Songbird

Suketu Mehta, from Mumbai writes about the terror attacks. Two paragraphs stuck out. The first:

Mumbai is a “soft target,” the terrorism analysts say. Anybody can walk into the hotels, the hospitals, the train stations, and start spraying with a machine gun. Where are the metal detectors, the random bag checks? In Mumbai, it’s impossible to control the crowd. In other cities, if there’s an explosion, people run away from it. In Mumbai, people run toward it — to help. Greater Mumbai takes in a million new residents a year. This is the problem, say the nativists. The city is just too hospitable. You let them in, and they break your heart

In the news reports on the vile, cowardly, and murderous attacks, time after time, it was reported how the population of Mumbai did their best to help those trapped in the hotels and wounded on the streets. They did so at great risk their lives. Sandra, at the Jewish Center, faced the terrorists head on and slammed a door in their face. Hours later, when she heard two year old Moishe calling her name, she didn't hesitate and ran toward him, scooped him up from amid the bodies of his dead parents, and carried him out of the building. Hers is but one of the many of selfless acts by those in Mumbai who tried to help one another.

The other paragraph that struck me reflects the anger I've been feeling about the Jewish Center attack. I'm angry about the loss of life and all those who were murdered but the attack on the Jewish Center was personal. I didn't know any of those were murdered but they were my people. I know there are many critics of Chabad but my personal experience has been positive. Mehta has this to say:

In 1993, Hindu mobs burned people alive in the streets — for the crime of being Muslim in Mumbai. Now these young Muslim men murdered people in front of their families — for the crime of visiting Mumbai. They attacked the luxury businessmen’s hotels. They attacked the open-air Cafe Leopold, where backpackers of the world refresh themselves with cheap beer out of three-foot-high towers before heading out into India. Their drunken revelry, their shameless flirting, must have offended the righteous believers in the jihad. They attacked the train station everyone calls V.T., the terminus for runaways and dreamers from all across India. And in the attack on the Chabad house, for the first time ever, it became dangerous to be Jewish in India.

Think about that last statement. India has become dangerous for Jews. The sickness and evil of Islamic terrorists is spreading.

It is a war on the openness that we have in the West and in India. It is a war on ideas and the notion that all people are free to chose how to live their lives. It is an evilness and a darkness. There should be no excuses for these vile murderers. Condemnation must be given where ever the attacks occur. There can be no excuse given for terror attacks in Israel, Spain, London, New York, Bali, and India. These terrorists are not freedom fighters. They are not militants. They are cold-blooded murderers who seek nothing more than to silence the songbird of freedom.