Never Again went out the window, and happened once more last weekend

 

Last weekend, on Saturday the 7th of October, a great number of people got together to cross a border. Some flew over using gliders. Others toppled a fence in a lot of places. Through the breaches in the fence came people. Men. In cars. On motorcycles. They didn't come through that fence to find freedom, or to flee from persecution. They didn't cross the border hoping for a better life, for the fulfilment of a dream.

The men who crossed the border, they came to kill, to murder. To shoot people in their homes. To kill babies and children in their beds. To go into communities full of people, civilians, and indiscriminately shoot everyone and everything. To go to a festival where people were dancing, enjoying themselves, and to shoot, kill, rape those people. The stories of the survivors are horrifying. Stories of people rushing for their cars, driving, being shot at. Stories of people running, being shot in the back. Stories of people hiding, being found, finding new places to hide. Listening to others being shot, raped, murdered in cold blood.

I am a big Star Trek fan. There's this scene in Star Trek Deep Space Nine where Jadzia, one of the main characters, is checking the casualty list from the war against the Dominion. On the list, she sees a name of someone she knows. It's been a long time since I watched the episode, but as it plays out in my head, Jadzia explains that while she didn't know the person well, it still hurts to see her name on the list. 

Up until last week, this was my experience of war. Sure, I'm in my thirties and have seen enough news reports about wars in far-away places. I've gone to school with survivors of war, have friends who escaped their home countries as they were persecuted and can tell me about how scared they were, about how their friends or family members were taken and didn't return. I've seen war on television and in movies. But I have no first-hand experience of war. I've never had to run for safety while a siren sounded to warn of incoming rockets. I've never faced someone with a gun standing in front of me threatening to shoot me. And up until this past week, I'd never looked through a list of names, wondering if there were any I would recognise. 

Living in Western Europe, I have to be honest... I never expected to feel this way. To know that people I know, people I care about, are in danger. Real actual danger. That rockets are being aimed at them. That they have been called up to fight, to defend their country. That they are fighting to defend not just their country, but their families, their life and lifestyle, and YES their entire actual existence. For the first time in my life, I am looking through lists of names, looking through pictures of faces, and waiting for that gut-punch. Waiting to see a name I know. Waiting to find out that someone I know and care about has been killed. Wars used to be in far-away places, and mostly horror-images of far away-places on the evening news, and lots of statistics. But now, it is so much more than just statistics... For the first time ever, the numbers aren't just numbers to me,, aren't just stories of things happening to strangers in far-away places. The numbers are not numbers: they are people. People I knows. Friends and relatives of people I know. And as I read through more names, I dread seeing the name of one of my friends. A name of a good, honest, kind, caring person. A name of someone that I've laughed with, cried with, danced with, cooked with, eaten with, smiled with, watched movies with, hung out with. A normal person. Just like me. 

Never again. That is what they taught us in school. After the horrors of the second World War, after learning what actually happened to all those the Nazis exterminated, the main take-away for my generation (the children of those born during and in the years shortly after WW2) was simple: Never again. And yet... Here we are again. Innocent men, women and children. INNOCENT CHILDREN. Not soldiers. Not fighters or soldiers. Not ex-soldiers. Not combatants. But children. Too young to fight. Too young to be killed. Babies. Unable to run, unable to get away. Killed simply for being Jewish.

KILLED SIMPLY FOR BEING JEWISH.

 Never again went out the window. And I am appalled. Killing soldiers when you are at war, while it makes no sense to me, it sort of does. Seeing war on the evening news all my life, even if it's happening in far-away places, I've 'gotten used to' reports of soldiers being killed. But terrorists crossing a border simply to kill, to murder, to rape... People coming into a country with their only goal to kill as many innocents as possible... Going into a community and simply shooting and killing everyone you see or can find or can get to... That is not war. That is not a 'fair' fight. That is wrong. That is inhuman. To do that to your fellow human beings... I simply do not understand you. I do not understand how you can do something so evil, so vile, so cruel, so wrong. The people who do this, who did this, who support this... I do not understand you. I don't want to. Not ever.