Last week I mentioned my professional connection to the Gaza Strip. But as for peace there, I’m no expert.
In fact, the middle-aged journalist at my local daily newspaper, who researched for his Gaza editorial, would presumably know more, now, than I do. But still, my readers may want to know what personal light I can shine on the prospect for peace in the Palestine. Meanwhile, that old untried idea from my boyhood, “the two-state solution,” was what my esteemed local editor was expressly against.
I personally can remember where I was, in late 1963 when I got the word that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, when I remained glued to the television set watching Walter Cronkite. The relevance is that within two years, Kennedy’s interests in equality for Blacks, such as the Voting Rights Act, had been nobly advanced. (1965)
But when that peace-loving Israeli prime minister was assassinated, (1998) by a fellow Israeli, I don’t know whether anything for peace was advanced to make sure he didn’t die in vain—certainly not a two-state solution. With all due respect to my local editor, I am sure the prime minister’s views were, and are, shared by a significant number of Israelis, including that assassin who surely feared the solution would come to pass—and be feasible. Then some wit would say, “Bang goes all those settlements on the West Bank!”
I personally served in the Canadian Armed Forces, in the infantry. We were volunteers; in the US, during my youth, only the men who’s draft numbers (think lottery) came up would be called; but in South Korea today they have universal conscription, as in that entire K-pop band, as they do in Israel. If, say, bone spurs keep an Israeli from serving, then he or she must forever feel a bit “out if it” since doing service would come up socially down the years. How unlike the US draft, where much of the damn middle class “got out of it”—with, they say, a clean conscience. Today in Israel, “calling up the innocent reserves”—poor guys—affects the whole society and the whole economy.
I personally realized, when I was as a grim soldier from the working class, that I served in battle not for “glory,” or even to “win,” but to “advance the war effort,” even if that battle would mean a “losing” retreat, amidst a stormy blocking action where my friends were being slain to protect the lives of fellow soldiers who are falling back, “trading space for time.”
(Not feasible in little Israel, I know— they fight with their backs already against the wall)
As a senior citizen now, I am convinced that diplomats, so formal like Mister Spock, don’t do diplomacy to “beat someone” or because they “hate someone,” and God knows diplomacy “isn’t fun.” And it doesn’t always work. They do what they do because doing the Right Thing means “a better peace.” My young dad served in the Second World War, a war that only happened because the pathetic peace treaty of the Great War had made things even worse than before, being a grotesque mockery of the word “fair.” “Old men make these wars,” said my elderly dad when my friend’s only begotten son was killed in action.
As for the deaths and wounding of innocent Israeli soldiers, the thought that others are suffering too, or that soldiers in my dad’s war had it so much worse, does not console me, and should not console anyone.
My personal value is:
If,
after the dust settles in Gaza, the peace is not fair, not better, if peace merely leads, in the next decade, to yet another raid, with digital rockets, new-fangled drones, and cold inventions yet unborn,
then
every Israeli soldier who has died since the horror of the “October 7 Raid” (almost) has died in vain.
… …
… …
Update: Amidst joyful cries of “peace!” comes this lengthy October 13 warning by the King of Jordan.
Sean Crawford
Northwest of the Liberty Bell,
August
2025
Footnotes:
~We soldiers never said “died in vain” during Vietnam—We said, “He got wasted.” Am I still angry? How can you tell?
~God willing, civil rights will not go backwards. At long last, a federal anti-lynching law was passed during Joe Biden’s term.
~For my comments on diplomats, I cribbed from the final speech of the Doctor Who my age, a man who—unlike President Trump who is still at the teenage level—does not live transactionally. In The Doctor Falls.
~That Israeli prime minister was not a crazy minority of one: Recently the leading admiral in the Israeli navy was interviewed on CBC radio: He said he believed in a two state solution.
