Watching the unspeakable horrors of Hamas terror attacks on Israel, I feel – literally – at a loss for words. Therefore, today I choose to quote some famous writers and thinkers, who have pondered on the futility of war. “You cannot negotiate peace with somebody who has come to kill you,” Golda Meir. “All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal,” John Steinbeck. “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” George Santayana. “War: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other,” Paul Valéry. “Never think that war, no matter how necessary nor how justified, is not a crime” Ernest Hemingway. “The tragedy of war is that it uses man’s best to do man’s worst,” Harry Emerson Fosdick. “We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children,” Mahatma Gandhi. And last but not least, reading about the heinous acts Hamas is capable of, let me quote William Shakespeare: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
Buenos Aires Times, October 14, 2023