All across the world people have been changing their facebook profile picture to include the French tricolor. From notables like Mark Zuckerberg to ordinary folk like many of my friends people have wanted to "show a gesture of solidarity" with the French people in this, their darkest hour since World War II.
I'm not on facebook, but if I were this is one bandwagon I wouldn't be joining. Not that what happened in Paris on Friday night wasn't enormous: the deliberate targeting of young people celebrating their freedom by enjoying a night on the town. This wasn't just a reprisal, or a "price ticket" as the Jewish terrorists call it when they attack the Palestinians, it was a deliberate attack on people who don't share their perverted brand of Islam.
But where was all this solidarity when Kenya was bombed, or Nigeria, or Lebanon, or Pakistan? The list is endless. What about, for instance, those 224 Russians blown out of the sky only last month? The truth is that France is our nearest neighbour, and love them or loathe them, they are culturally speaking closer to us than any other race of people. Hence to single them out for our "gesture of solidarity" is to recognise how parochial we have become.
We should be educating ourselves to be world citizens, capable of feeling the pain of other oppressed peoples wherever they are, not just north-western Europe. We're not Americans, most of whom care very little about what happens beyond their borders unless it directly impinges on them. We're better than that, aren't we?
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