8 Oct 2024 post begun 1128hrs BST

 

Life goes on, especially if the event happened thousands of miles away to people completely unrelated to you save by one - I have Jewish ancestry (paternal grandfather).

 

Life goes on even in the face of the utterly indescribable. You listen to the news, you read the news, you fume as most news outlets seek to blame the victim and justify sharp upticks in increasingly violent anti-Jewish attacks 'right here in my own town!'. 

 

The horror you feel as you learn more and know already how savage the terrorists are, it numbs you. As you go through each day you feel contempt for yourself as 'life goes on' and you have to do the monthly Big Shop and laundry and housekeeping tasks and preparing for winter, you ask yourself wth is wrong with me that I haven't cried? 

 

Yeah ok, I pray every night for the survival and return of the hostages, I pray for the comfort of the bereaved coping with the unimaginable even though I know just what unimaginable is 'thanks' to my training (oh yes, I do know just how inhumane Man can be) and I know there is no comfort for what the bereaved are struggling to cope with.

 

I began to think I hadn't quite managed to put my training behind me and regained my humanity the way I thought I had once I was out of it, that training that made it possible to sift through crime scene photos and witness accounts without going mad. I didn't like myself. Because I hadn't cried.

Until I read Alison Pearson's account of her visit to Israel to talk to some of the affected. The survivors, the families, the workers who gathered personal effects (including body parts), the workers who prepared what remains could be gathered. When I got to the part Ms Pearson quotes a mortuary team member who quietly said not even one victim of the hundreds of girls her team tried to prepare for burial could be seen by the grieving family. Not one, not even the youngest of the female victims of a breathtaking savagery could be brought out to aid a family in saying goodbye.

I cried. Quiet, no sobbing, no gasping for breath. But a river of tears I worried would flood the keyboard. I didn't try to stop crying. 

I think inside I am still crying. 

Here in the UK a recent poll indicates a large number of our 18-24 year olds support the terrorists. 

Pro-Palestine marchers block urban streets all across this oh-so-disUnited-Kingdom. Honestly? I honestly keep waiting to wake up to see on the news a 21st century  Kristallnacht has happened. I keep expecting to hear of an atrocity overnight.

The mainstream media stubbornly refuses to report when yet another anti-Semitic attack has occurred, BBC and SkyNews both insist on calling the terrorists 'militants' or 'soldiers', they insist on 'equalising' by reporting briefly on terrorist attacks and the shocking increase in anti-Jewish sentiment (and actions) here in the UK then bigging up 'islamophobic attacks' in a shocking 'whataboutery' as if to justify what the terrorists have done and continue to do. More blaming the victims - the Jews.

 

My husband asked me not to put the Chanukiah where the neighbours might see it, he asked me that last year and he's asked me again this year. 

 

We both think maybe WWIII really is about to be declared.

Yet life goes on. Winter is coming and we're bang up in the middle of preparing. I need to buy new duvets, I need to finish the semi-annual declutter. 

I need to stop wondering if bombs will drop on the house or the household supplies will be looted by rampaging marauders...ONE battalion is 1000 troops and over 40 battalions of 'illegal migrants' have landed to the UK shores, taken in fed and housed by our so-called government.

In the midst of all this horror, life goes on.