Depuis l'été 2014, 7 ministres européens des Affaires Etrangères se sont rendus à Gaza. Borge Brende, de Norvège, le premier, le 8 septembre 2014.

Suivi de George Vella, de Malte, le 29 octobre 2014, et de Martin Lindegaard, du Danemark, le 4 novembre.

Quelques jours plus tard, c'est la Haute Représentante pour l'Europe des Affaires Etrangères, Federica Mogherini, qui entre dans Gaza.

En 2015, le ministre José Garcia-Margallo, d'Espagne, se rend à son tour à Gaza. Suivi de Charles Flanagan, d'Irlande, le 16 février.

Puis de Frank-Walter Steinmeier, pour l'Allemagne, le 1er juin, et de Bert Koenders, des Pays-Bas, ce 15 juillet 2015.
A chacun va notre appréciation et notre gratitude. Ils représentent l'Europe en laquelle nous croyons. Au nom de la responsabilité et de la conscience.

 

 "Nous ne pouvons attendre jusqu'à ce que des pourparlers pour la solution a deux états reprennent pour améliorer les conditions de vie.

   Nous sommes assis sur un barril de poudre ici. A nous de nous assurer qu'il ne prenne pas feu."

   Frank-Walter Steinmeier, ministre allemand des Affaires Etrangères, lors de sa visite à Gaza le 1er juin

 

GermanyForeignOffice   @GermanyDiplo

 FM Steinmeier in Gaza: I take the hope from my Talks in Jerusalem + Ramallah, that the danger of a burning powder keg is being seen.

 FM Steinmeier : Need opening of Gaza borders + economic development. Gaza must not become launch pad for rocket attacks on Israel again.

 

"Je prends espoir dans mes échanges à Jérusalem & Ramallah, que l'on perçoive le danger d'un barril de poudre s'il prend feu.

Besoin d'ouvrir les frontières de Gaza + développement économique. Gaza ne doiut pas redevenir une base de lancement de roquettes contre Israël."

 

 

Le monde un peu trop binaire des médias français (pas de référence en ligne)

Quentin Moreau, Le Monde des médias, n°21, février-mars 2015

 

"Charlie" n'était pas destiné à séduire les foules... (pas de référence en ligne)

Bastien Collins, Le Monde des médias, n°21, février-mars 2015

 

Willem boycottait les conférences de rédaction depuis Philippe Val (pas de référence en ligne)

Valérie Benurtel, Le Monde des médias, n°21, février-mars 2015

 

Delfeil de Ton, l'un des "papas" de "Charlie", s'en prend à Charb dans "L'Obs" (pas de référence en ligne)

Julien Giraud, Le Monde des médias, n°21, février-mars 2015

 

Comment "Charlie Hebdo", au bord de la faillite, est devenu "le journal le plus riche de France" (pas de référence en ligne)

Pierre Massalki, Le Monde des médias, n°21, février-mars 2015

 

Quand Cavanna insultait les lecteurs, dans le tout dernier numéro de l'hebdo, en 1981 (pas de référence en ligne)

Cavanna, Le Monde des médias, n°21, février-mars 2015

 

Protéger l’expression dans la liberté

Robert Maggiori, Libération, 28 janvier 2015

 

Terrorisme : pourquoi l'excès de mobilisation est une faiblesse

 Vincent Le Biez, Le Figaro, 24 avril 2015

 

"Charlie" n'était pas destiné à séduire les foules... (pas de référence en ligne)

Bastien Collins, Le Monde des médias, n°21, février-mars 2015

 

Willem boycottait les conférences de rédaction depuis Philippe Val (pas de référence en ligne)

Valérie Benurtel, Le Monde des médias, n°21, février-mars 2015

 

Delfeil de Ton, l'un des "papas" de "Charlie", s'en prend à Charb dans "L'Obs" (pas de référence en ligne)

Julien Giraud, Le Monde des médias, n°21, février-mars 2015

 

Comment "Charlie Hebdo", au bord de la faillite, est devenu "le journal le plus riche de France" (pas de référence en ligne)

Pierre Massalki, Le Monde des médias, n°21, février-mars 2015

 

Quand Cavanna insultait les lecteurs, dans le tout dernier numéro de l'hebdo, en 1981 (pas de référence en ligne)

Cavanna, Le Monde des médias, n°21, février-mars 2015

 

Protéger l’expression dans la liberté

Robert Maggiori, Libération, 28 janvier 2015

 

Intégrale partie 2/3 17 janvier 2015 On n'est pas couché #ONPC (vidéo 1h11)

Michel Onfray, ONPC, France 2,  17 janvier 2015

 

Ce qu’il y a de non Charlie en moi

Rony Brauman, Le Monde, 15 janvier 2015

 

Le profil inattendu des djihadistes français

Eugénie Bastié, Le Figaro, 19 novembre 2014

 

Conversion à l'Islam : «Les jeunes français souffrent d'un malaise identitaire»

Wladimir Garcin, Le Figaro, 18 novembre 2014

 

 

 

 

 

November 22, 2014 [51 years after John F. Kennedy's assassination] : "We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process." (Martin Luther King)  

Some of us find it difficult to understand the exact meaning of this sentence about ends and means.

The end, in that sense, is the final goal that we pursue.

The means are the ways and tools that we use to reach our final goal.

 

Take the case of the attack on the Har Nof synagogue in Jerusalem, on November 18, 2014. Killing 4 rabbis and maiming 7 other worshippers in the midst of their morning prayers. The “final goal”, as claimed by a Palestinian party (PFLP), may have been a vehement protest against the Occupation, but it has been clouded in blood and totallydisfigured by the means used: knives, meat cleaver, gun. 

Likewise, the mass knife attack at the Kunming train station in China, on March 1, 2014, that left 29 dead and 130 wounded. Or the attack on Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, on October 28, 2014, when a four-wheel drive vehicle ploughed through a group of pedestrians, killing 5, wounding dozens.

Be it in Beijing or Jerusalem, be it in the name of “jihad” in Beijing or “jihad” in Jerusalem, a vehicle used to maim and kill pedestrians and passers-by, leads to the self-destruction of the goal and of the ideal in the making.

Nor have we forgotten the box of dynamite put under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, by a group of Klansmen (Ku Klux Klan), that took the lives of 4 young girls and wounded 20, out of 26 teenage girls who were entering the church.

Was dynamite anymore legitimate when used by Klansmen in 1963, or by “extreme-right” Irgun men (disguised as Arabs) at the King David Hotel, in Jerusalem, on July 22, 1946, which took the lives of 91 of various nationalities and wounded 46 ?

Were guns legitimate when used by a Jewish “far-right” Kach gunman who killed 29 Palestinian Muslims during their prayers at the Cave of Patriarchs in Hebron on February 25, 1994, wounding 125 others ?

Are guns legitimate when used by Somali Al Shabab gunmen, this 22nd of November 2014, before dawn, to hijack a bus and kill all the non-Somali passengers who could not recite a passage of the Koran ? 28  passengers on the road to Nairobi, in Mandera county, Kenya could not “prove they were Muslims” and were executed point-blank in the head.

Beware, now, if you still pretend that you do not understand about means and ends. Too many, from Jordan to Jerusalem, and all over, claim that, somehow, violence is a “natural response”, given the circumstances of the ongoing Occupation.

Surely we either ignore or have forgotten about the fate of Denise McNair, of Birmingham, Alabama, who should be 62 today; or that of Addie Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson, who should be 65; but the road to terror is the same, that leads from Jerusalem in 1946 to Jerusalem in 2014, and from Birmingham in 1963 to Hebron in 1994 and Kunming, Tiananmen, Mandera County in 2014. These four girls are still staring us in the face, although their pictures are blurred, as are staring us in the face four other little girls, killed in Gaza in early July: Yasmin Al Mutawaq, at the age of 3, from Jabaliya; Raneem Ghafoor, 1, from Khan Yunis; Safa Malaka, 6, and Marwa al Batsh, 7, from Gaza City. Along with 500 other children, they were not killed by Klansmen acting out of racial hatred, but by educated tank operators, jet-bomber and helicopter pilots who acted upon orders, firing missiles and shells from a safe distance.

We do not have pictures of Yasmin, Raneem, Safa and Marwa. We are just thankful that one British newspaper, The Telegraph, on August 26, 2014, published the list of the children killed in Gaza during 50 days of conflict, and named them. You still can find pictures of slain children in Gaza online, as you can find pictures of 4-year old Daniel Tregerman, killed by a mortar shell, in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, on August 23, 2014 - along with pictures of Naftali Fraenkel, 16, Gilad Shaer, 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19, kidnapped inGush Etzion, North of Hebron, and murdered on June 12, 2014; followed by Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 16, kidnapped in Shuafat and burned alive in the Jerusalem Foreston July 2, 2014.

Beware, now, if you are tempted to think that the road to terror that leads from one mass bombing to another mass attack, driven by retaliation, is legitimate – whether the means employed is the knife, the meat-cleaver, the car, the gun, the explosives, or the Apache helicopter.

Beware, if you call for more such attacks, under the delusion that they will get anyone closer to “liberation” or "preservation". Think of Syria today. Think of Iraq. Think of Libya. Think of Egypt, so close.

We are not doomed automatons ! We do have a choice, each of us. Between the peaceful, hopeful Tunisian way, or the appalling, terrifying Syrian way. It all starts with your own words and decisions, whether to speak and act, in favor of the knife, the gun, the bomb, the Apache, or to refrain from rushing to the abyss, keeping a clear view of the vital or fatal connection between ways and means.

You will never build a better, freer world with people who treat human beings like meat, and whose symbols have become the meat-cleaver and the kitchen knife.

Beware of a society in which butchers in a frenzy, and blind executioners, would become the norm. Be it at point-blank, or from a comfortable distance. No one is a “hero” for shedding blood !

If there is a "comfortable distance" to keep, it is for us to keep between those who want to kill and maim, and the rest of us who believe in the sanctity of human life. Any human life.

In his last speech in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King left us this warning :

“It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. This is where we are today.”

 

 

 

January 15, 2015 [Martin Luther King could have been 86 today] “Take me way back, take me way back, ah ! …Take me back to when the world made more sense   Well there’s too much suffering and confusion…”                                   - Van Morrison (Hymns to the Silence)   Take it back to just before Christmas 2014. Barely 9 or 10 weeks ago. We had the Har Nof Synagogue attack in Jerusalem (see below).  We also had the attack of a bus on the road to Nairobi, Kenya. Then, we had onslaughts and kidnappings of young girls by Boko Haram jihadis, in Nigeria, uncounted. This was the usual to us all. On our way, as Peace Liners, the first time we came across jihadis (from Afghanistan) was in Middle Bosnia, in the winter of 1993. Nobody in the West spoke about them then. They only spoke of the Serbs. To come across these jihadis from far away, you had to travel through the mountains, places that most journalists avoided. With 68 Nobel laureates, we confronted these jihadis and their brothers in arms again in Algeria, in 1997-1998, when no one in the West, and almost no one in France, cared to acknowledge what they were trying to achieve – nothing less than the Caliphate, the Islamic State. Their first task then was to slaughter journalists (read Hassan Zerrouky about it). Lo, in our long struggle for peace in Palestine-Israel, we have not met with any of them. Their numbers are restricted to Islamic Jihad militants and a few marginal groups in Gaza. Still, they caught up with us, when they struck in the heart of Paris, on January 7 and January 9, 2015. All in the name of jihad without borders, from Yemen and Iraq, Syria, back to Paris, France. This time, they were not exactly aliens, from exotic lands. The gunmen were “made in France”. Such is the double bind to which we are exposed, and that we must expose : terrorists want to terrorize us, paralyze us. Whereas some strategists want us to embark upon military ventures in distant lands, to “combat terrorists” they say. Thus realizing Orwell’s five prophecies : 1- “… three super-states are permanently at war, and have been so far for the past twenty-five years. (…) war hysteria is continuous and universal (…) The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at…” “To understand the nature of the present war – for, in spite of the regrouping which occurs every few years, it is always the same war – one must realize in the first place that it is impossible for it to be decisive.” “It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.” 2- “All of the disputed territories contain valuable minerals, and some of them yield important vegetable products (…) the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position to wage another war.” 3- “The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. (…) The problem was to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. (…) And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.” 4- “And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.” (…) “It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of DOUBLETHINK.” 5- “DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. (…) The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. (…) One clear illustration of this is the fact that war hysteria increases in intensity as one rises in the social scale. Those whose attitude towards the war is most nearly rational are the subject peoples of the disputed territories. To these people the war is simply a continuous calamity which sweeps to and fro over their bodies like a tidal wave. They are aware that a change of overlordship means simply that they will be doing the same work as before for new masters who treat them in the same manner as the old ones.” So, welcome to this Brave Old World, readers, thinkers, dreamers of the day, and occasional visitors! May you not feel dispirited by such continuous tidal waves of doom and gloom. After all, double bind situations, whose effect is to make us feel powerless, are not without exits. Open the Doors !

PEACE  LINES

MESSAGERIES DE LA PAIX 

www.peacelines.org

peacelines@gmail.com 

 

Newsletter n°88

 

15-31 janvier 2015

FROM FRANCE IN MOURNING AND TORMENT

“We stop it all, we think it over, and it’s worth it.” - Gébé

 

 

Warning : This is a quiet, uneventful street in Paris. A street lost amidst thousands of others, with its six-floor buildings made of stone, and its slate roofs that you can hardly see. Yet, by the end of January 2015, in front of the bakery at the corner, you can see a paratrooper in full combat gear, with his flak-jacket and red beret, his automatic rifle ready to fire. Hidden under a doorway, on the opposite sidewalk, another one is posted there, keeping a tense watch over any late passers-by in the falling night.

They stand guard in front of a “Jewish Community Center” that could not be distinguished by any sign, whatsoever. This center has been open for a few years only. How long will they stand guard ?

In a matter of hours, of weeks, it has all tilted. This is not the same country anymore. Each one paddles wildly with the flow, striving to keep upper lip and chin above water level. At Peace Lines, we have observed not a ritual minute of silence, but three weeks of safeguard, under the deluge of successive interventions. Every day we have posted articles, analyses on our site, in the section : Media – Must Read.

Must Read : will you take the time ? A former French Minister of Education, who was recently asked what the solution might be to the trouble his country is going through, advised to “get back to reading practice”. Now. Before more chaos and havoc strike us all. After all, isn’t this a “war” between those who can read and draw, and those who can’t ? If Dr King was right, “it is still one of the tragedies of human history that the ‘children of darkness’ are frequently more determined than the ‘children of light’.”

A rabbi friend once took me to meet Beduins south-east of Jerusalem, and I gave them a small (English-Arabic) book of Martin Luther King’s thoughts, as a token of exchange and human brotherhood. After opening it, one of them asked me, with a worried look, what “children of darkness” were. In France, this January 2015, it has become quite clear what determined “children of darkness” could be, and do. As for those who will oppose them, and prevent them from spreading further desolation, I guess it is for each of us now to start thinking, together, and take a stand. When History becomes grossly binary again, like day and night, and it is for us to see through it, setting all other matters aside for a while. Setting all other matters aside, life goes on…

 

****     ****     ****     ****

2005-2015 : THE END OF LAUGHTER ?

See through it. This avalanche did not break out without precursors, warning signs. Have we forgotten the riots of 2005 ? 2005 : a dark year for France. Take it back to May 29, 2005 : a little over 15 million French voters (almost 55%) rejected the Treaty for a European Constitution, much to the dismay of their neighbours (77% of Spanish voters had approved of the Treaty), thus blocking any constitutional document for three years. Five months later, riots erupted in dozens of French towns and suburbs, with a toll of 4 dead, 126 police and firemen wounded. 9,000 vehicles were burnt in three weeks, along with dozens of schools, gymnasiums, warehouses, stores. France had become the sick man of Europe.

As of January 7, 2015, it has become the injured man of Europe.

Ten years are gone, spiraling from bad to worse, and the French Prime Minister has finally put his finger on the wound, evoking “the ghettoes: territorial, social and ethnic apartheid”. Is there a risk of more such attacks in the near or further future ? Is this country at war, or on the verge of a civil war? With more killers arming themselves for the next rampages against Jews first ? First the Jews (Toulouse, Brussels, Paris), then others to follow, starting with journalists, like in Algeria, when journalists were first targeted at the beginning of the Algerian Civil War (remember Tahar Djaout) ?

After January 7, 2015, three full weeks of stupor, disbelief, and torment. How could anyone in his right mind think of killing the sweet-souled Jean Cabu ? merry old George Wolinski ? dear dignified Honoré ? Can you picture gunmen assassinating Three Men on a Boat ? For real, as children say ? It leaves you speechless. Where do we go from here ? What to say ? Whom to ? Is this the end ? Of laughter ? Of carelessness ? Of the freedom to express what you feel ? How can we proceed ?

And then, on January 11, one and a half million marched in Paris, with all these personalities ahead: 18 European Prime Ministers (from England to Hungary, from Sweden to Slovenia and Croatia…), plus Prime Ministers from non-European countries (Turkey, Israel…), prominent representants from other European countries (Germany, Spain, Italy…), from Kosovo too, Serbia, Palestine, Switzerland, down to 6 African Presidents (Benin, Congo, Gabon, Mali, Niger, Senegal) and the King and Queen of Jordan. Even the bells of Notre-Dame were tolling !

THE NEED TO UNDERSTAND

All it took was three men, determined to kill and get killed, to paralyze a country of 66 million – a rich and powerful country, which had just been overtaken by the United Kingdom as the 5^th economic power worldwide.

Three men born and raised in France, who found the funding for their weapons from a French loan company, to the incredibly low-cost tune of only 6,000 €. For which sum it seems they could acquire the war weapons : RPG, automatic Skorpion rifle, Kalashnikov, Tokarev handguns and ammunition necessary for their attacks. Investigators say it is common practice for would-be jihadis to borrow money from major loan companies – it is even considered as booty money. Meaning they do not have to refund it if they leave for the Islamic State or get killed in action.

So, this is war. Have we forgotten that France was already at war, since January 13, 2013, when it embarked upon its repeated raids into Mali, against Sahel jihadis, with a force of 4,000 men. By the end of 2012, it had withdrawn its troops from Afghanistan, only to re-deploy them to West Africa and Central Africa, later in 2013, and to Irak this year.

Since January 7, 2015, 10,000 military personnel are patrolling the streets, stations, airports, and standing guard before synagogues and some mosques. For a cost of 1 million euros a day.¹ Compared to 1€ for a Kalashnikov cartridge “sold on the street”, according to one of the gunmen during a previous interview.

All it took then was a three-week stay in Yemen, in the summer of 2011, to receive military training. In Yemen, jihadis now praise what they call “individual jihad”, that others call “lone wolf attacks”. Of the type that happened on the morning of January 21 on a bus in Tel Aviv, when a young man stabbed a dozen persons, wounding two of them critically. In his case, all it took was a kitchen knife, and the will to kill, the readiness to possibly get killed in the process (the Tel Aviv attacker was shot in the leg though, and duly arrested).

Israeli citizens have been confronted with such attacks for years, but why should they now strike France, of all 28 European countries? John Bowen,² a professor of anthropology at Washington University, has given his views on the matter : “The country has a long and tangled history with the Muslim world and organized religion,” he contends, giving “Three Reasons France Became a Target for Jihad”.

The first reason, he says, is that “France has been more closely engaged with the Muslim world longer than any other Western country. Since 1830, when it conquered Algeria, it has seen much of Muslim Africa as its own backyard. And after World War I, France took control of Syria and Lebanon as well (…) Unlike other European colonial powers, the French never really left their former colonies, continuing to intervene economically and militarily to defend France’s national interests in Africa and the Near East.”

The second reason being its “strong tradition of opposition to organized religion” – since the 1789 Revolution, and well into the 20^th century, when priests and nuns became the regular targets of satirists and some singers (including the famed Brassens, Ferré, Renaud). The Catholic Church having lost most, if not all, of its power and influence, the next target after September 2001 became Islam and its values. Leading to Charlie Hebdo’s repeated stands after 2005, of caricaturing Muslims and their prophet in all kinds of postures and positions that could only be deemed offensive, if not outrageous to most Muslims, within France and without (on January 24, 2015, thousands of Palestinians demonstrated in the streets of Ramallah, Hebron, against the latest cover of Charlie Hebdo, of January 14).

Leaving us with a third reason why France is in the path of the tornado : the rise of the nationalist, europhobic National Front, whose historic founder was a paratrooper in Algeria in the fifties, as John Bowen mentions, and whose policy regularly tackles a “basic incompatibility of Islam and the values of France”. Such antagonism fuels the flames of suspicion and rejection among French citizens, branding Muslims as the “usual suspects”. More than thirty mosques and so-called “Muslim” stores were attacked (with grenades even, and in drive-by shootings) from January 7 to January 20, 2015.

Then we have the inside germ of unrest and violence within the flow of Muslim immigration, as Bowen also points out, from the numbers of those he calls “settlers”, who left North Africa after World War II and settled in France in the poor sections and industrialized zones of the big cities. Only to find themselves out of work once the factories closed – “and it is their children and grandchildren who in 2005 exploded in rage over their exclusion from French society,” stresses Bowen.  If 9,000 vehicles were burnt in three weeks in October-November 2005, we must be reminded that three times that number, 28,000, had already burnt that same year, from January to September.

This analysis is not only that of an American anthropologist. Philosophers Edgar Morin³ and Michel Onfray insist that “we have created terrorism under the guise of fighting it,” and that “France has led an Islamophobic policy abroad for years now.”⁴ Military expert Jean-Dominique Merchet also made the connection between war without and war within.⁵ Historian Benjamin Stora, among others, warned that there were very few people from the poor suburbs (the ghettos) in the Million People March on January 11. ⁶ Furthermore, social sciences professors Julie Pagis⁷ and Didier Fassin⁸ likewise expressed dissenting views – the latter opposing “ethics of conviction” to “ethics of responsibility”. Political leaders as well, from ex-Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin⁹ to acting Prime Minister Manuel Valls¹⁰ who shared de Villepin’s view that “I am Charlie” cannot be the only message of France.

More striking, Delfeil de Ton’s letter, published by Le Nouvel Observateur on January 1, 2015.¹¹

WHAT OF CHARLIE ?

Paradoxically, as anti-institutional as it was to start with, Charlie Hebdo has become part and parcel of French institutions. Born in 1960 under the name Hara Kiri, with a team of ten – Bernier, Cabu, Cavanna, DDT, Fournier, Fred, Gébé, Reiser, Willem, Wolinski – this first version lasted a few years, until Charlie (2^nd avatar of the same spirit) was created, in 1969, borrowing its name from Peanuts hero Charlie Brown, devoted to comic strips and graphic art. Charlie lived until the advent of socialism, with the election of Mitterrand in 1981. It stopped for lack of an audience then, lack of funding.

Born again in 1992, with the same core team they had in 1981 (Cabu, Cavanna, DDT, Gébé, Siné, Willem, Wolinski), this 3^rd version of Charlie was reinforced by newcomers (Charb, Cyran, Luz, Renaud, Tignous, Val). Gradually, 7 of the historic 10 passed away : Reiser in 1983, Gébé in 2004, Fred in 2013, Cavanna in 2014. Fournier had died in 1973. DDT had left Charlie in 1975.  From the 1992 team, Cyran left in 2001. Siné was fired by Val in 2008 (because of a satirical trait against Sarkozy’s son, that was judged “anti-semitic” by Val. Still paradoxically, by the end of 2014 Charlie Hebdo was dying, reduced to 40,000 copies, and with no prospects of surviving financially. At the helm, Cabu was 77, Willem 79, Wolinski 80 – except that Willem would not participate in editorial staff weekly meetings, which saved his life on January 7, 2015.

Looking back, whether the victims of its acidity (and vulgarity) find it convenient or not, for any French-speaking person born after World War II, these ten men of 1960 had become… national monuments, in between icons and idols. Furiously anti-religious, left-wing, they never missed an opportunity to antagonize their targets (priests, imams, politicians) and exerted unparalleled power until now, despite the drastic decrease in followers. They were like a constant thorn stuck into conformity and global respect, never able to brake, let alone stop, before the temptation of one more provocation. “Esprit gaulois”, liberté, liberté chérie ?

Every now and then, since their turning-point in 2001, publishing more strikingly provocative drawings that were sure to offend Muslims would boost the sales to 100,000 and more, but the financial verdict had fallen : Charlie Hebdo was doomed. Had the gunmen gone off to Syria instead, the weekly would have died a natural death, and almost no one would have even noticed.

Back to DDT, Delfeil de Ton, one of the three surviving veterans. He had the unexpected strength to dissociate himself on two levels. First, like Bowen, Morin, Onfray, Merchet and de Villepin, he makes it clear that this fire was no random fire: “this attack surges within the frame of a war declared on France, but also within the frame of wars waged by France, meddling and intervening in conflicts where its participation was not a necessity – in which killings even worse than the Charlie Hebdo killings happen every day, and several times a day, to which our bombings add deaths to deaths…”.

He then reminds us that it took a phone call from the American President to the French one to call off the French bombers that were ready to take off for Syria in August 2013. “How many Syrians would France have killed, and most likely would still be killing ? Isn’t the right of peoples to self-determination a sacred principle ? If they are in an internecine war, what is our right to meddle with it ? We understand nothing of their quarrels, we only make them last longer – do we have to act surprised next, if they transport them to our territory ?”

His conclusion is about what Fassin, after Max Weber, would call an “ethics of responsibility” : “[Charb] was the chief. [After a first attack against Charlie Hebdo headquarters, in the night of November 2, 2011, in which everything was burnt down to ashes] what need did he have of dragging the team into escalation ? I will remind you of Wolin’s feelings, as they were recorded on film then, and that I had published in l’Obs : ‘I believe we are unconscious imbeciles, who took a useless risk. That’s all. We think we are invulnerable… We shouldn’t have done it.’”

 

*****     *****     *****

Not so long ago, Delfeil de Ton used to end his weekly chronicles about “the true story of Hara-Kiri Hebdo” with these lines : “Now, I see that Siné asked me for 2,500 characters. Once I have written ‘to be followed next week’, I will reach precisely the limit of 2,500 characters.”

Without entering the old quarrel of the number of characters (“spaces included” or not), the statistics tab says we have slightly passed 15,000 characters (spaces included). Over 2,600 words… 174 lines. That will be our limit for this end of January 2015. The main thing, to begin with, was to get out of this landslide, and find other voices in this storm.

We invite you to check upon the list of articles on this subject selected on our site www.peacelines.org (35 in 4 weeks after January 7), and to send us all links, references you may find necessary.

If the matter is freedom of expression indeed, this Peace Lines site needs you, your following, your feedback, your support, now more than ever.

 

¹ Nathalie Guibert, « Les pièges du plan Vigipirate pour les militaires », Le Monde, 20 janvier 2015

² John Bowen, Three Reasons France Became a Target for Jihad, Time Magazine, 8 janvier 2015

³ Edgar Morin, « Essayons de comprendre… », Le Un, 21 janvier 2015

⁴ Michel Onfray, France 2, ONPC, 17 janvier 2015 – lire aussi « Le balai de l’apprenti sorcier », Le Un, 21 janvier 2015

⁵ Jean-Dominique Merchet, « Charlie Hebdo : Pourquoi ? », L’Opinion, 13 janvier 2015.

⁶ Benjamin Stora, « Il faut préserver les principes républicains tout en s’adressant aux minorités », Le Monde,  19 janvier 2015.

⁷ Julie Pagis, « Quand nos enfants tuent nos pères », Libération, 16 janvier 2015,

⁸ Didier Fassin, « ‘Charlie’ : éthique de conviction contre éthique de responsabilité », Libération, 19 janvier 2015

⁹ Dominique de Villepin, « ‘Je suis Charlie’, ça ne peut pas être le seul message de la France », Le Figaro, 19 janvier 2015

¹⁰ Manuel Valls, « Manuel Valls évoque ‘un apartheid territorial, social, ethnique’ en France », Le Monde, 20 janvier 2015

¹¹ Delfeil de Ton, « Fais-moi mal, Charlie », le Nouvel Observateur, 16 janvier 2015

¹² Robert Maggiori, « Protéger l’expression dans la liberté », Libération, 28 janvier 2015

 

 

 

 

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