98. Where have All The Flowers Gone?
97. Punfield Cove
May 7, 2025
E ver since I was a child a book of pressed flowers stood on the bookshelf. For a child, it was fascinating - a cover made of polished olive wood with an engraved cross on the front and holy ‘Jerusalem’ in black letter on the back. A present from the Holy Land …. Each page bears a dried up, dead Palestinian flower covered with discoloured tissue paper; there remains an evocative smell – musty and disappointingly free of floral scent. My father bought it as a present for my mother. He loved Palestine, remembered it as the high point of his overseas prewar military service. When my mother died, the book came back to him and, after he followed her, it has passed to me. Now, Palestine has been effectively erased. It is no longer holy, flowery..
I was born during a decade-long holocaust, remember, as a teenager, newsreels of its horrors. Now in my eighties, I shall die with a century-long second holocaust unresolved. The victims of the first holocaust have turned on other innocents and created this second. It is not for me to write its history: if you are interested, the truth is available - books, newspapers, images, stories filter out. Foreign journalists are unable to see the horrors first hand. Too embarrassing for the perpetrators. But the truth will come out eventually. Like the Germans, the Israelis and their American chums will have to live with the shame. My country, too cowardly to speak out, bears its share of the guilt. Eventually, most folk will forget – but some will remember and redress the balance.
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