Peace on Earth – Give peace a chance! – My Season’s Greetings
I am not used to writing blogs on current politics. At best I may have picked special events or anniversaries to make some sideline commentaries. But that has been most of it. Likewise, I have not been active in sending ‘Season’s greetings’ in public domain – at best on my Facebook account but that has been it.
This time things are different. For quite some time I have been following the war in Syria and the bombardment of Aleppo – and the difficult efforts of diplomats to get a ceasefire that could bring real help to people who were stuck between the warring parties. Indeed, Aleppo has become to us and pour contemporaries the symbol of similar sufferings as Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and Sarajevo in the Wars arising from the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. This time it has been hard to witness and understand the weakness of the World Community, the UN Security Council and the public opinion. During the most recent days there have been relieving news on ceasefire and the start of evacuations, topped up by the unanimous vote of the UN Security council to send Peace Monitoring teams to support evacuations and international aid. Let us hope that they can provide help for the ones needed and give peace a chance.
However, parallel to these news we get schocking news of terrorist attacks in different places. For me the most striking is the news from Berlin – given that I have lived in over a year in Berlin (1994 – 1995) and I know the places in West Berlin very well. Here, the most striking thing was that the terrorist attacked the Christmas market area at Breitscheidplatz, next to the Gedächtniskirche – the ruin church that has been kept as a memory of the destruction caused by World War II. But equally, what has happened in Zürich (shootings in Islamic Centre) and in Ankara (the murder of the Russian Ambassador), in Yemen and in Somalia (the latter ones hardly attracting the attention of the Western worls) – all this is too much.
What is also striking is, how differently people react. My German Facebook-friends have promptly reacted with messages that express their condolences to the relatives of the victims and injured and condemn terrorist actions, whatever their motivation may have been. At the same time they have expressed their anger about the right-wing demagogues who have tried to pass the blame to all refugees and migrants en bloc. I have been pleased to share their messages and to translate their points in English. They speak the language of peace and understanding (instead of suspicion and xenophobia), they speak for dialogue with well-thought facts and for building bridges (instead of isolating oneselves and building walls around comfort zones).
In this spirit I also want my blog to pass messages of peace and understanding as my Season’s Greetings for the Christmas time and for the New Year 2017:
