For the second time in recent days, the Home Affairs Minister rose in Parliament to attack the Opposition media for trying to frighten people.

The minister is wrong. He is very wrong.

People do not need the Opposition media to frighten them. People today do not get their information from the traditional news media. There is a surfeit of information out there and, yes, much of it is frightening, but then the times themselves are frightening.

The country needs a very different response to the one the Minister has been giving.

Actually, the Prime Minister is one notch better than his Minister. At least he does not waste his time attacking the Opposition’s media. He has been saying that, so far, there are no signs of any threat to Malta and that, if there were, he would tell us.

This week has seen the tabling of the report by the Security Service in Parliament and it was this newsroom that got hold of it first and discovered that it said the Isis threat had come nearer and more quickly than the service had foreseen.

If we want Malta to feel secure, such an admission would have merited a full press conference and analysis, perhaps even a Parliamentary Committee and the rest.

Instead, not even the Leader of the Opposition, who sits on the Security Committee and who has recently burned his fingers for harping on about the Security Committee, has reacted to the report.

So we ended up with Parliament meeting till 1 o’clock in the morning to discuss – at committee stage – the Mepa demerger, with many interruptions in-between, at the same time that we could see the concurrent sittings of the House of Commons and the House of Lords deliberating on the UK’s response to the terrorist threat.

The contrast was awesome. The Maltese MPs were all present because of the many repeated votes that were taken, while the House of Commons was full as it rarely is for 10 hours of straight speeches.

At no point in all these hours did anyone accuse the press of frightening people.

There can be no doubt that the events of the past few months have radically changed the Europe in which we live. Our lives are now far more dangerous than they were before.

Two countries in particular have disappeared up the spout – Syria and Libya, where the Arab Spring has brought about disintegration, the absence of a central authority and mayhem replacing law and order – such as they were. The two countries have become hotbeds of terrorism, exporting it to all the other countries. Where previously only Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent Pakistan, used to fulfil this role, Syria and Libya are now a more potent source. They are also attracting scores of radicalised Muslims eager to give international terrorism a helping hand.

This, in turn, has spawned a huge wave of terrified migrants who are fleeing the violence and absence of law and order for the relative safety of Europe. It may well be that some terrorists have slipped in amongst the wave of migrants and managed to enter Europe.

Europe, it would seem, has walked into the trap with its eyes wide open. In a bid to bring into effect the single market, Europe created what has become known as the Schengen area, in which passports and frontiers have been abolished. The terrorists have seized on this with glee. But then, earlier today, it was revealed that one of the Paris terrorists seems to have travelled repeatedly to the UK, which is not in the Schengen area. So it may well be that even the borders of non-Schengen countries are porous.

It has also been speculated that the absence of borders contributes a fair share to the GDP of Schengen countries due to less time spent at borders, etc. To a Europe barely out of crisis (with some countries – like Greece – still in mid-crisis) a re-imposition of borders will serve to snuff out any small spark of growth once again.

And, of course, the huge wave of migrants, still largely unchecked, puts the whole of Europe under increased pressure. The German argument is that, in time, and with training, integration and assimilation, the migrants will contribute to growth but that is, if ever, still many years down the line.

For now, the migrant wave looks like having broken Europe’s back: some countries refusing to touch migrants and everybody blaming everybody else, while holding camps spring up everywhere, not least in non-EU member Turkey.

Last weekend, the European Council met the Turkish leader and tried to bribe him with money to keep the migrants in Turkey. I listened in amazement as the Prime Minister explained this deal in Parliament and am shocked to the core that no one rose to ask questions and that everything was taken in the softest manner possible. I have no doubt that Turkey will not keep its side of the bargain and that we will see the wave coming this way once again. I also have no doubt that the Council was lying when it said this agreement will hasten Turkey’s future membership of the EU.

Turkey is engaged in a spat with Russia over the bringing down of a Russian plane (and the brutal murder of one of the pilots) and Russia, in turn, has accused the Turkish President and his family of being engaged in trade with Isis.

Now – after the Paris attacks – France has asked the EU states for to demonstrate solidarity. The Justice and Home Affairs Council has agreed with France’s demand to trigger Article 42(7) of the EU Treaty – the Mutual Defence Clause – which, however, refers to a country that is the victim of armed aggression in its territory, rather than a terrorist attack, however bloody.

(Note that, in this regard, Minister Abela did not even venture into this area in his statements in Parliament, and neither was he questioned on the matter by the Opposition.)

Anyway, the upshot is that France has already joined Russia in bombing Isis positions in Syria and the UK followed suit after the Commons vote.

I have more than one doubt as to how effective this will be, except to create more civilian victims, more grieving relatives and more recruits to Isis.

To my mind, a far more effective way is to be relentless in the search for whoever aided and abetted the terrorist attack, to suss out the soft underbelly of fellow travellers, radical Imams, violent speeches in mosques, the organisers of travel, equipment and finance, etc. There are, in other words, far more effective ways to combat Isis than by bombing the desert.

This also applies to Malta and, if I can say so, even more. Malta is not about to bomb Syria. I do not share the widespread fear around in Malta (and, Minister Abela please note, among Labour supporters as well as among PN ones, and the former surely do not get it from the PN media) that Malta is among the Isis targets. It is true Isis rails against the Crusaders, and the past is all there for everyone to see, of course. It is also true that there is Isis just across the water, in Libya. It is also true that the lifestyle of the Maltese is anathema to the Isis morality – just as the terrorists said about the Bataclan victims they termed as ‘apostates’, because they were dancing and wining. But Malta is not on the operative side of the attacks.

Nevertheless, I would sleep better at night if we had better all-round security. I have been writing – unfortunately with no take-up – about migrants in Malta who have become radicalised these last few months, about an increased frequency of meetings in homes, while other people (I know – not with any degree of real information) have mentioned unlicensed underground mosques in garage complexes while, of course, there is the Internet with its huge store of radicalised sermons.

It is the height of folly for the government to focus on the Opposition in the midst of all this.

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