Peace is the beauty of life ?

23 September 2018

From time to time , my colleague said, you meet young mothers demonstrating and crying out, “It is time to stop this war, our children are dying without reason, they are the innocent victims of a war which they have never asked for. You, the grown-ups should be there to protect them and not kill them by continuing a war we never asked for. The world’s children ask by the grace of God to stop all this violence!”

I remember, he continued, interviewing one of the former Secretary-General’s special envoys who was in charge of bringing peace back to a war thorn country. The country was faced with civil war. The special envoy had a very efficient way of stopping the fighting between the different tribes. He had managed to gather the women, and made them work hand in hand to bring back peace. What did he do? Each time, the rumour came about that the fighting would resume somewhere, they broadcasted messages on the local radio. What happened? The women came running with their frying pans and other things they had at hand...and the fighting stopped.

Who is the man/fighter who can kill his own mother? The system worked very well and huge progress was made. But one day, one of the superpowers decided to invade the country, and everything fell apart. The special envoy resigned. Today the country is still war-torn and a no-go zone, and this has been the case for more than 25 years.

Those were the old days, my colleague sighed. It might be more difficult today, nevertheless women do have huge unexploited power. Mothers are mothers, and who is suffering the most when disasters strike – the elderly, the women and children. “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth”, wrote Khalil
Gibran in his famous philosophical book, The Prophet.
Soon other peace talks will resume in Geneva. Let us hope that the men and women coming to sit around a table to discuss again produce something concrete. Let’s also hope that the children will soon get their future back, and that they will not be like others, in other countries, lost generations.

On these semi-gloomy reflections, we quote Menachem Begin who once said “Peace is the beauty of life. It is sunshine. It is the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family. It is the advancement of man, the victory of a just cause, the triumph of truth.“ Let’s hope that all the children everywhere will soon live in peace too.