Below, Charlie has written quite forcefully about Secretary Kerry and his clumsy (at best) remarks about Paris: the massacre at Charlie Hebdo and the attacks last week. As some readers know, I interviewed Zineb El Rhazoui earlier this year. She is a Moroccan-born journalist who worked at Charlie Hebdo and was spared murder. She was absent that day, but the killers have taken note, and vowed to do what they were unable to do that day. They are especially affronted by Zineb because she springs from a Muslim family, country, and culture.

I would like to excerpt my piece, in light of Kerry’s comments and my colleague’s post about them:

I point out to her [Zineb El Rhazoui] what she well knows: that many people fault Charlie Hebdo for being “provocative.” What does she have to say to them? Many things, of which I will relate a few.
First, these critics “may have a lack of culture.” The satirical press is an old tradition in France, and “it is not meant to please the one who is cartooned. By definition and necessity, it is provocative. But that does not mean that, if you provoke, you deserve to be killed.”
Second, “we are a French atheist magazine. Why should we accept a rule of their religion?” (By “rule,” she is alluding to the Sunni taboo on depicting Mohammed.) “In France, do we work under sharia law or French law? Just tell me!”
Third, “you don’t have to buy Charlie Hebdo. It’s not a compulsory product.”
Fourth, “the monsters who killed my colleagues in the heart of Paris are the same monsters who kill in Nigeria, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other parts of the world. In Paris, they killed because we depicted the prophet, but in other places they kill you because you’re drinking a beer or because you’re not covering your hair or because you don’t go to mosque. They even kill innocent children, for no reason. They will always find a pretext to kill, so I don’t accept this argument from those who say we are provoking.” . . .
Near the end of our discussion, I ask Rhazoui the most clichéd question in the business: “What would you like people to know?”
“I am not merely threatened,” says Rhazoui, “I am condemned to death. I live under protection, and this protection is paid for by the French state. But I don’t think it’s to protect me personally. My life is not worth that much. It’s to protect freedom of speech and to protect a model of society that we want to build and preserve. So people must understand that if people like me are threatened today, tomorrow their own rights and freedoms will be threatened, if they do nothing.”