Violence -- both the home-grown kind in Holland and the imported kind in Iraq -- dominate the papers Wednesday. All major papers carry detailed stories of the US forces' advance into the center of Fallujah, a hornet's nest of resistance fighters. Despite Germany's clear anti-war stance, all commentators recognize the need to pacify this dangerous holdout city. "The assault on Fallujah is highly risky, but without alternative," writes the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The only hope is that it goes quickly. A swift victory by US troops in alliance with the new Iraqi army could send a signal across the land. The longer the battle of Fallujah lasts, the more civilian casualties, the greater the danger." The paper also points out that escalating attacks in the town of Ramadi demonstrate that Fallujah is likely not the last fight against the resistance.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung shares this concern, saying, "The path to the new Iraq passes through Fallujah. The extremists want to keep the Sunni triangle out of elections and to overrun Iraq with violence. If they succeed, any attempt at new political beginning and economic reconstruction will be thwarted. Allawi's government and its American allies have no choice but to look for a decision in Fallujah. For whoever manages to maintain security and order will be accepted by the population." Even if Fallujah is won, there will be other hot spots, the paper points out. And there will be the dicey question of whether the onslaught has created more rebels than it subdues. The worry is that more angry Iraqis will join the cause and that the Sunni tribal leaders will look to terrorist organizations for help. "To win this battle, a political strategy will also be necessary."

The left-leaning Tageszeitung says the current battle is not as important as what comes next. "There is no doubt that with its technological and military superiority, the US marines will conquer Fallujah sooner or later. Whether this military success can lead to political success is another question. The challenge is to conquer the city without too many civilian deaths. If this fails, the US may well have brought down Fallujah, but it will have created lots of other Fallujahs all over the country. The rebels know this." The paper also says regardless of what happens, the real test of success or failure will come in January when elections are held. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said he worries bloody street battles in Fallujah could jeopardize the elections by alienating Iraqis even further from the idea of fair and open elections. Interim Iraqi President Ayad Allawi has said he disagrees and that conquering Fallujah is key to good election results. "It will soon be decided who is right," the paper writes. "But in terms of the current slaughter, one thing is clear: the quicker the assault is hailed as a success, the more skeptical we should be."

Violence of a decidedly different sort is also on the minds of editorialists on Wednesday. Most papers carry reports about attacks on churches and mosques in the Netherlands -- a backlash against the murder last week of Islam critical filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh was shot six times and stabbed to death by a man investigators believe is a Muslim extremist angry over the film "Submission," in which van Gogh criticizes the treatment of women under Islam. His murder has ignited angry debate among Holland's 16 million people, 1 million of whom are Muslim, and in recent days has led to bombs and arson attacks at over a dozen churches and mosques across the country. Perhaps, suggests the Berliner Zeitung the country's biggest mistake was that it mistook living side by side with immigrants with integrating them into society. Van Gogh, it says, "loved to fight, and rebelled against any climate that threatened to silence individual opinions.... For too long the country kept silent about its problems and omissions."

By far the most moving testament comes in the conservative daily Die Welt. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali who is in the Dutch parliament and who wrote the script for van Gogh's film, bemoans his death in an editorial. "I mourn the death of Theo. I am sad because the Netherlands has lost its innocence, an innocence that manifested itself in Theo," she writes. "Theo's naiveté was not in believing that something like this couldn't happen, but in believing it couldn't happen to him." "I am angry when I hear the police chief say he saw no reason to provide protection for Theo," despite the fact that he had received death threats, she writes. As a parliamentarian, Hirsi Ali has body guards. Van Gogh had none. When police found his dead body it had a note stabbed into it with a knife. The note threatened to kill Hirsi Ali for her part in the film. A suspect, Mohammad B. from Morocco has been arrested.

The worst part of the crime -- if there is such a thing -- says Hirsi Ali is that it was not a singular act of hate. "I am angry because I know that the perpetrator is not alone: He is a member of a network of Muslims who are obsessed with their religion and with the plan to kill innocent people. ...I feel guilty because I brought the script for "Submission" to Theo and it is because of this film that he was killed. Rationally, I know that the murderer alone is responsible. Emotionally, however, it my feelings are all tangled. Theo and I talked a lot about what consequences this film could have for us. His response was, 'The moment such thoughts prevent you from giving your opinion about something, is the moment freedom of opinion dies.'"