This is how Karen Northshield, one of the survivors of the Brussels airport attack, spoke to Politico:
“All I could do was wait and pray that God would come and save me."
It has already been ten years, so in case you forgot, on March 22, 2016, ISIS terrorists carried out coordinated suicide bombings at Brussels Airport in Zaventem and Maelbeek metro station, killing 32 people and injuring over 300.
32 dead and 300 injured.
The terrorists' names: Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, Khalid el-Bakraoui, and Najim Laachraoui.
As the West once again finds itself staring into the abyss-this time in open war against the Islamic Republic of Iran-it is necessary to look back without indulgence. Because what happened then was the poisoned fruit of a civilization that had decided to fund its own executioners, to fight for their release, and ultimately to celebrate them as martyrs.
Israel had warned Belgian officials weeks before the attack about inadequate security measures at Brussels Zaventem airport. The warning came from Israeli officials tasked with evaluating security standards at airports operating flights to Tel Aviv. The Israelis had identified “significant deficiencies" at the airport, which just days later became the site of two deadly ISIS explosions.
A year earlier, Israel had helped London stop a Hezbollah terrorist plot.
But European neutrality-that dogmatic belief in the intrinsic goodness of others-prevailed over the instinct for survival. Only six months later, the Belgians would travel to Israel to take security lessons.
These days, Israel’s Mossad is in London helping the British with counterterrorism. A few nights ago, four Jewish Hatzola ambulances were destroyed in London.
One of the airport terrorists, Khalid el Bakraoui, when released from prison in early 2014, two years before the airport attack, received €28,000 in various social welfare benefits from the Belgian system. With that money, Khalid and his brother Ibrahim bought backpacks, nails, and detonators.
Then there was their cousin, Oussama Atar, the mastermind of the attack.
Raised in Brussels, Atar was arrested in Iraq by Americans in 2005. The Belgian government and NGOs immediately began pressuring for his release, invoking “Islamophobia," and some NGOs spread the false claim that Atar had cancer (in reality, he was in excellent health). Among those advocating for him was liberal politician Louis Michel-former Belgian minister, deputy prime minister, foreign minister, and European Commissioner for Development, as well as father of Charles Michel, President of the European Council from 2019 to 2024.
The Belgian government pushed for the terrorist’s release despite warnings from American and French intelligence services, which considered Atar extremely dangerous.
Elected representatives from the Socialist Party, Amnesty International, and environmental groups took part in a demonstration outside the Brussels Palace of Justice on October 9, 2010, under the slogan “Save Oussama."
The support committee included Jamal Ikazban, now head of the Socialist group in the Brussels Parliament.
Atar was released, returned to Belgium, and masterminded the killing of 32 “infidels."
In Copenhagen, two artists lost no time in planning to stage the deeds of the brothers Ibrahim and Khaled el Bakraoui, who detonated their explosive belts at the Brussels airport check-in. Among the terrorist accessories on display was a replica of Ibrahim el Bakraoui’s leather glove, used to conceal the bomb detonator. The exhibition was inspired by Tehran’s “Museum of Martyrs," and the suicide bombers were presented alongside historical figures who died for their cause, such as Joan of Arc and Socrates.
The West, in its aesthetic decadence, celebrates its destroyers. Moral relativism has reached its peak - or nadir: death is no longer evil but performance; fanaticism is no longer barbarism but cultural expression.
Thus, we funded terrorists through welfare, our NGOs and governments campaigned for their release from prison, and Western artists justified them by comparing them to the Maid of Orléans and the Greek philosopher.
The same elite that shouted “Save Oussama" now wonders whether using force is “excessive." The same culture that displayed a bloodstained glove in a museum now questions whether it is “Islamophobic" to name the enemy.
Belgium chose to ignore the warning of a country-Israel-that has always lived under the threat of Islamic terrorism. Brussels, the bureaucratic heart of Europe, felt safe in its illusion of neutrality, in its dogmatic belief that dialogue, forced integration, and unilateral tolerance are enough to ward off evil.
Last week, Benjamin Netanyahu, in his first press conference on the war with Iran, said:
“Churchill said that democracies suffer from the torpor of democracy. A disease, he called it. And they only wake up when they hear the gong-the gong of danger. Well, you are hearing it. We must be strong. We must be more powerful than the barbarians, or they will not just be at the gates-they will crash through them and destroy our societies."
It is not enough to pray that God will come to save us, as the survivor did: we must also save ourselves from ourselves.
At Brussels airport, the site of the terrorist attack, an Islamic iftar was held last week.
We are setting the table for the suicide of Europe’s civilization.