02-11.

Ik heb op dit moment even heel weinig te zeggen. Sprakeloos.

Thomas Schlijper en Fokke & Sukke ook niet.

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Met de verschrikkelijke gebeurtenis in Amsterdam vanochtend en deze belangrijke dag voor de VS in het achterhoofd word ik herinnerd aan de prachtige woorden van Bill Clinton in het kader van de Dimbleby Lecture voor de BBC in 2001:

When I was my daughter's age, just about to embark on my great adventure in England, just before that Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, two of the heroes of my youth, were murdered by their fellow Americans for trying to reconcile the American people to each other. Gandhi, the greatest spirit of the age, murdered, not by an angry Muslim but by a fellow Hindu because he wanted India for the Muslims and the Jains and the Sikhs. And the Jews and the Christians. Sadat - murdered not by an Israeli commando, but by a very angry Egyptian - a member of the organization now headed by Bin Laden's number two guy - an angry Egyptian. Because how could he be a good Egyptian or a good Muslim because he wanted secular government in Egypt and peace with Israel, though he got the desert back. And one of the people I have loved most in my increasingly long life, Yitzhak Rabin, was murdered not by a Palestinian terrorist, but by a very angry young Israeli Jew who thought he was not a good Jew or a good Israeli because he wanted lasting peace for Israel through the recognition of the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians for a homeland. And that guy who murdered him got exactly what he wanted - he derailed and delayed the peace process and let it be swarmed and mauled by all those people who were under the foolish illusions that their differences matter more than the fact that they are all the children of Abraham.

So that's what I want you to think about. It's great that your kids will live to be ninety years old but I don't want it to be behind barbed wire. It's great that we're going to have all these benefits of the modern world, but I don't want you to feel like you're emotional prisoners. And I don't want you to look at people who look different from you and see a potential enemy instead of a fellow traveler. We can make the world of our dreams for our children, but since it's a world without walls, it will have to be a home for all our children.

(Cursivering van mij, natuurlijk.) Zo was het ook in mei 2002, toen iedereen over elkaar heen buitelde om te zeggen: "Laat het alsjeblieft geen moslim zijn!" Het bleek een oerhollandse, blanke milieuactivist uit Harderwijk. Vandaag lijkt dat anders. Iemand die niet begrijpt dat Theo geen vijand was, maar een medereiziger.