While the absurdity of the Russia-Ukraine war with Russia's unpredictable coup continues to threaten world peace, suddenly come to light the atrocities of the Hamas fighters with their invasion of Israel, and the slaughter of civilians in cold blood! Images show looted and burned houses, scattered corpses, while the images of mothers with their young children and elderly people covered in blood are horrifying. Fascist forces here and there clash mercilessly!
The Israeli-Palestinian conflicts have already claimed countless lives and uprooted millions of people. The eyes of the entire world have once again turned to the Middle East, where the Israel-Palestine conflict is escalating again after the attack by Hamas, and unfortunately it seems to be developing into an unprecedented violence, which does not have the character of war but of savage and inhuman slaughter. The massacre of tens of thousands of Greeks of Chios by the Ottoman army in the second year, 1822, of the Greek Revolution comes to the mind of the Greeks. The painting inspired by her by the French painter Eugène Delacroix remains a monument of art.
The crime, unfortunately, is committed by the powerful of the earth, whose economic interests do not allow them to stop wars, with disastrous consequences in the loss of human life, but also in the increase of immigrants and the inability of countries to absorb them. The Middle East Issue, the Arab-Israeli confrontation, is a legacy of unprecedented duration and acrimony. Political as well as religious forces perpetuate the conflict, while both suffering peoples seek, in vain, peace.
Historian at Jerusalem University Yuval Noah Harari rejects the surprise theory of the Hamas attack, as the government had been repeatedly warned that its policies put Israel at risk at a time of heightened threats. He considers Netanyahu, a populist, a genius in public relations, but a completely incompetent prime minister. History, as he writes, is not a moral lesson. Therefore, however much Israel is to blame, this cannot justify its failure. Its failure is due above all to populism. We grew up - he writes - with stories of how defenseless Jews hid in closets and cellars from the Nazis and no one came to help them. The horrifying stories heard these days, after the attack by Hamas, remind the Jews of what happened in the Holocaust and the pogroms of the Russian Empire against them. Ultimately the goal of creating a state of Israel failed. And he concludes by emphasizing: "Whoever really wants peace must condemn Hamas, impose sanctions on it and demand its disarmament." These words, from a famous Israeli historian, not only convey the reality, but also suggest the proper solution to the problem, to which the powerful of the Earth are deliberately deaf.
Besides, the Nobel laureate Israeli professor Joseph Stiglitz described Netanyahu as a scrap person, a "lame duck", who rules with the logic that only he is right in the Palestinian issue and that he is on the right side of history.
War can never be humane, it can only be abolished, Einstein believed, and the visionary of the European Union, Robert Schuman, pointed out: "World peace cannot be maintained unless creative efforts commensurate with the dangers that threaten it are undertaken." But when will they be undertaken and why haven't they already been undertaken?
Alas, what is happening worldwide portends the Second Coming, which according to the Christian tradition will also be sudden, like lightning, after wars, political and social upheavals and great sorrow on Earth...
Prof. Stella Priovolou, president of the Body of Emeritus Professors of EKPA, dean of the Municipal People's University of St. Paraskevi.
photo hosnysalah / https://pixabay.com
