Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
First-Hand Account From The Terrorist Attack on Charlie Hebdo
If I sound incoherent, it’s because I am shaken. The reasons will be obvious.
I had no intention of reporting on this from the scene of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. I was walking up Boulevard Richard Lenoir to meet a friend who lives in the neighborhood. But the moment I saw what I did, I knew for sure what had happened. A decade in Turkey teaches you that. That many ambulances, that many cops, that many journalists, and those kinds of faces can mean only one thing: a massive terrorist attack.
I also knew from the location just who’d been attacked: Charlie Hebdo, the magazine known for many things, but, above all, for its fearlessness in publishing caricatures of Mohamed. They’d been firebombed for this in 2011, but their response — in effect — was the only one free men would ever consider: “As long as we’re alive, you’ll never shut us up.”
They are no longer alive. They managed to shut them up.
The only thing I didn’t immediately know was how many of them had died.
All of them, it seems, or close enough. So did two police officers who had been assigned to protect their offices. Twelve are dead for sure; I assume that number will rise; seven are seriously injured. It was at the time I was there unclear how many were wounded.
And the attackers are still at large.
Given that two police officers are dead, now doesn’t seem the time to say what comes to mind about the fact that the assailants escaped. It will say this much though: if they’re not dead before nightfall, I’ll say exactly what comes to mind, respect for the dead be damned.
I did what I could as a journalist but — since it wasn’t my plan to be one — I was there with neither a camera nor even a notebook. And it didn’t seem the time to ask the police to prioritize me. There were more than enough journalists on the scene and I doubt I’d have done better than they will.
What we know is this: at least two masked attackers. Kalashnikovs. Gunmen who shouted, “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad.” Rumors of a rocket launcher, but I suspect we should wait for confirmation on that; eyewitnesses tend to get confused about these things, especially when unused to seeing them.
The latest tweet on Charlie Hebdo’s Twitter account was a cartoon of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi:
Meilleurs vœux, au fait. pic.twitter.com/a2JOhqJZJM
— Charlie Hebdo (@Charlie_Hebdo_) January 7, 2015
This was the worst Islamic terrorist attack in Europe since the London tube bombings of 2005, and the worst of any kind since Anders Breivik.* If I’m correct — I have not checked carefully — it was also the worst in France since the Nazis were running the place.
I was there only by luck: I had no desire to see this. Luck is probably not the right word. I wish I hadn’t seen it. But lucky, certainly is the right word to use in noting that I was running late, and thus there a few minutes after the fact. Had I not been running late, it’s fairly obvious what might have happened. They weren’t discriminate in their targets.
There wasn’t much for me to do. I didn’t even have a pen on me. I spoke to a cameraman from France 3, to make sure I understood the facts. I didn’t ask if I could quote him, so I won’t use his name. But his comment summed up the sentiment. “This is the kind of thing you expect in Pakistan. And now it’s coming here.”
While I didn’t get any photos, Buzzfeed is running a few. They are warning that the images are “disturbing.” I’m so sorry if you find them disturbing, readers, but take a good long look at them anyway: they’re nothing compared to what I saw, and what I saw wasn’t “disturbing images”; they were “people who until this morning were alive, but this afternoon are dead.”
They included figures not apt to be household names in America, but certainly household names here: Charbonnier, Cabu, Wolinski, Verlhac; all alive this morning, and all of them now dead.
President François Hollande said the trivial: “No barbaric act will ever extinguish the freedom of the press.” That the statement is self-falsifying seemed to bother him little: That barbaric act literally extinguished the press. Literally. They are dead. Their freedom is thus of little relevance.
That I’m shaken is of concern to no one; my emotions are not the point. The entire city is shaken. So much that even my cab driver — I had to catch one to get home; the streets were otherwise blocked off — didn’t even ask me to pay the fare. When I said I was a journalist, and in a rush to say what little I knew, his response was, “Forget about the money. Just hurry.”
The assailants are as yet at liberty. I hope they’ll be dead by the time you read this. But if not: You want me too? Come get me. Because nothing short of killing me — and many more of my kind — will ever shut us up.
And if you don’t believe that now, you’ll believe it very soon. Because there are more of us willing to die for that freedom than those of you eager to take it from us. And soon you will find out that those of us willing to die for that freedom are also much better at killing than you.
So come and get me. Je suis Charlie.
And have a good long look at the cartoon below. Because you may have been able to kill its authors, but you sure didn’t kill what they created. And nor will we ever let you.
There are things I’m not allowed to say on Ricochet. But if I were allowed to say them, this is what I’d say—though I’d add a few other words.
Go ahead. Make my day. Because you’ve got no idea what we’re capable of when we are pushed too far. And you are more than pushing your luck.
Cover image credit: By Thierry Caro (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
** To join the conversation on posts like this — and to support Ricochet’s ability to continue providing them for you — please become a Ricochet member today. Memberships are available for as little as $5 a month.**
* Editor’s note: The original version of the post neglected mention of Anders Breivik; the correction was provided and requested by the author.
Published in General
All those “Je Suis Charlie” people should be carrying placards, pubishing columns and sending tweets with the “offensive” cartoon. Otherwise it’s just vacuous preening.
Claire,
So very good to hear from you. I am very thankful that you were late. If I had taken an earlier plane I would have been in NYC on 911 but didn’t. It’s an odd feeling.
When I made my distinction earlier this month about Jihad v. Islamists, Extremists, Terrorists..etc. this is what I was talking about. These were pure Jihadists. They have declared war on us. We must realize how real that statement is. They didn’t ask for hostages or make demands. They took no prisoners and just killed.
It is perfectly reasonable to return the favor and prosecute a war against Jihad. Our war is justified out of self defense. Our war against Jihad would be justified in using the most extreme measures. As we see from this episode no mercy whatsoever was dispensed by the Jihadists. Our war against them must be just as merciless.
We must use adequate force to coerce these coercers.
Stay safe good Claire.
Regards,
Jim
That was a one-time-only event in 2010, right? Methinks it should be an annual event.
If you want to stand up for free speech, then make serious criticisms of Islam and Mohammed. Let’s not mimic the juvenile hippies on Comedy Central by pretending that any mockery is good mockery. Insulting Mohammed just for the fun of it reflects neither bravery nor principled opposition.
By the way, I noticed that the spell checker on my phone offers various spellings of “Mohammed” but always try to change “Jesus” to “Jesup”.
Mohammed can get stuffed.
And so can his flying horse, Barack.
If you want to stand up for free speech, then make serious criticisms of Islam and Mohammed. Let’s not mimic the juvenile hippies on Comedy Central by pretending that any mockery is good mockery. Insulting Mohammed just for the fun of it reflects neither bravery nor principled opposition.
It is not a question of good or bad but allowed and tolerated. All criticism or mockery of Islam and Mohammed may not be good but we must insist it be allowed.
In addition to anger and grief, but not surprise, I am overcome with a sense of weariness.
Everybody is outraged. Everybody is talking tough. It’s meaningless. In a month, everybody will be back to talking about Islamophobia, paranoia about the “other”, and how any body armor that would let police officers survive rifle fire is just too scary looking.
I don’t speak French, but the cartoon above seems to be mocking the extremists by suggesting that if Mohammed were alive today they would behead him as an infidel. The target is the extremists, not Mohammed itself, and it’s actually making a serious point.
Oh, come on, Mike, don’t you get it? This had nothing to do with Muslims, or even with Islam. In fact, as everyone knows (and as Mark Steyn helpfully pointed out a couple of years ago), shouting “Allahu Akabar” while rushing forward, with scimitar or guns blazing, is nothing more than Arabic for “Nothing to see here. Move along.”
Yes, even bad mockery should be allowed. I just wish conservatives wouldn’t participate in its production.
Thanks. But I wasn’t responding to that particular cartoon. Rather, I was thinking of the “Let’s Make Fun of Mohammed Day.” That idea strikes me as a shallow response.
Islam isn’t a joke. It’s an ideology of conquest and oppression. It should be rebuked directly, as we rebuke communism.
Reagan had some good jokes about communism, but they were worthwhile because they struck at deeper truths. A “Make Fun of Lenin Day” wouldn’t have been fruitful either.
Stay safe Claire. I saw the news this morning and was shocked. Hopefully you will be able to give us the perspective on how the French are handling this. As of writing this post I just saw the the gunmen (there are three apparently) have been identified, no word as to their arrest. I hope the french manage to get them without losing anymore people, but something tells me that these guys won’t go quietly.
I for one hope the French manage to take them alive and bring back the Guillotine.
It’s no different than a typical conversation about anything else on Ricochet. Few expect Boehner and company to make any significant headway against Democrats. Few expect our culture to right itself or expect our schools to stop filling kids’ heads with nonsense. Still, we complain about it and talk about the ways things should be. The reasons for doing so aren’t always clear.
Thanks Claire. It’s chilling. I can’t help but wish we were barbaric enough to roast these monsters alive in front of Notre Dame instead of providing them an air conditioned cell. Nous sommes tous Français d’aujourd’hui.
You have to keep the embers glowing my friend.
Th Gurardian is reporting that French authorities have arrested three men in connection to the attack. But they are scant on the details.
Thank you, everyone, for your comments. I’m just too tired to respond in any detail. I seem to have been the only Anglophone eyewitness, or the only one who made this known publicly. So you can imagine what my In Box looks like right now.
I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this in the next few days, given that everyone seems to want me to. But for now, I just need to sleep. It’s hard to keep a cool head and remember exactly what you saw when you’re short on sleep and long on emotion. Getting the details wrong is not what I get paid to do, so I need to sleep and regain some control over myself before I say much more.
I’m fine. I’ve seen worse. Not much worse, but worse. So no need for concern for me–victims and their families aren’t fine at all, so your prayers for them are more than needed.
As of this writing the killers still haven’t been apprehended. I have a feeling they’re not apt to decide after this that they may as well now quietly retire. So until they’ve all been killed, no one in France will be sleeping well.
Except for me. Because I’m so tired they could firebomb my apartment and I doubt I’d even notice.
Thank you for your post, Claire. I fully agree with your non-CoC compliant tweet.
This is coming to a head and sooner or all of elite’s lame attempts to delay the inevitable by calling mass murder by jihadists “workplace accidents” will fail.
There will be a reckoning.
As Thucydides said, “The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.” Martyred editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stéphane Charbonnier, and his martyred colleagues had the courage to be free.
May enough Americans be brave enough to remain free.
I am not sure what you mean by “Let’s Make Fun of Mohammed Day,” but Everybody Draw Mohammed Day was an important suggestion made by Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris, to send ultimately – with gentle humor – to those who killed in response to the Danish cartoons, the same message that Claire Berlinski (and we) send to today’s murderers:
Je suis Charlie. If you want to kill free speech, you’ll have to kill all of us.
Personally, I was somewhat disappointed that relatively few drew Mohammed on Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. I posted my cartoon on the website of then-Boston, now Atlanta-based radio talk show host Michael Graham, who has for over a decade now been warning of the danger to free speech – and to all of liberal democracy – posed by Islamic extremism, and advocating against capitulation to intimidation and terrorism conducted in the name of Islam.
Ron Paul is proving again that he’s a sociopath.
It won’t be a month, but otherwise spot on. And I repeat, the West has gone mad.
Those of us hoping for a disproportionate response are bound to be disappointed. Again.
I was with you in spirit but unfortunately, I literally cannot draw. If I’d tried to draw Mohammed, you wouldn’t have been able to tell it wasn’t a mutant carrot.
But it’s not “Let’s Make Fun of Mohammed Day,” it’s “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” No doubt some people will engage in juvenile mockery, but you’re free to strike at deeper truths, or mock extremism as the Charlie Hebdo comic above does.
Or for that matter, one could participate by drawing a reverent, heroic painting of Mohammed reciting the Quran to his followers. The extremists would still be offended, since they insist that Islam forbids making any images of Mohammed.
Which is fine with me — for Muslims. I have no desire to force them to draw Mohammed, or put his image up in their homes or mosques, just as I have no desire to force them to eat pork.
But, if they suggested that they are “offended” whenever anyone anywhere eats pork, I think an “Everybody Eat Bacon Day” would be an entirely appropriate response.
I’m with Midge: baruch haShem you’re all right!
That is just wicked. If he didn’t destroy his son’s presidential aspirations, it’s possible he should have. We have to hope such malicious foolishness isn’t heritable.
Such is the price of open borders and mass immigration.
French law enforcement efficiency?
Radio just said the job is 1/3 done, and I think he said they caught the other two.
The debate on immigration to Europe has been utterly distorted by the insistence that any expression of concern – frequently any insistence on the existing laws being enforced-is instantly labelled “Bigotry/Racism/Islamophobia/Extremist/Far Right” etc, ad nauseum. Hence the open doors and anti-assimilation policies which have contributed to predictable events like today’s. Hence the focus turning almost immediately to the “backlash”. All this achieves is to push people with rational concerns or fears into the folds of the real bigots.
I cannot respond and obey the Code of Conduct.