Twelve years ago today, London was hit with a multi-pronged bombing, leaving 52 dead and hundreds injured. The city, and indeed the world, was shocked.
It was the third major Islamist terrorist attack against a Western city in six years: 9/11 in 2001; the March 11, 2004 bombing in Madrid; then, in 2007, 7/7 in London.
Sadly, Islamist motivated terrorist attacks against major Western cities and other targets only increased — far more frequently than once every two years, on average. Indeed, that pace seems quaint in light of the Islamist car rammings, bridge bombings, nightclub bombings, beheadings and other atrocities that have filled our news pages over the page few years.
We have witnessed Islamist attacks in Manchester, London, Nice, Paris, Berlin, San Bernardino, Tehran, not to mention Israel, Syria and Iraq . . . and the list goes on. Have we become inured to these attacks since 7/7?
What 7/7 brought about was twofold.
First, the understanding that Islamist terrorism was becoming homegrown, that a country’s own citizens could be the perpetrators as much as foreign terrorists. There was a growing acknowledgement, painful as it was, that one’s own countrymen could be collaborating with foreign enemies for materiel, training and, not least, inspiration.
Second, stemming from the first, the surveillance of terrorist suspects would need to be more thorough and nuanced. As a result, hundreds of attacks in the UK, US and elsewhere have been prevented.
Twelve years later, the scourge of Islamist terrorism continues. But the lives of those lost on 7/7 are remembered as the will to stand up for civilization is stronger than ever. Witness the liberation of all but the smallest patches of what, until just recently, was the Islamic State in Syria.
Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News
