Wave of attacks shows no signs of stopping and there’s still no end to this Angela Merkel summer madness
It has reached the point where we must accept French PM Manuel Valls words, that France 'must learn to live with terrorism'
HOW is your Merkelsommer going? For now, Britain does seem to be missing the worst.
True, a couple of men of Middle Eastern appearance tried to abduct a soldier near his base in Norfolk for what was unlikely to have been an inter-faith dialogue session.
But Britain’s geographical good fortune, relative success in limiting weapons and our justified scepticism of the undiscriminating “open borders” brigade mean we have so far been spared the delights of what Angela Merkel’s growing army of critics call her summer of terror.
Indeed social network users venting their fury at the Chancellor coined #Merkelsommer — or Merkel summer.
It is now a fortnight since Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel shouted “Allahu Akbar” and ploughed a truck along the Nice seafront, killing 84.
The following Monday Muhammad Riyad, who said he was from Afghanistan but almost certainly came from Pakistan, screamed “Allahu Akbar” while hacking with an axe at his fellow passengers on a Bavarian train.
The next day Mohamed Boufarkouch shouted “Allahu Akbar” and stabbed a Frenchwoman and her three daughters (aged eight, 12 and 14) near Montpelier.
Mixing things up a little, that Friday’s shooter in Munich was a child of Iranians called Ali David Sonboly.
Skip forward a couple of days and a “Syrian asylum seeker” with a machete was hacking a pregnant woman to death in Stuttgart.
The next day another “Syrian asylum seeker”, Mohammad Daleel, carried out a suicide bombing outside a bar in Ansbach, Bavaria.
And a little over 24 hours later two men shouting the name of ISIS entered a church near Rouen during Mass, took the nuns and congregation hostage and slaughtered the priest with a knife.
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Although the public know what is going on, the media seems loath to find any connection between these events.
“Syrian man denied asylum killed in German blast” was the Reuters headline on the Ansbach story, turning the suicide bomber into the victim and the German asylum system into the perpetrator.
Reuters went on: “A 27-year-old Syrian man who had been denied asylum in Germany a year ago died on Sunday when a bomb he was carrying exploded outside a music festival.”
How terrible for him to lose his bomb.
The more complex story of the Munich shooter allowed everyone to double-down on their favourite explanations for violence.
Inadequate welfare provisions, unsuitable town-planning and bullying were all wheeled out to explain why Sonboly started shooting.
Others were too keen to claim him as an ISIS warrior, when it seems he wasn’t.
The BBC got around the problem by excising the “Ali” and all reports of his religion.
Instead, speculation about the shooting happening on the fifth anniversary of Anders Breivik’s assault in Norway meant everyone could ignore the Muslim eyewitness who heard Sonboly shout “Allahu Akbar” and headline on Breivik instead.
Meaning a child of Iranian parents can be portrayed as a white supremacist, while no amount of shouts of “Allahu Akbar” can be said to have any link to Islam.
Sections of the media and political class seem determined to stop the public coming to conclusions.
But most of us probably did that a long time ago, and these conclusions are reinforced daily.
For the time being, the acceptable thing is to blame ISIS.
There is sense in that.
The German train attacker had an ISIS flag at his home, the Ansbach bomber left a video pledging allegiance to the group, and at least one of the church attackers had tried to travel to Syria to join them.
The extent to which the group are involved varies but their ability to inspire as well as direct will be a problem as long as they exist.
However, opinion polls show the European public know that the problem is bigger than that.
Before ISIS there was al-Qaeda.
After ISIS there will be something else.
A poll two years before the Charlie Hebdo attacks showed 74 per cent of the French public believe Islam to be an intolerant religion.
The reaction of most politicians to findings such as this is that the public don’t know enough about Islam or haven’t experienced enough Islam.
On the contrary, many French people — like the Christians of the Middle East — have experienced quite enough, and do not like it.
Mainstream politicians cannot agree with this, not least because they (and Merkel in particular) are responsible for the upsurge of Muslim migration into Europe that is fundamentally changing its future.
But this is a gap which they must at some point bridge.
One way to do so is to be frank with the public even when there is a political price.
The French PM, Manuel Valls, was heavily criticised for saying France “must learn to live with terrorism”.
But he was right.
Limiting the availability of guns and explosives is the most important step towards limiting terror.
But you cannot limit availability of knives or trucks.
And although a lot of jihadists may be deterred from losing their own lives if they can claim perhaps only one victim, it needs only a few innovative attacks each month to change a country significantly.
It is hard to imagine a security plan that could prevent another attack like the one at Rouen.
President Francois Hollande’s “state of emergency” has not stopped five terror attacks in the eight months.
Recognising this, Valls, among others, is willing to be strident about “Islamism”.
But like every other European political leader, he is unwilling to admit where it comes from.
Again, the public are ahead of him. They know Islamism comes from Islam.
The extreme interpretation may be a minority problem, but when a continent is struggling to assimilate the Muslims already here, there is a huge risk in bringing in so many immigrants from war-torn parts of the world where jihadism is already rampant.
Some of this summer’s attackers were born here. Others were recent arrivals.
Many of those who opposed Angela Merkel’s open-door free-for-all last year opposed it for precisely this reason.
If Europe wants to help genuine refugees then it can help them outside Europe, as Britain has sought to do.
It does not need to turn Europe into one vast refugee camp.
We can’t afford it and, aside from a noisy fringe of migration extremists, the people of Europe don’t want it.
The tragedy is that those in charge still refuse to face up to this problem.
Just this week, Jean-Claude Juncker said however bad terrorism gets Europe will never give up on open borders.
UN representative Peter Sutherland repeated his view that anybody who wants to live in Europe — even economic migrants — must be allowed to come here.
Not to give our home over to the world would, he declared, be an affront to European values.
In Germany, despite the elections next year, no serious challenger to Angela Merkel, has emerged.
She is not about to turn around, look at the disaster created, and say: “Whoops.”
So Merkelsommer madness will drag on into the autumn.
Which could be not just the autumn of this year but the autumn of liberal Europe.