The attack on New York’s Twin Towers on 9/11
The Jewish Chronicle asked me to look at a subject respectable commentators duck: the probability that the hatreds the Gaza conflict has unleashed will end in terrorist attacks.
It feels as if they might. The tension here in London is far greater than after 9/11, and, depressingly, the security sources I spoke to took it as read that violence was likely.
We have learned the hard way since 9/11 that terrorism has disproportionate consequences. The attacks on New York in Washington killed 2,966 people. Exact figures are impossible to find, and estimates are controversial, but the Costs of War project estimated that the war in Afghanistan claimed 176,000 lives and the war in Iraq 180,000.
In my piece I mention the January 2015 Islamist killings at Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris (its cartoonists had dared to satirise the Prophet Muhammad) and the assault on a Jewish supermarket. The violence peaked with the massacre of fans at the Bataclan concert hall.
The effects on French culture have been extraordinary. Islamist violence has forced up support for the far right, and allowed it to talk to the language of civil war.
We ought to know by now that terrorism has grotesquely disproportionate consequences. Rationally, western societies would do better if we did not overreact. The record of recent history shows that we do.
Here’s how I see the situation in the UK.
The BBC lectures Parisian Jews
We are waiting for bombs to detonate. We pretend we are not. No one goes on the BBC to discuss how rage about Gaza may translate into murder in the UK.
We do not like to talk about the possibility of terrorist attacks in case we are found guilty of tempting providence. It’s a possibility we do our best to block out.
But the fear is still there.
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