No winners in a war

One more time the Middle Eastern region is on fire, a merciless war is ravaging, burning the dry and wet, harvesting innocent lives, lives of people on both sides, who a few days ago, were going about their daily struggles. And with the current situation in the world, it is indeed a daily struggle for everyone to make ends meet.

I grew up with Palestinian neighbours during my childhood, I have a lot of respect for the way they have excelled in many domains of life, they have always been called refugees, but they always overcame that by showing excellence in all things. 

In our class, Palestinian students were always among the top five. When we visited their homes, they were meticulously clean and orderly, you could smell the fresh baked bread in their kitchen from a distance. Our neighbours were always ready to host us with their special cookies and a cup of black tea mixed with dry sage, mostly brought from the hills of Jordan. 

I remember one day visiting a neighbour with my mother, she had seven children and was expecting the eighth. This family lived in a one-bedroom house with a living and an outdoor kitchen. 

My mother told the woman that with the severe financial challenges that faced them, was it wise to have eight children? Our neighbour said : “But I do not have eight children, I have four.  And then she said : “You see, half of my children are for Palestine.”
 So, somehow at the back of her mind, she was ready in case of a war to sacrifice a number of her children to liberate her country.
When we returned home, I told my mother that if I lived in that house, I would have always wondered to which half I belonged. As a child that weighed a lot on my mind. However, in reality no one wants to lose a child, not even a finger of a child. With every surge of aggression in any part of the world, we keep wondering what can we, at the grass-root do? Sitting behind screens of social media and cursing famous people who do not show a reaction to what is happening, is definitely not a solution. If communities start educating children from a tender age to perform acts of service by helping others, those charitable hearts will only think of service and not aggression. 

In one of its messages, The Universal House of Justice, the International governing body of the Baha’i Faith say: “Prayer and acts of service may seem like a feeble and slow response when weapons of destruction are fired, they are, however, the means by which, ultimately, those weapons will be silenced forever.”