Trying to Understand Violence

We are all one...

Image by Jeff Attaway from Abuja, Nigeria, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

It has been an unsettling week since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israeli kibbutzim. The murders of civilians are unacceptable, hideous, cruel. I have no words to express my disgust and horror and leave it to pundits and journalists to address reasons and potential outcomes. 

But I do know that I have met Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis, Jewish people, Christians, Muslims, and people from almost all faiths and ethnicities. We are all Homo sapiens, all descendants from the same root of the same tree. I refuse to take sides except the side of peace. I pray that the bloodshed ceases in the Middle East and in this troubled world.

I am saddened by this malaise of violence, pain and suffering that continues to envelop humanity since time immemorial. There are no winners in this affair except for the arms merchants, the undertakers, the purveyors of medical supplies, the powerful who cynically play with people’s lives using demagogic rhetoric. There are plenty of losers: the hostages, the dead, the orphans, the widows and widowers, the wounded, and their families, those rendered homeless and unemployed by the rampant destruction. 

In my view, if we want peace, we should always work for justice in every sphere, and persevere in that effort with compassion, making room for understanding among all people.

What do you think?