I FELT unclean this week speaking my customary greeting of salutation, that wonderful word of Hebrew origin, “Shalom”, used as a greeting of peace.
In my lifetime the Jewish people lost six million of their number, a quarter under the age of fifteen, in the Holocaust of central Europe.
Little wonder that they will be victims no more and that they will act, as they see fit, to prevent rocket attacks on their land.
The die was cast when the commandoes abseiled from the dark night down onto the deck of the “Mavi Marmara”.
No policemen these, but trained and skilful instruments of death. That’s what soldiers are.
The activists who died and those who escaped death focused the opprobrium of the world on Israel.
But to resist or to fight was to select the unintelligent pathway, the road to certain death.
And with it all over, the children of Gaza are still without aid and hope for a better life.
Death for the activists, no betterment for the children, a postHolocaust defiant Israel, America refusing to sanction the Jewish nation, it all adds up to mission failure.
Israel will continue to do as it wishes and to offer explanations that border on the credible.
And then there were the murders in Cumbria.
It has been a week of being wrapped in a parcel of awfulness but it was a week too of the Bank Holiday Monday in Newry that brought us a modicum of happiness and joy.
I speak of that cavalcade of colour, smiling faces, honed bodies, shouted greeting of goodwill, two men in wheelchairs, all bubbling along in the wafting smells of embrocation and athletic liniment.
Coffee in the roadside cafes, Tall Ships in the Basin, continental cuisine at The Quays, the sun in the blue sky.
The Newry Marathon experience was an event that lifted our hearts above the reality of terrible times surrounding.
Maybe that should be Newry’s Mission Statement, to be an oasis of uplifting joy in a world of trauma and terror. A place apart.
And let’s have, a “Month of Joy and Smiles” with a prize being paid to every citizen who smiles, says “hello” or “thank you” or helps a neighbour in some way.
The publicity for such a themed time would do us no harm at all and would surely point the way to a better world and a more wonderful way of living.