No - you are NOT Charlie !

Today’s mass rally in Paris is a spectacular event for the French people and guaranteed to leave them aglow and refreshed after a most traumatic week.

It’s also a useful PR boost for Francois Hollande who has probably been the most inept and farcical figure ever to have occupied the Elysee Palace. As for the other visiting dignitaries, the photo-ops won’t do Netanyahu any harm in his upcoming election and, as for the King and Queen of Jordan, Paris shopping will be a welcome distraction from ISIS forces knocking on their door back home.

Mahmoud Abbas is also making an appearance – doubtless in gratitude for Hollande’s support of his UN bid for PLO statehood. Welcoming such a man to this celebration of tolerance and harmony is like inviting the grim reaper to a shiva.

But beyond all these ulterior motives and the feelgood factor for the citizens of France, this will not change anything where it counts. The crowds will drift away and life will go on, down the slippery slope to dhimmitude.

As Paris gets back to its daily routine, some may realise that a great opportunity was missed. That France passed up the chance to send the best possible answer to those who seek to destroy the free Republic. A simple and collective act of courage we might reasonably have expected from journalists in the mainstream print media.

That each and every one of them should have printed the offending cartoon somewhere in their newspaper or magazine.

I am not talking front pages here. I am talking about announcing in advance that these would appear inside every Sunday newspaper so that French Muslims who felt they might be offended needn’t buy it.

Every non-assimilating citizen would clearly get the message that the host country reserves the right to such freedom of ex‎pression and that if this does not suit them, they may freely emigrate to the nearest Sharia state.

This would have sent the clearest message of solidarity with the slain journalists and entitled the French media to genuinely claim: “Je Suis Charlie”.  As things stand, they are far from being Charlie. In fact I’d bet Charlie’s departed souls would be grossly disappointed with what they have seen from their peers. Sheer collective cowardice.

It’s the same cowardice that infects the BBC and other news media who still can’t utter the term Islamist terrorist no matter how monstrous is the massacre or how barbaric is the beheading.

Had the French media demonstrated this purest of all solidarity with Charlie, they would have almost certainly been supported with print runs across the continent. Instead of being the first in line for dhimmitude France would have been the standard-bearer leading Europe back from this dark abyss.

So, L’Express, Le Figaro and Le Monde you are most certainly not Charlie.

And tonight as you print lovely pictures of flag-waving citizens, know that you have let most of them down very badly.