Stop and Think

All over the UK today, people are commemorating the attack on the tubes (and bus) that happened one year ago, in which 52 people died.

At the time of the bombings, I was here in Palestine. I remember telling a Palestinian friend here about what happened, and her response was to shrug her shoulders. It wasn't that she was being insensitive. It was more that such violence against civilians has become so commonplace here that people's emotional responses have also had to alter to accommodate such frequent and widespread death.

In Gaza yesterday, 23 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military, almost half the number of those killed in London.

If you are commemorating what happened in London one year ago, stop and think what it must be like to not only suffer such horror on a nearly daily basis, but to reach the point where your reaction to such violence is to shrug your shoulders and just get on with life.