Canary in the Coal Mine

For years we Israelis have been warning the world that what is happening here will soon happen elsewhere. We are simply experiencing it first.  And if they equivocate, excuse and justify such attacks against Israelis, they too will soon begin to feel the terrible effects of Islamic violence.

Yet the wise leaders of the world's governments and diplomatic institutions have rejected the idea that Israel is just a canary in the world's coal mine*.  We must have provoked the violence directed against us, as well as the groundswell of anger emanating from the Muslim world.  

After all, no reasonable people would behave with such violence and callous disregard for human life, unprovoked.

No reasonable people, indeed.

Now after months of silence from the Europeans regarding the current wave of stabbings and shootings we have been enduring here in Israel, somewhat apropos of the canary in the coal mine analogy, a stabbing attack has just been reported in the tunnels of the London Underground.

Interestingly, the New York Times is already reporting the attack in London as 'terrorism', while they have largely ignored the attacks happening here, or dismissed them as the random acts of 'militants'.  I guess the difference between Chateaubriand and Flanken depends on where you cut it.

I'll be interested to see if such attacks against Europeans will be greeted with the same indifference and apathy as those carried out against Israelis... or if the creeping danger in the tunnels will finally be recognized for what it is, and addressed with clear-eyed resolve by the civilized world.

 

*An allusion to caged canaries (birds) that miners would carry down into the mine tunnels with them. If dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide collected in the mine, the gases would kill the canary before killing the miners, thus providing a warning to exit the tunnels immediately.