RECENTLY, a truck driven by Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel mowed through revelers gathered to watch fireworks during Bastille Day celebrations in Nice, in the southeast of France, killing 84 people and injuring about 100 others. With this terrorist act, the Bastille Day celebrations in France were turned into a horrific scene with the smell of blood. It was a painful scene of bodies strewn all over the road. The victims were of various nationalities and religions. Death and destruction anywhere, whether in the Western, Arab or Muslim countries, are the ultimate goal of terrorist organizations, which enjoy shedding the blood of innocent people, irrespective of their nationality or religion. These organizations always look for excuses for terrorist operations. Examples include attacking the West for assisting Israel against the Palestinians, to force Western armies to withdraw from Muslim lands, or to punish the West for providing assistance to what they call "infidel rulers" who they say "oppress" their own people. There are many other excuses that terrorist organizations use to justify the killing of innocent people, calling it a holy war (jihad) in the path of God. The justifications for killing innocent people are not strange to terrorist organizations. They look for any pretext to kill and cause destruction. But it is astounding to find some intellectuals, journalists and others who are elated about the misfortune of France and who show no sorrow for the carnage left by the criminal act by giving strange excuses to justify their stance. They should have reacted with a much higher degree of wisdom. Their excuses went on like: This is the least that France deserves for the years of colonizing Arab countries, or the martyrs who fell in Algeria during the war of liberation from France, or the role France is currently playing out in Syria. They also have excuses for terrorist acts that have taken place in Western countries previously. This is strange. There is no better service or support these people can give to terrorist organizations than the justifications they provide for their heinous crimes. I don't know how a person can justify a terrorist act that targets innocent people. A terrorist act is a heinous crime that must be condemned by one and all without exception, irrespective whether it has taken place in an Arab, Muslim, or Western country. It is a cowardly act that claims innocent lives without discrimination against any religion, race, or color. All are equal before terrorist organizations. It seems these people are trying to forget that these terrorist organizations that are targeting the West target us as well. Do they have justifications for terrorist acts that take place in our own countries? There is no justification for any terrorist act, whether it takes place in Saudi Arabia or outside it. Justifying such criminal acts is as good as legitimizing them. This does not help in combating and eradicating terror.
