Yad Vashem Memorial Museum

Powerful, tough, emotionally and mentally draining.And yet it has to be included as part of the itinerary if there is to be any hope of trying to understand this land

Yad Vashen is a hard hitting, very visual, very personal, and very well presented memorial museum to the holocaust. Obviously it's from a Jewish perspective but by the end of it you certainly have a better insight into why the desire for an exclusive Jewish homeland is so strong

So many hundreds of thousands of lives lost just within that period in history. And when you add it to the list of other e ampules of Jewish persecution and expulsion - yes, I get a bit more where they are coming from

That doesn't mean I feel happy about the current situation and the oppression and violation of human rights etc. But you can see what is fuelling their underlying emotion of fear. 

I think back to the Genocide Memorial museum in Kigali Rwanda and how equally tough it is to go round. 

But the difference between the two is how they have responded 

Both are saying no more, never again. 

But Rwanda says no more never again by saying no more tribal barriers, we are all one nation, let's live together

And Israel is saying no more never again, but because there is still a strong element of fear of the other, they put up walls and barriers which in turn make unity and cooperation very hard to pursue

Yes, I know there are lots more angles and issues to take into account - the attacks by Palestinians, corruption by those in power on all sides, the role of other nations in the history of the land etc

But I wonder how different it could be if there was a way to heal the fear, to build an identity that isn't based on fear of other, an underlying principle of 'let's not do to others, as others have done to us' or as Jesus more simply put it 'love your neighbour as you love yourself'.