My heartbreak over parents' broken dreams

WHEN 11 Israeli athletes were brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists who had infiltrated the Munich Olympic village in 1972, my mother was a 24-year-old pregnant Londoner.

- Lianne Kolirin

Yet amid the devastation came a glimmer of hope as she and her in-laws focussed on her bump, hoping, praying and believing that this baby-to-be would grow up to see peace in its lifetime.

That bump was me and the story was relayed to me last Saturday when, just weeks before my 51st birthday, Hamas launched its barbaric attack.

Virtually every conversation I've had in the last week has struck a raw nerve, but this image of my young parents holding on to me in utero and dreaming of peace has been one of the most heartbreaking.