Belgian King: "Let Us Dare to Be Tender"

This article was first published in The New English Review




On March 22, Belgium's King Philippe marked the one-year anniversary of the murderous terrorist attack in Brussels that killed 32 people at the Brussels airport and subway. In a monument to Europe's surrender to the forces of evil, here is what the King had to say:

"It's the responsibility of each and every one of us to make our society more humane, and more just. Let's learn to listen to each other again, to respect each other's weaknesses"Above all, let us dare to be tender." 

At least the king wasn't holding an umbrella in one hand and waving a piece of paper in the other a'la Neville Chamberlain.

Where was the anger? Where was the vow to stand up to these barbarians who have entered his country and committed mass murder on his citizens? Was it Belgium's fault that they were not more humane, more just? Had Belgium not listened to the "grievances" of the bombers?

This is symptomatic of the attitude of almost every Western European country when it comes to confronting Islamic terror. They refuse to close their borders to waves of people that include so many criminals, shiftless people looking for welfare, hate-filled fanatics, rioters, and terrorists. How many Europeans have to die to show the world Europe's "openness"?

In addition to the March 22 bombings, it was Brussel's Molenbeek quarter, inhabited by an unassimilated Muslim community, that harbored one of the Paris terror attack ringleaders, Salah Abdeslem, for four months. The people in that district knew that he was hiding in plain view among them. He wasn't hiding in some attic. He was going to cafes and ordering pizzas. Yet nobody lifted a finger to notify the police.

Belgium has become one of the biggest havens for Islamic terrorists in the world. And here you have their king telling his grieving citizens, "Let us dare to be more tender",  as if that were going to melt the hearts of the killers and lead them to the righteous path. Has Belgium not learned its lesson from World War II, when it was occupied by a murderous foreign force that was ready to kill their citizens at the drop of a hat-first and foremost its Jews?

The day may well come when Belgium's epitaph will read:

"Here lies Belgium. It dared to be more tender."