With another Islamist-inspired knife attack shaking Berlin, Germany is once again paying the price for a decade of denial. It reinforces tha belief that Europe’s migration crisis was never merely about numbers but a profound failure of political judgment. The latest outrage followed a horrifying rampage near a Berlin Pride event, where a man drove a rented van into a crowd, killing a 65-year-old Polish woman and injuring at least 29 others before attacking people with a machete. Just days before, another confrontation had unfolded in Berlin’s leafy Spandau district, when the police had shot dead a knife-wielding suspect as he charged towards officers. The identity of the attacker has intensified the questions facing Germany. Abdul Ballout, a 21-year-old German citizen of Lebanese origin, was not an unknown figure. Authorities knew he had previous convictions for assault, robbery and extortion. They knew he had attempted to join the Islamic State. They knew he had been radicalised. The tragedy in this case was not a failure to identify a threat but the failure to act on one. Germany’s latest security crisis is part of a disturbing pattern. The country has repeatedly witnessed attacks where perpetrators were already known to authorities or had displayed warning signs before violence erupted. In December 2016, Tunisian extremist Anis Amri drove a truck into Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz Christmas market, killing 13 people. He had been classified as a security threat, yet bureaucratic failures allowed him to remain in Germany. In Würzburg in 2021, a Somali migrant killed three women in a knife attack after reportedly shouting Islamist slogans. In 2024, a police officer was killed in Mannheim when an Afghan national carried out a knife attack during an anti-Islam demonstration. The same year, Solingen’s anniversary celebrations were shattered when a Syrian asylum seeker allegedly inspired by Islamic State ideology killed three people. In each case, the public was told that lessons would be learned. In each case, the cycle continued. The roots of this crisis lie in the political choices made during Europe’s migrant wave of 2015. Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than a million migrants and asylum seekers into Germany was presented as an act of moral leadership. Her famous declaration “Wir schaffen das” (we can manage this), which became the defining slogan of an era, today stands as the apotheosis of elite liberal folly besides being a dangerous illusion. Merkel’s government had underestimated the challenges of integration, vetting and monitoring. Instead, a legitimate debate about borders, identity and public safety was replaced by moral grandstanding. Open societies cannot survive if they become incapable of defending themselves. Berlin’s latest tragedy is not simply another attack. It is a warning that Europe ignored too many times.
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