Compassion and solidarity - A Jewish man with a Palestinian flag.
(Image by alisdare1 from flickr) Details DMCA
Since I arrived with my family in the UK last summer, I have been repeatedly asked: "Why choose Bristol as your new home?"
Well, it certainly wasn't for the weather. Now more than ever I miss Nazareth's warmth and sunshine.
It wasn't for the food either.
My family do have a minor connection to Bristol. My great-grandparents on my mother's side (one from Cornwall, the other from South Wales) apparently met in Bristol - a coincidental stopping point on their separate journeys to London. They married and started a family whose line led to me.
But that distant link wasn't the reason for coming to Bristol either.
In fact, it was only in Nazareth that Bristol began occupying a more prominent place in my family's life.
When I was not doing journalism, I spent many years leading political tours of the Galilee, while my wife, Sally, hosted and fed many of the participants in her cultural cafe' in Nazareth, called Liwan.
It was soon clear that a disproportionate number of our guests hailed from Bristol and the south-west. Some of you here tonight may have been among them.
But my world - like everyone else's - started to shrink as the pandemic took hold in early 2020. As we lost visitors and the chance to directly engage with them about Palestine, Bristol began to reach out to me.
Toppled statue
It did so just as Sally and I were beginning discussions about whether it was time to leave Nazareth - 20 years after I had arrived - and head to the UK.
Even from thousands of miles away, a momentous event - the sound of Edward Colston's statue being toppled - reverberated loudly with me.
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