Peace is the Enemy
(6 minute read) 8/8/2014, 1 page
When planning for war, peace is the enemy.
A civilian passenger plane gets shot down over Ukraine. Eighty of the 298 people on board were children. The world cries out. The perpetrators are accused of committing war crimes.
In the latest Israeli offensive more children have lost their lives than died in the plane crash but in the majority of western media we're led to believe that these actions are justified. (Anyone that suggests otherwise can expect an immediate beat down in the media and online for being antisemitic.)
Assad of Syria is portrayed as being evil for waging war on the civilian population. Assad is accused of committing war crimes. Our nation is supposed to do something to help the rebels that Assad calls terrorists because the targeting of a civilian population by him in order to protect his regime is wrong.
We live where there are approximately a half million people in our metro area. If we were told to run for our lives and that we had minutes to get to safety where would a half million people go? I suppose we could go to the traditional locations, schools, churches, city buildings, designated shelters or the homes of friends and family in other neighborhoods. What if in all these instances those were the very places that were in danger? Relocating a half million people temporarily or permanently would be a huge undertaking. Could we do it in minutes and nowhere is safe? And then, when it was over, there was no home or neighborhood to go back to?
There are approximately one and three quarters million people in Gaza. Entire areas have been reduced to rubble. Rubble. There are approximately two and three quarters million people in the West Bank.
Hamas fires thousands of rockets at an Israeli civilian population. Not pinpoint targeting of military objectives, but weapons fired indiscriminately to hit whatever they hit. Isn't that evil? Just firing a rocket at a city? Hamas uses innocent human beings as shields. Are they evil for doing this? We're told by the majority of western media that they use schools, mosques, hospitals, neighborhoods and UN designated safe areas as shields for their activities.
Like Hamas, the Israelis target the civilian population by bombing, shelling and blowing up all the afore-mentioned locations. If it's evil to use innocents as shields then it seems to follow that it's just as evil to target those innocents. Are all the innocent bystanders and dead children somehow complicit?
The Israeli government, using the Devil-made-me-do-it defense, claims they discriminate to reduce casualties and that their killing of innocents is really Hamas' fault but the Israelis are way ahead when it comes to killing innocent civilians.
Whether an unfortunate circumstance, accident or on purpose, dead is dead. Death by friendly fire is still dead. Who are the terrorists as far as the parents of dead children are concerned? How many dead civilians and children justify the death of a single combatant? When is the body count unacceptable? Is a hundred dead children to one dead Hamas combatant unacceptable or is it some lower/higher figure?
Am I for Israel? Am I for the Palestinians? Who's the "bad guy"? Who's the "good guy"? I can't sort it out any more.
There really isn't any military purpose served for Hamas to fire so many missiles at Israel. Ninety plus percent never hit anything of military value or inflict much in the way of material damage. They don't need better weapons. They need a different strategy. They need a strategy that encompasses peace.
The Israelis can keep blowing up tunnels and shooting down incoming rockets with high dollar interceptors and Hamas or some other group will build more tunnels and more rockets. Death will continue to walk in unannounced.
Have humanity without borders as a strategy. Everybody stop killing people. That's a good starting point.
Be pro-life.
"Let us remember that everything is lost in war, nothing is lost in peace…” –Pope Francis