Denmark [Image Source]

From The Copenhagen Post, a Danish English-language daily, this morning:

Jewish community radio station shuts down in wake of terror attacks | Radio Shalom advised by PET to take a break while Jews across Europe demand more protection | The Copenhagen Post | February 17, 2015 | Ray Weaver | For the first time in the station’s history, Radio Shalom did not broadcast its usual blend of programs about Jewish culture, music and history on Monday evening. The control board located in a basement in Nørrebro was silenced for what host Abraham Kopenhagen called "security reasons". “PET says it's too dangerous,” Kopenhagen told DR Nyheder. “We do not feel that it is too dangerous, but we respect the information we are given.” Kopenhagen said that Radio Shalom will be back on the air when PET tells them that it is safe. The security agency offered to protect the station while it was on air, but Kopenhagen turned them down. “We must do as instructed, but we will not have police standing outside the door,” he said. "We would rather close down until it is quiet again. I do not know how long that will take.” The radio station was not the only Jewish institution in Copenhagen that chose to shut its doors following the weekend's attacks, which included the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Dan Uzan, a guard standing in front of the synagogue on Krystalgade by Omar Abdel El-Hussein. The Jewish school Carolineskolen was also closed yesterday.

Imam Abu Bilal Ismail
[Image Source: MEMRI]

The same article in the same paper, evidently exploring the toxic environment behind the murderous events in Copenhagen on Saturday and Sunday, provides a link to a July 22, 2014 report entitled "Danish imam encourages followers to kill Jews". Embedded within that is a MEMRI Arabic-to-English video capturing Imam Abu Bilal Ismail, an Islamic preacher described by the Danish paper as

a regular speaker at the Grimhøj Mosque in Aarhus, and accused of encouraging young Muslims to travel to Syria to fight in the bloodbath there.

The Grimhøj mosque in Denmark's second-largest city Aarhus has been in the news often. In "Aarhus: The Danish town where Syria’s jihadist fighters are welcomed home" [The Independent UK, October 20, 2014], for instance, it's pointed out that

In Denmark, not one returned fighter [from the Syrian killing fields] has been locked up. Instead officials here are providing free psychological counselling while finding returnees jobs and spots in schools and universities. Officials credit a new effort to reach out to a radical mosque with staunching the flow of recruits... “I know how some people think. They are afraid of us, the ones coming back,” says Talha, a name he adopted to protect his identity because he never told his father he went to fight. “Look, we are really not dangerous.”

Not dangerous is a relative expression in today's Europe.

In a Danish article, "Head of Grimhøj mosque supports IS" [DR.dk, January 15, 2015], the same Aarhus-based house of prayer is said to be

known in the media as a hotbed for radicalised young Muslims. Numerous youth from the region who have attended the mosque have subsequently travelled to Syria to fight in the conflict. The mosque is now making waves once again. In the documentary “Den Fordømte Moské” (“The Condemned Mosque”), shown on DR1 on Tuesday evening, Oussama El Saadi, head of the mosque, declared his support of Islamic State. “I hope that IS wins and that we one day will have an Islamic state in the world,” said El Saadi in the documentary... [He] believes that the western world’s declaration of war against IS is not a war against terror, but rather against the entire Muslim world. Therefore, he says, it also hurts when the Danish state is at war against people in the Middle East.

Evidently it also hurts the Danish state and its fair-minded people to see one of their own shot down by Danish police, even though the shooter was a cruel murderer of innocent and unarmed strangers, and was holding a powerful weapon at the time:

Numerous bouquets had been laid at the killing site of the suspected Copenhagen gunman, 22-year-old Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein. The flowers were laid in solidarity with the alleged terrorist’s family, locals told reporters... Masked young men, describing themselves as “brothers” of the suspected gunman behind attacks in Copenhagen, removed flowers and candles from the site where he was fatally shot by police. The young men said they removed the flowers because it is not a Muslim tradition to lay flowers for the dead. [Sputnik News, February 16, 2015]

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, a beloved theme of our childhood, seems to be rapidly receding into the distance, never to appear again.

17-Feb-15: In defeating the terrorists, condemnation is essential but never enough

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 the disappointment they can bring on.

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 we expect governments and public figures to do more than condemn terrorism for the savagery, bigotry and barbarism that it is has concrete ramifications. As egregious as the violations of freedom of expression in Copenhagen and Paris are, the ongoing assaults on the most fundamental of human rights - the right to stay alive - are no less crucial for policy makers and the people who protect our societies, families and lives. Hatred of Jews - yes, specifically Jews - is a fundamental part of the challenge. This does not turn it into a narrower battle but a broader one. The willingness of terrorists, propelled by Islamist messaging, to slaughter Moslem in their own villages and continents, along with victims of every other sort, is a reality that shows how the war now upon us transcends mere politics and prejudices. 

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.