Everyone Love a Party, Though Some Execrate Them

"But if we think there are risks, depending on our analysis of the context, we have fallback scenarios. There are Plan Bs and Plan Cs."

"[Organizers could decide to shorten the itinerary of the parade on the Seine, and even to] repatriate the ceremony to the Stade de France".

"It's a world first. We can do it and we will do it."

"We want to work towards an Olympic truce and I think it is an occasion for me to engage with a lot of our partners."

French President Emmanuel Macron

President Macron visiting the Grand Palais, which will host some of the Games  Getty Images

France feels it is prepared to deal with the very real possibility of a terrorist attack during the Paris Olympics. It has, after all, experienced a number of such devastating attacks by Muslim terrorists in the past. The show must go on. In Munich, Germany, the host country of the 1972 Olympic Games, it was unlikely that their intelligence service picked up the potential for a terrorist attack; that Black September of the extreme branch of the extremist Islamist PLO would plan an attack leading to the deaths of 11 Israeli Olympians. A half-century has passed but not the danger inherent in the rank hatred of Islamists murderers wreaking mayhem and havoc.

 

The Israeli Olympic delegation parades during the opening of the Munich Olympic Games on Aug. 26, 1972. West German organizers wanted to give the Games a light atmosphere, trying to break from Germany's prior Olympics under the Nazis in 1936.  AFP via Getty Images

Of course it is not only Israel and Jews that excite the hatred and deathly malice of Islamists. Jews first, perhaps, but their focus also turns to the West, and any who spurn their version of Islam, including other Muslims. They reserve the right of their entitlement to martyrdom and the gift of the dead to Islam's rigorous calls to  jihad, their zeal in promoting the benefits of both earning them the loathing fear and terror of those unwilling to become another statistic in the volumes of their lethal exploits.

So, ahead of the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, France is of necessity on high security alert. Millions of visitors are expected to be drawn to Paris to glory in the international sportsmanship of competition, but not the gore of slaughter. The unique opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics sees the River Seine the locale of the opening ceremonies. As many as 600,000 spectators were originally envisioned to witness from the riverbanks the 10,500 athletes parading on boats along the Seine, the route to end in front of the Trocadero in the heart of Paris on July 26.

 

Still from video: paris-olympics-splashy-river-seine-curtain-raiser-faces-security-transport-challenges

 

This exceptional opening ceremony involving boats carrying athletes along the Seine on a six-kilometre parade with a huge crowd watching from the embankments has understandably excited security concerns to a  high pitch. France's president has addressed the issue, assuring both his citizens and the world community that law enforcement forces in France will be mobilized to ensure security of the opening event, at a level of alert exceptionality set to match the level of the event itself.

The organizers' ambitious original plans -- in the interests of logistical concerns linked to security -- have been reluctantly and progressively scaled back. Overall number of spectators reduced to 300,000. Despite which, President Macron insists that plans for the opening ceremony remain the same, at least for the present. Repeatedly struck by deadly Islamic State attacks, the most deadly of which was the Bataclan theatre massacre of 2015 when terrorists opened fire on concertgoers, holding some as hostages for hours, is never far from the mind of authorities determined to protect from another like it.

Countdown clock reading 100 days before the Olympics opening in Paris. AP Photo