The cobblestone streets of Antwerp and the quiet neighborhoods of Amsterdam now ring with the heavy tread of military boots. Following a wave of arson and bombings by the obscure Islamist group Ashab al-Yamin, the Belgian and Dutch governments have deployed armed soldiers to guard Jewish schools and synagogues. This is the tragic price of a society that has forgotten the importance of order and the protection of its religious minorities. In Antwerp, a city often called the 'Jerusalem of the North,' the sight of soldiers with assault rifles outside the places of God is a sobering reminder that the peace we take for granted is fragile. These attacks, which have targeted ambulances and places of worship from London to Rotterdam, are not merely crimes; they are assaults on the very idea of a community rooted in faith. The rise of sectarian violence in the heart of Europe is the bitter fruit of decades of soft enforcement and the erosion of shared values. When children cannot attend school without the protection of the army, the social contract has been broken. We must support the brave men and women in uniform who stand guard, but we must also ask how we reached this point. True security does not come from the barrel of a gun alone, but from a society that is confident in its own traditions and refuses to tolerate those who seek to import foreign hatreds into our streets. The protection of our neighbors, regardless of their creed, is a moral duty that requires both strength and clarity. We pray for the safety of these communities and for a return to a time when our houses of worship were sanctuaries of peace, not targets for the lawless.