It's amazing how time can fly. As someone mentioned to me yesterday, we're no longer new in town. We have our locals, friends, and routines. It wasn't till I paid rent this week that I realised I have been living in my apartment for a year, but this time last year was a day that shook me.
Most of the time I can safely say I feel settled here. Yes, there is the occasional wave of "what if I was still in the UK", but it doesn't take too much to remind that I would find it very difficult to live on the Queen's homeland every again. I have even been heard to say that I miss the US more than I miss England and yet I never lived there, but at this hour last year, three hundred and fifty years of English blood in my veins made me identify with the country in a way I had never felt before.
In a video released yesterday by one of the bombers, England's support and financial aid towards America and Israel was used to justify the attacks. Israel has become a political pawn, used by anyone with a problem, be they terrorists claiming to act in the name of religion, or left wing voters that want to solve the worlds problems with hugs and kisses.
Today Israel is mourning too. We mourn the loss of the Yehuda Bassel, killed yesterday to keep the rest of the country safe. Since the turn of the century there have been major terror attacks in America, Bali, Spain, England, Israel and throughout the world. Terrorism has become the norm. To preach for it to end would be unrealistic. Maybe the world has become a more dangerous place, or perhaps the media may just be better at carrying news faster and quicker.
I'm not going to start hanging a Union Jack or Cross of St. George alongside the Israel flag outside my apartment, but today's acts as a reminder as to where I came from, and who I am becoming.
Shabbat Shalom.
Most of the time I can safely say I feel settled here. Yes, there is the occasional wave of "what if I was still in the UK", but it doesn't take too much to remind that I would find it very difficult to live on the Queen's homeland every again. I have even been heard to say that I miss the US more than I miss England and yet I never lived there, but at this hour last year, three hundred and fifty years of English blood in my veins made me identify with the country in a way I had never felt before.
FIRST there was New York, then Bali, then Madrid. But a year ago today London and the rest of Britain awoke to the awful realisation that Islamic terrorism was not a faraway phenomenon. (THE TIMES - full article)Today the UK remembers the fifty two that died. Maybe this shook me so much because I was visiting England this time last year, and I heard the news as it came in. Stations across the country were evacuated and nerves were highly strung. Sure, the UK has felt terrorism, but this attack was new terror for a new, undefined cause. Terror against the West.
In a video released yesterday by one of the bombers, England's support and financial aid towards America and Israel was used to justify the attacks. Israel has become a political pawn, used by anyone with a problem, be they terrorists claiming to act in the name of religion, or left wing voters that want to solve the worlds problems with hugs and kisses.
Today Israel is mourning too. We mourn the loss of the Yehuda Bassel, killed yesterday to keep the rest of the country safe. Since the turn of the century there have been major terror attacks in America, Bali, Spain, England, Israel and throughout the world. Terrorism has become the norm. To preach for it to end would be unrealistic. Maybe the world has become a more dangerous place, or perhaps the media may just be better at carrying news faster and quicker.
I'm not going to start hanging a Union Jack or Cross of St. George alongside the Israel flag outside my apartment, but today's acts as a reminder as to where I came from, and who I am becoming.
Shabbat Shalom.
No comments:
Post a Comment