Israel and Hamas

Alarming saber rattling, rockets and bombs! This region is spreading horrendous dread.

We do not need another calamity. I still remember World War II and the suffering it set off across Europe—it claimed so many lives; it caused such devastation!

Can we steer clear of Nostradamus’ sinister words and the biblical prophecies regarding Armageddon? If we put our minds to it, I’m sure we’ll find wiser solutions.

Of course the price is high: keeping the peace would dent much human ego and pride to which we still tenaciously cling. It would violate our ancient beliefs that land belongs solely to one people and no one else. It would restrain our desire to hate those who are different. It would reign in our emotions. It would prohibit us from killing those we do not like, and deny our age-old desire to prove that we’re better and stronger than others.

How clearly I remember one particular day after the war. My young aunt together with the entire staff of the local hospital had been taken hostage and shipped off to Russia; and so was the hospital— dismantled and shipped East, its patients left in the street, and the staff never heard from again. That same day, father watched helplessly while Communists took away his best friend. Moments later they were looking for him. He sped home and within seconds we were in the car, leaving our home—never to see it again:

“…A mile or two before the train station, we ran out of gasoline. We abandoned the car and continued on foot, mother and my little brother a few steps ahead, father and I behind, as if we were strangers. The streets were deserted. Devastation everywhere. The ruins rose into the gloomy sky like eerie phantoms. Some buildings were sheared off as with a razor blade, baring the bowels of deserted offices and homes. Paintings still dangled from the walls. Unmade beds were quiet witnesses that someone had slept in them before a shell knocked off the other half of the room. A boot balanced precariously on a ledge. 

Here and there in the rubble yellow sheets hid unburied bodies, an official precaution to warn those who were still alive of typhoid. Somewhere a dog wailed, forsaken, hungry and scared. Just like us.

At last, the station came into view, but our hope was short-lived. The platform was packed with hundreds of other pitiful refugees and fugitives, some sleeping, some crying, most of them numb with misery—waiting. No one knew if trains were still running. It was rumored that the tracks had been blown up. Hitler had given Albert Speer, his architect and minister of armament, instructions to destroy everything and burn it to the ground before the enemy approached. …” *

The war-years had been pure terror, but the years that followed, years of devastation, hunger and need were even worse and lasted much longer.

Those years made us understand the futility of war. Mankind, it seems to me, has become more tolerant and more willing to cooperate with one another. May we succeed in steering clear of letting our baser instincts carry anyone away. The final price of war is higher than the price of keeping the peace.

Have a happy and peaceful Thanksgiving,

Rosi

* taken from my memoirs, “The Madman and His Mistress”