The streets are empty in Uccle. Our parents or grandparents experienced it in WWII. Having enemies next-door. The fear is the same. All over the place. The attacker is different. It is a terrorist group and not a state.
In WW II you could locate soldiers. We are now only faced with hidden assassins. Population is hiding themselves for attacks. We lost our liberty.
Today similar ingredients are present for an explosive cocktail. Nationalism ,xenophobes, racists, Jew and Arab haters. And we all know how this ended. And now 70 years peace is at stake. Peace that was achieved by Germany and France shaking hands. By Belgium France West Germany Italy Luxembourg Netherlands setting the trend by organizing European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), in 1951 and 1958. And it went on.
My generation was convinced that there would be peace forever with the fall of the berlin wall on November 9, 1989.Horror would never be possible.
Thanks to the power of cooperation bridging differences.
Whatever happens today, tomorrow or later. Whatever the level of horror we will be faced with. I hope we will not surrender to terror. We will not fall into the pitfall of hate and blaming the other. This is the victory terrorists are hoping to “enjoy”.
Whatever happens we will have to bridge differences to join forces to fight terrorism. This is the only way to recover what we lost in Belgium this weekend: freedom.
Together with our friends from Paris. Together we will overcome. The one against the other we will fall.
