The Paris attack: Why?
By the nature of my 40-plus years’ work as a journalist, most days I am rarely at a loss for words. Wednesday was an exception.
Like the rest of the civilized world, I struggle to understand the murderous attack on the satirical French newspaper, Charlie Hebdo. Ever since learning of the events early this morning, my head has been spinning with questions that I can’t answer:
- Why did the attackers have to take the lives of 12, including several journalists and two police officers in Paris?
- What kind of sick minds can justify killing journalists who were practicing their craft?
- How does the attack aid their cause, no matter what it might be?
- How cold was the heart of the attacker who executed a wounded officer as if he were putting down an animal?
- What about the families of the victims?
- How will the families ever cope with the horrible loss of their loved ones?
- What happens to the newspaper now?
Sadly, the attack in France was not the deadliest on this awful day. A car bomb outside a police college in Yemen, killed at least 35 people.
For journalists around the world and in our newsroom, today is an especially sad day for those of us who wince at the news and mourn the slaughter of journalists doing their job. The Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization that helps defend press freedom around the globe and tracks such things as the killing of journalists, reported that 61 journalists were killed in 2014. Syria was the deadliest, where 17 journalists were killed last year while doing their jobs.
The Associated Press reported the Paris Mayor, Anne Hidalgo mourned the slain as “martyrs of freedom, of freedom of the press, the pillar of democracy,” and called upon all freedom-loving people to hold a solemn march in their memory.
Meanwhile, AP reported, a member of the al-Qaida in Yemen extremist organization, posting on the Twitter social network, accused the weekly of engaging in the “defamation of Islam.” As news of the killings in Paris reached the Middle East, AP noted, celebratory gunfire was reported in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon.
Sure, there will be plenty to be said and written about the attackers, who were said to have shouted Allahu akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great!” Much also will be written about the Paris-based newspaper, an irreverent and liberal weekly that often pokes fun in crude ways at all of the major religions. But after all is said and done, the world will continue to struggle with larger questions about humanity, the use of violence in whatever form, and where all this will leave us.
Of course, America is no stranger to disastrous events. Think Oklahoma City bombing. Think 9-11. Is there more to come on our shores? If so, where will it happen and how will we react? These are the kind of dark thoughts and fears that much of the world may be having right now.
Man’s ability to destroy one another continues to astound me. Just when I might think I’ve seen it all, a new ugly chapter is written. There is no happy ending on a day like today.
The human spirit continues to endure, of course. A French writer posted on Twitter today a touching sentiment: “They wanted to bring France to its knees; but they made it stand up – 12 dead and 66 million injured.”
