This week’s homicidal attack on a French satirical magazine follows years of violence against French Jews. Will Europeans finally begin to realize that radical Islamism presents a grave threat to Western civilization? David Horovitz writes:

Speaking to Israeli television from Paris on Wednesday night, hours after gunmen shouting “Allahu Akbar” had shot dead twelve people at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, the French-Jewish parliamentarian Meyer Habib called the massacre France’s 9/11. When Islamist killers targeted Jews in Toulouse in 2012 and Brussels last year, Habib recalled, “we warned that this would come to all of France. And to our sorrow it came. . . .”

The question is whether France, Britain, and the rest of Europe, in the aftermath of Wednesday’s assault . . . will now muster a more energetic, coordinated, and effective response.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.