Israel Matzav

Eyewitness account from Charlie Hebdo

Claire Berlinski, whom I have long followed on Twitter, was in Paris yesterday on Boulevard Richard Lenoir when the terror attack at Charlie Hebdo's offices took place. Here's her eyewitness account (Hat Tip: Sunlight).

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.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Charlie Hebdo, Claire Berlinski, feckless French, freedom of the press, Islamic terrorism, Paris

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:29 PM