July 13, 2014, the storming of the Bastille was "re-enacted" by enraged mobs shouting Death to the Jews. Trampling the protest march tradition, they stomped down boulevard Beaumarchais, fanned out into the Marais, and massed in front of synagogues, armed with baseball bats, iron bars, rocks, and blood-curdling screams of Slaughter the Jews. They clashed with Jews defending the synagogue on rue de la Roquette and fought with the police that finally arrived to restore order. Six days later, the mobs occupied Place de la République in defiance of a ban against their demonstration. They climbed onto the pedestal of the Marianne statue, symbol of the French Republic and made a mockery of revolutionary iconography. "Pro-Palestinians" proclaimed love for Gaza and unconditional support for la Résistance, burned the Israeli flag, and waved the black flag of jihad. Israel was fighting back against a constant barrage of rockets launched from Gaza, one more episode in a genocidal war disguised as a national liberation movement. Hamas résistance, Jihad résistance-that's the program chanted in the heart of the French Republic in the summer of 2014. Demonstrations, banned or authorized, exploded in violence against Jewish shops, synagogues, citizens, and the French police, duty-bound to protect them. Public opinion was modeled to perceive this unbridled rage as solidarity with civilians in Gaza, victims of "excessive force" and dying in unfair numbers compared to the Jews of Israel protected by an efficient civil defense system. Who thought to warn them of the ominous portent of the jihad flag brandished at the feet of Marianne? Five months later, in January 2015, the word "jihad" finally took its rightful place in the vocabulary of current events. Jihadis decimated the staff of Charlie Hebdo, executed policemen, assassinated Jews in a kosher grocery store. In Syria and Iraq, jihadis, more exactly mujahidin, raging under that black flag behead journalists, conquer territory, destroy treasures of humanity, persecute Christians, enslave Yazidi women. "Moderate" rebels armed and trained by Western forces defect to the Islamic State or other jihad factions. European Muslims join the ranks of Daesh, learn the skills of decapitation and plot against the lands of their birth. And the free world snuggles up to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The democracies fight their sworn enemies by pouring oil on the fire. Payback comes in the shape of millions of "refugees" poured into Europe, pounding on its borders, flooding its institutions. Paris, November 13, 2015. Jihad attacks kill 129, maim or wound 352. It takes the skills of a scrupulous journalist combined with the eloquence of an inspired novelist to capture the ongoing narrative in the fullness of its living dimensions.
About the Author: NIDRA POLLER nidrapol@gmail.com Nidra Poller, born in 1935 in Jessup, Pennsylvania, is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin (BA History) and Johns Hopkins University (MA Writing Seminars). After teaching at Federal City College in Washington D.C. (1969-72), she moved to Paris where she has been living ever since. Her literary career began with the publication in 1966 of a short story, "Wedding Party in Piazza Navona," in the review Perspectives. Author of (forthcoming) novels in English and in French, she turned to journalism in 2000. She has published widely in print and online media, including the Wall Street Journal Europe, New English Review, Dispatch International, Tablet, Times of Israel, INQUISITR, Midah, Israel Affairs, Makor Rishon, Middle East Quarterly, American Thinker, Commentary, Jerusalem Post English & French, New York Sun, National Post-Canada, National Review Online and dozens of other outlets. She travels regularly to Israel and the United States, speaks in a wide variety of venues, appears in documentary films, and on radio and television in France, Israel, the US, and Canada. In a parallel career as a translator (1972-2000) she translated, among others, works by French Caribbean and African authors, including Amadou Kourouma, and texts by Emmanuel Levinas (Unforeseen History and Humanism of the Other, University of Illinois Press). RECENT RELEASES: fiction Karimi Hotel & autres nouvelles d'Africa, l'Harmattan, Paris 2011 Karimi Hotel & other African equations, authorshipintl, Paris, 2012 non-fictionAl Dura: Long Range Ballistic Myth, authorship intl., Paris 2013 FORTHCOMING 2015: non-fictionThe Black Flag of Jihad Stalks la République Protective Border Operation seen from Paris, followed by jihad attacks in Paris and Copenhagen. Synagogues Torched, Democracy Scorched Chronicle of the dawn of the 21st Century, al Dura hoax, Intifada, 9/11, Iraq...