One year after the attacks of January 7, 2015, we wanted to revisit these events to extend our reflection on them.
With the attacks of November 13, we have taken a further step marked, in public discourse, by the use of more security-focused and distinctly more warlike rhetoric.
This time, the terrorists’ target was neither the cartoonists of Charlie, nor Jews, nor even Christians, but ordinary citizens, at symbolic locations in Eastern Paris and the Northern suburbs, places of gathering and celebration.
Both times, the killers were suicide bombers ready to kill and die as martyrs. The goal was to kill as many people as possible, indiscriminately, coldly, and to die.
In the longer term, the aim is to sow fear by encouraging divisions and intercommunal violence on French soil.
We know that other attacks will occur, even if some will be foiled.
We must prepare collectively to emerge from terror and from a need for security that can never be completely satisfied, to rediscover the movement of life and thought, to move forward together by defending our ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
We question the meaning of the words that must be used to understand what is happening to us: we are told we are at war, but what war is it and against whom? How do we name our enemies?
In the face of fanaticism in this phenomenon of Islamic radicalization, the Republic must stand together in its cultural and religious diversities.
by Garibaldino
