HALIFAX—Former United States president John F. Kennedy once famously said that if we don’t get rid of war, war will get rid of us. His dire prediction is coming true.  

As the world turns and burns, war is everywhere. After three agonizing years of conflict in Ukraine, there is no end in sight, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s idle boast that he could end the conflict in a single day.  

More than 120 days into his second term, the war rages on. Trump says “millions” of soldiers on both sides have died. Statistics from Kyiv, the United Nations, and BBC claim that 158,341 soldiers and civilians have so far lost their lives in the conflict.  

Other sources place the actual death and casualty numbers much higher than that—700,000 Russian soldiers dead and another 48,000 missing. For Ukraine, 400,000 killed and 35,000 missing. By any measure, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has turned into a bloody killing field that no one can seem to stop.

War without end is also the story in Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Everyone knows the genesis of that conflict: the brutal slaughter by Hamas of 1,196 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded with a full-scale military invasion of Gaza. The death toll from this war of revenge and rage is staggering. Approximately 1,600 Israeli soldiers and civilians have lost their lives, and more than 53,000 Palestinians. A further 866 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank.

In the Sudanese Civil War that began in 2023, an estimated 62,000 people have lost their lives although the numbers may actually be higher. In the previous civil war that began in 1983 and ended in 2005, between one and two million people were killed.  

Depending on whose statistics you believe, there are between 26 and 56 armed conflicts going on in the Middle East and Africa alone. When you add the terrifying confrontations between India and Pakistan, and India and China—all nuclear powers—it paints the picture of a world ready to fight rather than talk.

And that raises an intriguing question. With so much war, death and destruction, where are the peace-makers?  

There is no shortage of war-makers, but where are the Nelson Mandelas, the Martin Luther King Jrs, the Mother Theresas, the Dalai Lamas, the Desmond Tutus—the people who in their day negotiated agreements and championed non-violence?

The greatest of them all was Mahatma Gandhi. He was the leader who promoted India’s independence from Great Britain, but insisted that the process should be non-violent. It is worth remembering the fountainhead of his peacemaking: “There is a higher court than the court of justice and that is the court of conscience.”

The sad fact is that Gandhi’s great humanity is mostly missing in these dread, dirty times. Instead of peace-makers, we have all too many leaders who operate without conscience or compassion. They are fine with being war-makers.

Trump is a prime example. As U.S. president, he has the leverage over both the Ukraine and Gaza wars to bring them to an end.  

He could, for example, impose punishing sanctions on Russia for continuing its bloody and illegal invasion of Ukraine. Instead, he holds meaningless phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and continues to indulge the man whom the International Criminal Court accuses of being a war criminal. Being a convicted felon himself, I guess there is a bond.

Instead of pressuring Russia to cease and desist, Trump busies himself with soliciting bribes from Middle Eastern countries eager to curry favour with the “leader” of the Western world. In a word, Trump is a man without a conscience. Instead, he’s a man with a lust for self-aggrandizement, at the same time as he is slashing services for regular Americans.  

Further proof for that proposition is provided by his stance on the bloodbath going on in Gaza. Despite Trump’s crocodile tears over the terrible death toll in that war, he has done nothing to bring the conflict to an end.  

And it’s not as if he doesn’t have the tools. If, for example, he curtailed military aid to Israel, or reduced the billions of dollars in aid he provides to that country, the war would be over the next day. Instead, he gestures his desire for peace, while enabling the war to continue until nothing is left standing in Gaza.  

If there were any humanity or conscience in Trump, it would have shown up after the Netanyahu government in Israel blatantly used food as a weapon against the Palestinian people. That is a violation of international law.

Since March, Israel has cut off all food going into Gaza, a move that has put half a million people at risk of malnutrition or starvation. According to UNICEF, a total of 90,000 Palestinian children have already been treated for malnutriton.  

Under international pressure, Israel recently allowed a mere hundred trucks of food and medicine into Gaza. Aid workers on the ground say that it takes 500 trucks a day of aid to meet the demand. As a result of the shortfall, aid agencies can’t supply what they refer to as “hot meals” to Palestinians. What are these hot meals that are no longer available? Rice.

To Canada’s everlasting credit, our new prime minister—in concert with other world leaders from the United Kingdom and France—injected a little Gandhi conscience into the ascendancy of violence in our world. This is what they said about Netanyahu’s barbarity in Gaza: “We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Yesterday’s announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate. We call on the Israeli government to stop its military operations in Gaza and immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. This must include engaging with the  UN to ensure a return to delivery of aid in  line with humanitarian principles. We call on Hamas to release immediately the remaining hostages they have so cruelly held since 7 October’s 2023.”

And Canada, the U.K., and France had one more message for Israel.

“We oppose any attempt to expand settlements in the West Bank. Israel must halt settlements that are illegal and undermine the viability of a Palestinian state and the security of both Israelis and Palestinians. We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions.”

Last word to American musician Bob Dylan on war versus words: “How many times must the cannon balls fly before they are forever banned? The answer my friend is blowing the wind, the answer is blowing in the world.”

The winds of war.

Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist.

The Hill Times

 

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