French Hostages

Belmot Club comments on the other hostage crisis of the moment, the curious case of the French journalists held in Iraq despite the condemnation of many Islamists of the treachery against their ally, France.

The most diabolical aspect of the terrorist's cruelty is that they have placed the symbolic dagger of execution into the hands of the French themselves. The French open their schoolday with the the subconcious understanding that upholding the headscarf ban may end the lives of two men. This tranferrence of guilt is terrorism's greatest lie: that the ultimate responsibility for a hostage's death lies in the failure of his loved ones to capitulate fully to their monstrous demands. It is a lie which the Left never tires of repeating but it is false all the same. Albert Camus once wryly wrote in the Rebel that "on the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence -- through a curious transposition peculiar to our times -- it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself." He was referring to Stalin, but alas, both for the world and for France, the evil the Left worshipped never died.