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Illustration: Ella Baron
As a Frenchman mandated to write this feature before the Paris attacks happened, I have both the fortune and misfortune to be in the position to express my feelings about the events that took place on 13th November in Paris; this is not an easy article to write. Yet I want to give you an impression of what, as a French national living abroad, my reaction has been to this horrifying attack.
A couple of days later, I am still struggling to wrap my head around the sheer scale of what happened. More than 130 people died in Paris last Friday in what is the deadliest terrorist attack ever committed on French soil. Ever since Friday, I can only wonder what we could have done to avoid it. I can only ask myself, what did those people do, what did my country do, to deserve this?
I greatly dislike the obvious answer that has been offered in the aftermath. Yes, we could have stayed out of Syria, and thus not angered extremists into reacting in the way they did. We could have refrained from bombing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. We could have put the abstract security of our people ahead of the very real and horrifying deaths that happen every day in the Middle East. Some individuals living in Middle Eastern countries would rather us let them sort themselves out without our meddlesome interventions; some people here would be happy to let them have at it. They would say, why should we care about people who don’t seem to share any of our Western values? The answer is that these values, and the basic rights that they protect, come with a contingent set of duties that bind us to the fate of all people, not just our own people.
Reducing our perspective to only our own country would mean ignoring the countless horrors that take place every day around the world; if we truly believe in the defence and promotion of basic human rights and welfare, then this belief must be applied universally. All people, regardless of where they are in the world, deserve to be considered equally. We must show an unyielding commitment to defend the basic rights that make us all human. This fully justifies contributing, in whatever way, to finding a solution to both Syrian conflict, and the issues in much of the Middle East more generally.
The question is, do we actually consider these basic rights to be universal? There has been a great backlash against the huge movement of support for France, or at least the lack of equivalent shows of support for similar tragedies. Examples of this include the lack of media coverage of the bombings in Beirut on the day before the Paris attacks or the university shooting in Kenya in April, which has resurfaced due to the very similar number of casualties – 140. I fully understand the frustration many people feel when a shooting in a major European capital completely overshadows equivalent tragedies in non-European regions. As a French person, I also cannot feel anything but overwhelming gratitude for the unbelievable support for my country in the wake of what happened.
Cynically, it is sadly the case that many people intuitively feel more strongly about tragedies in communities that are close or similar to their own than in communities that are geographically or culturally more distant; the reaction to the Paris and Lebanon shootings supports this observation. My hope, and the only hope one can have in a change in these intuitions, is that this newfound solidarity in the Western world will set a precedent. My hope is that mass move- ments of condolences and anger towards perpetrators of such horrific attacks become commonplace in the future.
Changing human nature is a very difficult task; yet I would rather consider the international gathering to stand with the French to be a step in the right direction towards a more empathetic and compassionate global community.
These are harrowing times for my country; I have stopped counting the number of times I have read the word ‘horror’ in the past few days. Yet it is important to look to where we go from here. When I do so, I see a ray of light. When I see the international response to this tragedy, the sheer number of people who have chosen to gather together around the world to condemn this horrifying crime, I feel hope. I am grateful to those who have expressed concern and anger following the Paris attacks. The response that I have witnessed over the past few days has also reminded me that people across borders and beliefs can unite when faced with an unacceptable act of terror; I remember that there are some values, visible through the prism of what we cannot condone and must oppose, that we all share. We can and should use these values to fight those who would divide us.
For now, Paris must continue to grieve. Those individuals who died in this terrible atrocity will not be forgotten and their deaths should act as a reminder that Paris and the rest of the world must stand up to acts of evil. But Paris, France and the West more generally must also continue to look beyond their own borders. A death is a death wherever it happens in the world. The outpourings of support for the people of Paris, and the demonstrations of solidarity, are remarkable, and it is my hope that in the future a similar level of sympathy will be shown to more distant communities suffering from similar atrocities.
Terrorism only works if it succeeds in making us afraid. The perpetrators of this attack thought that they could weaken us by spreading fear into our hearts. They have only strengthened us. It is reactions to horrifying situations like this that suggest that maybe, in the future, we can live in a world where no terrorist attack goes unanswered; and that is the best comfort one could hope for.
