USA, Ukraine/Russia, Palestine/Israel: Peace Is Possible!
NOBEL LAUREATES, 11 Nov 2024
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate | Peace People – TRANSCEND Media Service
5 Nov 2024 – When Martin Luther King spoke so passionately and eloquently in his speech, ‘I have a dream,’ he touched the hearts of millions of people. When he spoke these words, I believe he had passed beyond the narrow confines of Politics/Religions/ Ethnic divisions/Economic Injustices/Racial inequality – he had transcended these limiting concepts into absolute love of God and neighbor.
In his speech, when he said ‘free at last, thank God I am free at last,’ he had had a spiritual breakthrough into inner peace, joy and freedom. It was a spiritual transformation – a realization that LOVE is the way, it is the only way, the way that makes all else possible. King realized that he was born to love and be loved, to the point of giving of himself to serve others in life or death for ALL of humanity.
King would be ‘sad’ to see the US, indeed so much of humanity, stuck in the destructive politics of violence, war, hatred and division. He would be sad to see so much of humanity destroying itself and others, non humans and environment, indeed stupidly destroying the very air we breathe and water we drink in the madness of mindlessness and militarism. King’s core message was a spiritual revolution based on an ethic of LOVE, whose roots are justice, forgiveness, equality and fraternity.
All Religions have as a core teaching of love and all agree on the Golden Rule ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you’. How much the world today needs to hear this message from religions together in fraternity and loudly proclaiming their primary message of Peace, Nonkilling and love of enemies.
A new US President has just been elected but I believe no President can bring about real change unless North American society has a spiritual transformation and begins to implement the values and ethics of love and mercy and rejects the politics of violence, hatred, individualism, corruption, and greed.
So too Israel is ‘out of its roots.’ The Israel genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians supported by the USA, UK, EU has shocked and horrified the vast majority of people. We are ashamed to watch on our tv screens the starvation of Palestinians, the bombing and killing of Palestinians, the destruction of their homes and confiscating of their land. This inhumanity is not acceptable and the Israel government will be held accountable for war crimes.
Gaza has sadly shown us what militarists and war mongers can do with the grotesque weaponry now available to destroy the world. Humanity can and must do better than this. In this the 2lst century genocidal militaries and wars are ‘old’ concepts and belong to the age of the dinosaurs. Peace science and action, is the alternative and the only way forward for human/nonhuman family to survive. Peacemaking is harder than making war but we must move onto the path of disarmament and peace if we are to survive as the human species.
The Ukraine/Russian war continues to cause the death of millions and the destruction of their homes and livelihoods. To save lives we must stop feeding the killing machines with arm and money and political cowardice. A ceasefire as called for by the UN chief, Antonio Guterres and talks must be held to stop this madness of cruelty and war.
Though things look bleak in the world today and humanity is on the wrong road of armaments wars and enmity let us through the UN and peoples themselves commit ourselves to peace science and let us in the words of the late US President John F. Kennedy, ‘Begin again the quest for Peace’.
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Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book, The Vision of Peace, (edited by John Dear with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from www.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com.
Peace People began in 1976 as a protest movement against the ongoing violence in Northern Ireland. Its three founders were Mairead Maguire, Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown. Over 100,000 people were involved in the initial movement and two of the founders, Mairead and Betty, received the Nobel Peace Prize for that year. Since its inception, the organization has been committed to building a just, peaceful society through nonviolent means – a society based on respect for each individual, and that has at its core the highest standards of human and civil rights. www.peacepeople.com
Tags: Israel, Palestine, Peace, Russia, USA, Ukraine, Violent conflict
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 11 Nov 2024.
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