Peace as a human necessity

Dr. Michel E. Abs

Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches

The history of humanity is filled with wars, baptized with all sort of names … as if wars needed names! Is it an attempt to make them more human?

When going through history one finds amazing details and information about the typology and effects of wars and has the impression that human race builds a civilization just to destroy it by war.

Typology of wars varies from invasions and large scale conquests to small local civil wars. Effects include all sort of destructions and all categories of casualties, the mentally ill, the physically disable, the disappeared and those who lost their lives. War is but a grim picture of human nature and a failure of civilization. War is the most irrational inhuman act that human beings can ever perpetrate.

In war everything becomes cheap, especially lives. Human beings, that were carried by their mothers nine months, making the joy of their families at birth, taken care of medically educationally and else, who costed fortunes to become citizens able to edify a society, become worthless, subject to collateral damage of hatred and violence. Monuments and business enterprises which are the results of decades of sacrifices, can vanish in a moment during war. War cheapens everything since, as the Arabic adage says, “no voice is louder than the voice of the battle”. In the tentative of annihilating the “enemy”, every sacrifice becomes worthless. War represent the pinnacle of human madness.

The expression of “war criminals” sounds ridicule! Does it imply there are “war angels”? The psychology of the weapon leaves no room for distinction.

During wars people feel humiliated and valueless, in need of mercy. People lack the basic element of decent life, from bread to dignity. Yes, war makes you lose your dignity.

The problem is that modern industrial society cannot live or survive without war. The industry and trade of arms and ammunitions is the most prosperous business ever. It constitutes the lever of the economy and therefore, domineering criminal governments have frequently recourse periodically to war in order to save their economies. They discovered that they have no interests in making wars directly, so they make it by proxy. Profitable business!

Therefore, Churches, as well as organizations concerned with the safety and dignity of human beings and civilization, are called to promote an anti-war culture, through advocacy and education. Peace lays the foundations of progress, prosperity and the development of society and culture. Promotion of peace is a difficult endeavor which needs the mobilization of all peace loving people, despite the fact that, at the “eruption” of every conflict, humanity returns to square one.

So far, the war promotors are stronger than the peace lovers, but the struggle continues.