Peace is The Answer

75 years of war hasn't worked. Why expect it to start now?

(Pictured: my drawing of the Buddhist Wheel of Samsara, or the cycle of birth, life, suffering, death, and rebirth. The karmic cycle, I guess you could say. It is ruled over by Mara, a great demon.)

I had a debate with a person on Twitter the other day who was pro-Hamas. They believed it was a justified resistance. They asked if my country were being occupied, wouldn't I resist? I responded that while I can understand being upset about the occupation and wanting to push it out, 75 years of war has not worked. All it has ever accomplished is getting more of their people killed. I acknowledged that the United States was created via a revolution against the British, but that violent revolutions rarely end well. They either fail and result in more unnecessary bloodshed or they succeed, but then install an even worse system that kills even more people.

Here, in America, we colonized this continent and oppressed Native Americans. We're not proud of it, and it's sad we did that. The natives fought us. We spent literal centuries killing each other. The natives would win the occasional battle, like they did with General Custer at Little Bighorn, but by and large every time they attacked settlers or fought the army, the result was more of their people being killed and harsher and harsher treatment by the government.

That's what happened from early colonization all the way until 1890 (there was one conflict in 1918, but it was actually the result of mistaken identity rather than an intentional battle. A tribe was actually fighting the Mexican government and fired on some American soldiers by mistake. It did not end well). For the last 130 years or so we've had peace with native tribes. We haven't been slaughtering each other. Things aren't perfect, and there's been a great deal of inequality. There still are many issues that face native tribes. But now that we're no longer massacring each other, guess what? The public has a conscience about how we treat native tribes now that it never had when we were constantly at war.

In that last 130 years or so, while progress was slow, the rights of natives are now more respected than they have ever been. Peace has made things far better for these peoples than war ever did. Had they kept fighting- whether it was justified or not- they never would have won, and all that would have been accomplished is more of their people dying, more crackdowns by the government, and there would have been little progress towards any kind of equality or respect for their rights.

There are times to go to war and times to maintain the peace. There are some things that cannot be won with the sword. The reality is that the Palestinians have about as much of a chance for success in reclaiming Israel as the native tribes here in America have of overthrowing the US government and expelling the descendants of the colonists. It's just not going to happen. Even if you did have the support of foreign powers that were capable of fighting off both the IDF and the US military, what would you do? Ethnically and religiously cleanse the country? Either way, congrats, you just bought yourself an insurgency and international sanctions that will last for decades, making life everywhere in Israel just as bad as it was in Gaza.

It doesn't matter who is right or wrong here. Both sides have blood on their hands and have done unspeakably evil things. I call out Israel mainly because they have more power and have been oppressing Gaza for a long time, but Hamas and those in Gaza that support them aren't helping. Every time they kill an Israeli it simply galvanizes the Israelis behind more draconian responses. Not only is killing the innocent wrong on every level, but it is even more wrong because of what it causes in turn.

War cannot solve this problem. It hasn't worked for the last 75 years and it's not about to start now. Peace is the only answer with any hope of success. It is the only way to stop the cycle of hatred and suffering. History has proven this, both here in America and elsewhere.