{"id":3688,"date":"2016-01-01T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-01-01T00:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=3688"},"modified":"2021-11-26T08:23:01","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T00:23:01","slug":"143-the-call-for-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=3688","title":{"rendered":"143. The Call for Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDepart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it<\/span>\u201d<\/strong> [Psalm 34:14<\/span>, NRSV<\/em>]<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0<\/a>\"\"<\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n

[L] Pope Francis prays at the wall that divides Israel from the West Bank. [R]\u00a0The pope, the two leaders and Patriarch Bartholomew planting an olive tree.<\/span><\/p>\n

Walls demarcate. Walls vacate dialogue. Walls perpetuate a divide built on violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Always seeking peace, Pope Francis during his brief tour of the Middle East in May 2014, made an unscheduled stop at a section of the dividing wall that separates Israel from the West Bank in the city of Bethlehem. He put one hand on the wall and leaned over it, touching the wall with his forehead. It was an unprecedented gesture. But the world could tell that this holy man of peace prayed fervently for peace in the region where the absence of peace remains a protracted and agonising reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

On a trip intended as a “pilgrimage for peace,” with its roots in faith and not politics, Pope Francis later visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and prayed for the victims of the Holocaust. The following day, he also visited the Muslim Dome of the Rock located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Also at the Temple Mount area, he prayed at the Western Wall, Judaism\u2019s holiest site, and left a piece of paper in the Wall, on which he wrote the Lord\u2019s Prayer.<\/span><\/p>\n

.\u00a0<\/span>Politicians are wont to give their preferred spin on the Pope\u2019s gestures, but that in no way diminishes the truth that his peace-making attempts are always spiritual bridge-building, not political posturing. In this twenty-first century world, what nations and their political leaders need is a willingness to step away from their trench-digging political manoeuvring. They need to ease up on their rigidity, to allow a bit of the spiritually positive dimension \u2013 the yearning for peace<\/em> – that every human person is fundamentally gifted with, to emerge in their handling of political affairs. Without easing up on rigidity, no nation with a violent past is ever going to taste real peace, and we can only despair of ever seeing any world peace any time soon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two examples intrude upon our consciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first is Turkey<\/em>. While Armenia commemorated its 150th<\/sup> anniversary of the Armenian Holocaust in the hands of the Turks and the whole world expressed empathy with Armenia, the Turkish nation has chosen to hold steadfast to its denial that a holocaust of the Armenian people ever happened.<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem is, for political leverage, most specifically in securing Turkey\u2019s strategic cooperation in any armed conflict in the Middle East, the United States of America and its European allies have chosen to stay mute, refusing to acknowledge in public what they would only whisper in private to be the truth of history. Upon its denial, Turkey will never find peace on the Armenian issue.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second is Japan<\/em>. Unlike Germany, which could and did courageously accept the historical reality of the Nazi atrocities and own up the nation\u2019s infamous role in the Second World War, Japan remains steadfast in a strategy of denial-at-all-costs, for face-saving and<\/em> so that her future generations would not have to be \u201cweakened\u201d by any sense of shame of her atrocious past. And so, whereas Germany could recover and progress and, crucially, go on to rebuild a new nation of peace and prosperity, enjoying the praise and trust of all nations, Japan too, seemingly could and did go on to rebuild and grow into a rich and prosperous country but, one has to be blind as a bat to not notice a crucial difference between these two nations. With her ill-conceived attempts to cover up, and even to blatantly distort her horrible war crimes, Japan, unlike Germany, could never enjoy peace<\/em> with and respect from her neighbouring nations. Resorting to such strategies as doctoring school history text books, political dignitaries openly paying respects and honouring their \u201cwar heroes\u201d at the Yasukuni Shrine [including 1,068 war criminals!], rejecting claims relative to the enslavement of Korean \u201ccomfort women\u201d, and denying the historicity of the Nanjing Massacre, even to the point of raising official objections against \u00a0the UNESCO World Memory Heritage recognition of the Nanjing Massacre documents, the Japanese, as a whole, are simply mendacious and untrustworthy people in the eyes of her neighbours!<\/span><\/p>\n

The Japanese have yet to learn that facts are stubborn things. In 1770, John Adams, who later became one of the most influential American presidents, was asked to help provide a legal defense for the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. He accepted the brief knowing that his fellow colonists were hostile to the troops and his legal practice would probably suffer. Despite obvious risks to his personal welfare on account of the dominant political fervour, he earned admiration from fellow Americans and beyond in his firm defense submission, saying:<\/span><\/p>\n