Landmarks in major Western countries were illuminated last night in a show of solidarity with the victims in Brussels and the people of Belgium.
In New York, the World Trade Center, ground zero on September 11, 2001, was lit up in the Belgian colors of red, yellow, and black. In Paris, site of the atrocities committed by terrorists in January and November last year, the Eiffel Tower sported the Belgian colors. Same in Berlin, where Germans displayed their solidarity by lightening up the Brandenburger Tor.
We all grieve for the senseless losses inflicted on this small nation in the heart of Europe.
The world has rallied to show support for Belgium after the despicable attack on Belgian civilians yesterday as they were peaceably going to work on the underground and getting ready to travel from Zaventem airport, one of Europe’s major hubs. The suicide bombings cost 34 innocent people their lives and wounded more than 200.
The Belgian nation is in shock and mourning. Indeed, we all grieve for the senseless losses inflicted on this small nation in the heart of Europe.
It was done in the name of a sick, perverted, and inhumane ideology by ISIS sympathizers, hailing tragically from Brussels’ own Muslim immigrant neighborhoods, center of a terrorist cell also involved in the Paris attacks.
Unfortunately, it is only too easy for Americans and Europeans to understand the pain of Belgium’s loss. We know those feelings so well by now. ISIS-connected terrorists, and before them those controlled by al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, or Iran, have claimed innocent lives in city after city in Europe, in the United States, in the Middle East, and around the world. It is the grim reality of the world we live in today.
But out of pain, we have also fortunately seen resolve born, again and again.
The people of Belgium have come out to show courage and compassion at makeshift memorials. After the attacks in Paris, in Jan. 2015 and Oct. 2015, French citizens rallied to take back their city. Boston became known not just for the marathon bombing of 2013, but also for being “Boston strong.” And New York has rebuilt on the spot of terrible tragedy and grief at 1 World Trade Center Plaza.
Belgium now needs the aid and support of the United States and all its NATO allies in rooting out the terrorist networks that have grown in the old working-class neighborhoods of Brussels.
It is a fight against a perverted form of Islam, against extremism, inhumanity, intolerance, and hate that we all have to fight together.
