Reflecting on what he terms the “summer of terror,” Douglas Murray assails the inability of Europe’s media, and its politicians, to assess the problem properly:

For the time being, the acceptable thing is to blame Islamic State (IS). There is sense in that. The German train attacker had an IS flag at his home, the Ansbach bomber left a video pledging allegiance to the group, and at least one of the Rouen church attackers had tried to travel to Syria to join it. The extent to which the group is involved varies, and it undoubtedly talks up its capabilities, but Islamic State’s ability to inspire as well as direct [terror] will be a problem as long as it exists.

However, opinion polls show that the European public knows that the problem is bigger than that. Before IS there was al-Qaeda. After IS there will be something else. . . .

The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, . . . among others, is willing to be strident about “Islamism.” But like every other European political leader, he is unwilling to admit where it comes from. Again, the public is ahead of him. They know that Islamism comes from Islam. The extreme interpretation may be a minority problem, but when a continent is struggling to assimilate the Muslims already present, there is a huge risk in bringing in so many immigrants from war-torn parts of the world where jihadism is already rampant. Some of this summer’s attackers were born here; others were recent arrivals. . . .

If Europe wants to help genuine refugees then it can help them outside Europe, as Britain has sought to do. It does not need to turn Europe into one vast refugee camp: we can’t afford it, and aside from a noisy fringe of migration extremists, the people of Europe don’t want it. . . . [But] as the public continues to move to the right, its representatives will continue to stampede to the left. And the . . . madness will continue dragging on into the autumn. Which could be not just the autumn of this year—but the autumn of liberal Europe.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.