“…everything began like a children’s game, a game played by children who will never have time to become adults.” — Marc Levy, from Children Of Freedom

One of my greatest fears today is that my children will never have time to become adults. As a teenager, my greatest fear was of having to go to war. I was raised next door to a Second World War veteran, and so I had heard discomfiting stories about soldiers’ sufferings, and also stories about the sufferings of civilians who were either the targets of tyrants or incidentally found themselves in the pathway of war. But as it turned out, thanks to the sacrifices of our brave soldiers, I had time to become an adult. All too many of today’s children are not so privileged.

The war we face today in North America, not as soldiers but as civilians, is a war brought to our very doorstep by the forces of the global jihad. Of course, there are conventional wars being fought abroad, wars that are like so many conflicts before them. But the war the Islamic jihadist is waging against the West is a terrorist’s niche because, typically, the terrorist loves “soft targets,” simply because soft targets require minimal planning. And soft targets are “terrorized” much easier than are military targets. Civilians doing their shopping, or riding a subway, or enjoying a day at the beach are not at all inured to the horrors of a terrorist strike as are, conversely, military personnel trained for the stress and brutality of combat. The naivete and ignorance of Western leaders today in insouciantly dismissing the raw evil of the Islamic jihadist is one of the greatest advantages enjoyed by the enemies of Western democracy.

The Islamic terrorist has Western civilians and their places of concourse at the top of his/her target list. They want to kill unarmed and therefore defenseless civilians. Hence I’m always puzzled whenever I read reports in newspapers referring to some unidentified “mastermind” who planned this or that terrorist attack on civilian targets. How much of a “mastermind” does it take to plan for a Muslim terrorist to drive a panel truck into a crowd on a balmy summer night in France? I’m also amused when I read of ISIS or other terrorist groups claiming responsibility for every lone wolf attack, as if their terrorist network were more extensive than it really is. I’m reminded here of the fact that Adolf Hitler’s party number was 555, although there were actually only 55 members when he joined: the Nazis had started numbering at 500 so as to make their movement appear more popular than it actually was.

The blind faith all too many have in the mainstream press – including its fictional and apologetic narrative, which in many instances inevitably aids and abets the jihadist cause and actually hinders the creation and advancement of any genuinely “moderate” Islam – has become a noetic impediment all over the Western world to understanding what we’re up against: authorities have failed again and again to notice, or to acknowledge, the vile vision the jihadists have for the future of a Western world that they believe will one day be theirs. Christopher Hitchens wrote, “Even as we worry what they may intend for our society, we can see very plainly what they have in store for their own: a bleak and sterile theocracy enforced by advanced techniques.” Today it is imperative for us to remind ourselves that what the jihadists intend for their own, they also intend for the citizens of all Western democracies, and are actively working for the end of those democracies.

I am appalled that my teenage children are today subjected to news reports of Jews being attacked in European cities by Muslim terrorists; of a Jewish rabbi being stabbed to death in a synagogue in Israel while praying (the target of a so-called Arab “Palestinian” promoting the cause of a “Palestinian state”); of an ISIS recruit shooting up a gay bar in Orlando, Florida; of a Canadian soldier being shot to death at a war memorial in Ottawa. I remember reading about the Achille Lauro hijacking of October 7, 1985 and thinking that those terrorists and that terrorist act were far away and therefore were of no concern to me. But now this jihadist horror is on our doorsteps. Now Canadians are beginning to experience, in extremely small samples, the terrorism Israeli Jews have been experiencing in much greater measure for decades. What did old Job say? “That which I greatly feared has come upon me.”

Candice Malcolm writes in the Toronto Sun: “At least 180 individuals with a connection to Canada are fighting alongside terrorist organizations. That’s up from 130 known terrorists in 2015. But those individuals aren’t necessarily the problem for Canada right now. A far greater security concern are the jihadists who are here in Canada.” She goes on to point out that “there are 60 known returned foreign fighters in Canada,” according to a federal government report.

How will our children ever find the opportunity to become adults, living in times such as these? Even as the proverbial “clash of cultures” is taking shape before their very eyes, even as they pass into adulthood, they are indoctrinated with the childish fantasy that this is just a game, that the talking heads of CBC are to be believed, that Islam really is a religion of peace and, according to Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada, most terrorists just want to have fun.