Sheikh Yassin, False Martyr, Real Malefactor, by Pascal Bruckner, Iannis Iannanakis and Michèle Tribalat

LE MONDE | 03.04.04 | 15:23  •  UPDATED 03.04.04 | 19:56

While our president was at the sides of Madrid's victims at a solemn gathering, how were we to understand why his representative at the United Nations Security Council was authorized to vote for a resolution proposed the next day to condemn the assassination of sheikh Yassin by Israel? One might have thought, after Madrid, that Europe would grasp the scale of the terrorist war declared on September 11, 2001.

However, far from leading to an awakening of the conscience, this event reassured our diplomats in the conviction that this act of terrorism visited on the one of the pillars of the American coalition was the inevitable sanctioning of an unjust war.

The doubled contempt of Europe that refuses to see this as a new provocation of democracies, whichever they may be, and that commits the same error as George W. Bush in linking terrorism to Iraq. Thus the victim is once more responsible for his lot: the West is necessarily guilty and, convinced of being so, deserved it!

The death of a terrorist leader who called for the murder of "the Jews," who manipulated a national struggle (itself legitimate), who, without the least moral objection, urged his own children to commit suicide in order to kill other children and who diverted charitable donations to fund his all out war, has been transformed in official European parlance into an "unacceptable and unjustified" (Jack Straw) murder of a spiritual leader of a movement some described as "political." Miguel Angel Moratinos, the future head of Spanish diplomacy, said that, at this rate, "there will be no more Palestinian interlocutors."

Did Sheikh Yassin — the charter of whose movement calls for the "total destruction of the Zionist entity" and not for a simple retreat to the 1967 borders — ever participate in a single negotiation? Do we in Europe desire a democratic Palestinian state or an Islamic republic from the river Jordan to the sea? One can wonder with good reason about the European goal of a pacified Middle East. In the heaven of "spiritual leaders," can one believe that the "paraplegic old man" will join the ranks of Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King? He will rather go to his strange heaven, that of the shahid, those "phony matyrs" that he armed spiritually...

It is striking and worrisome to observe that in Europe compassion for victims, fed by post-colonial guilt, has lead to an equalizing martyrology that, in the same sincere lamentations, confuses the victims and their murderers. A few exceptions are nevertheless noteworthy: tears dry up for the Israeli victims, the soldierly American woman or her Iraqi "collaborators"...

In his time, Spinoza enlightened us about the perverse duo, remorse and resentment. The Islamists have succeeded in deriving political and cultural gains from the European propensity to self indictment. Convinced that it must make amends for a mistake, Europe turns the other cheek. It does not see that such resentment has only fed hatred for a model of society — albeit imperfect — in which freedom and equality among citizens are established. This declaration, death to its essence, has not been heard, and we can even fear that, the more it is struck, the more Europe will be convinced that it's its own fault.

This is why Europe must "attack the roots of Evil" that are "injustice, resentment and frustration" (Dominique de Villepin), not combat but "seek to understand" the enemy, for "to understand the other is fundamental" and "the use of force leads nowhere" (Mario Soares). This effort to seek out the rational in criminal deliria continues to obsess Europe despite the lesson of the totalitarianisms taught in its midst.

So what are the foundations of our collective memory? What of history have we retained today to see war criminals portrayed as political actors? Is this to prepare the pacifist public opinions of democracies for a new, bipolar order? Is the contemporary world, united under American ægis, so anathema to us that sharing our planet with a new totalitarianism would be preferable? First the Zhdanov doctrine and nuclear deterrence, then the charia revised and corrected by jihadis and the deterrence of indiscriminate terrorism? But is "peaceful coexistence" with the devout enemies of life desirable?

The insuperable strength of our democratic model is the genuine political power of its public opinion. Citizens have the power and the duty to lead their elected representatives and to take stock of a reality that sometimes eludes diplomats. And when terrorism strikes, in stead of accusing our leaders of being the "real guilty parties," it is urgent that we unite to avert the worst: the collapse of our system under the effect of violent internal and external pressures.

Pascal Bruckner is a writer. Iannis Iannanakis is a political scientist and Michèle Tribalat is a demographer.

• ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN THE 04.04.04 EDITION