Peace is not absence of fighting, Senegal Rotary Club-Florida-USA
September 30, 2024
IDP
To the editor:
May peace prevail.
In 1981, the UN designated “a globally shared date for all humanity to commit to peace above all differences and contribute to building a culture of Peace.” As part of that, on Sept. 20, I participated in the dedication of the Rotary Club’s “Peace Pole” installed at The Community House on Sanibel. It was a wonderful, thoughtful event. Calls (prayers) for “peace to prevail” remind me of the many songs from 60 years ago with phrases like “give peace a chance,” “get on the peace train,” “love is all you need,” “why can’t we just get along together” and many more. I also remembered the Doors saying “you cannot petition the Lord with prayer” or as others say, “God is not a celestial butler.” This makes prayer a call for human, not celestial, action. Rotarians and many others already know this. It is human action that brings people wheelchairs and clean water.
It is easy to call for peace but hard to fight for it when leaders tell us that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Hard to pick the side of good when both use many of the same weapons and in all these fights, innocent people die. The identification of evil is made difficult by the nature of evil. It has been pointed out that evil is not a something hiding in the dark but blindingly bright forcing people to look away in horror rather than confront what they see. Best to define evil by acts we all agree are evil. I hope we can all agree that rape, beheading and burning people alive, acts that force us to look away in horror, are evil. Those intent on oppression, domination and ending the freedom of others often kidnap, murder captives, kill gays, oppress women, and kill or — as in the case of Hong Kong, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and others — jail their opposition, using fear (thus the term “terrorist”) to expand their control, while others too horrified to act are forced to look away. There are many doing evil in the world today but as a place to start, let us focus on Hamas in Gaza.
Despite their acts of rape, burning babies, kidnapping and murdering their captives, rather than looking at their evil acts and condemning Hamas for their evil acts, students and their professors find, usually flawed but unchallenged, clever intellectual arguments to justify those unjustifiable acts. There can be no circumstances where a rape is condoned much less justified. The same is true for burning babies, kidnapping and murdering hostages. Those who do perform unjustifiable evil acts and those who support those doing evil must be condemned. If we want “peace to prevail” and to make the world better, we must open our eyes and confront those who do and those who support evil doers. For now, in Gaza, that means demanding Sinwar (not Netanyahu) step down, Hamas release the hostages, and Hamas lay down their weapons and leave Gaza — that will immediately end the war. A hopeful sign from Gaza is reports that women sheltering in schools have begun to deny access to the Hamas fighters wishing to hide among them. This means Hamas’s oppression of civilians has been weakened. Previously, this defiance would have led to their death.
Peace is not the absence of fighting. North Korea, Cuba and Hong Kong have no fighting, and those in Afghanistan and Iran who have submitted to Islam also live in peace, but not the freedom most of us think of in a world where peace has prevailed. For the majority of us who cannot do anything active, we must look to support those who are able to identify and act against those doing evil, rather than call for restraint in the fight against evil. We all know evil can never be eliminated, but in the spirit of bringing “benefit to all,” people need to open their eyes, look for evil and act to condemn, control and contain its perpetrators, and support those who fight against it.
Michael Raab
Sanibel