A CNN reporter says that what really has shaken the people of Paris in the aftermath of the Nov. 13 terror attacks is that this time those killed by Islamist terrorists weren’t just Jews or provocative cartoonists.
Talking to CNN host Don Lemon Monday night, reporter Martin Savidge tried to convey why the people of Paris view the Nov. 13 terror attacks differently than last January’s Islamist terror attacks in Paris that targeted French cartoonists and Jews in a kosher grocery store.
“I think what really has shaken the people of Paris, they’ve grown accustom to the idea that of course the city is a target,” Savidge said from on the ground in the city of lights. “But this particular assault, aside from the sheer numbers of people that were killed or wounded, it was the neighborhoods that were struck. It was the fact that this time no one was spared. It wasn’t that a person was picked out because of their faith. It wasn’t because a person was picked out because of their jobs such as Charlie Hebdo. This was just people — any kind of person. And that has really shaken the people of Paris. This time you could not explain it away as somebody else’s threat.”
Ahh, so it’s more understandable when an Islamist terrorist murders a Jew because, well, it’s a Jew! What else should a Jew expect for being a Jew in Paris and shopping at a kosher grocery store, right? But when Islamist terrorists strike “just people” — “just” being a synonym for “real” here? — that’s far more alarming.
Let’s hope that Savidge isn’t accurately representing the sentiment in Paris right now. But it is a similar sentiment to what John Kerry expressed last week, at least with regards to the cartoonists in the Charlie Hebdo attack.
“There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that,” Kerry said, referring to the attack on cartoonists who had lampooned Islam, and other religions, in their satirical magazine. “There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, ‘Okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.’ This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate.”
