As the world reels once more, from an act of sadistic, inhumanity, all eyes have turned to a small yet well known district in Kings County, Brooklyn. Crown heights, the home of the Chabad movement headquarters, the community of Chabad Shliach Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivkah slain brutally in their own Jewish outreach center in Mumbai.

On Friday the Chabad leadership held a press conference for the myriads of media personnel and reporters that had descended on the community to document, capture and convey the pain and sorrow. Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky addressed the reporters.

In a most stirring moment during the press conference a reporter asks Krinsky: “how will this affect the Shlichus movement, and will you be deterred from going to more volatile areas? Matter of factly Krinsky responds: “Nothing deters us”

In order to defeat the scourge of Islamist terror effectively, we need to believe in our way of life with the utmost passion. Our love of life and freedom must be as powerful and focused as the radical Islamic glorification of death and oppression. So far we have seen in the west a wavering spirit that denies us the stomach to follow through all the way with the necessary measures needed to combat this global ill.

Chabad and the Shluchim, as indicated by Krinskys comment “nothing deters us” displays exactly that conviction. Talking with Chabad friends, most of whom have not chosen the path of Shlichus for themselves, all had the same to say “If Chabad leadership offered me the replacement position as Shliach in Mumbai I would pick up tomorrow and go”
This point is magnified a thousand times, with the tearful words of Rivkahs grieving father talking to an Israeli journalist: “Please G-d me and my wife will continue their path, we will persevere in the Chabad house, and the work of the Rebbe will go on here, until their child Moishe will grow up, and he will continue the work, re-build a Chabad house here, I have no words”
In the midst of this bitter angst, when some would cower in fear, others would call for harsh revenge, this response is righteously courageous.

Nothing deters us simply because our inherent confidence is more powerful than the Islamists, the love of fellow Jews and humanity, Is stronger, more powerful and more overwhelming than the hate the Islamists feel towards Jews and all free and loving people on this planet.

Make no mistake, this direct dichotomy, (and this is for the moral relativists out there) is a black and white issue, the struggle is global and it effects all, this is an ultimate battle of light versus darkness.

There is much that leaders of the western world could learn from the Shluchim.