I am preparing a presentation about Christopher Columbus, which I need to complete by the end of the month. Yesterday, I was reading about his death, which happened in the city of Valladolid. I am happy that he died in Valladolid, because I always thought it a weird name for a Spanish city (still do) and I never really knew how to pronounce it. I guess I never cared enough, but now I know that it is pronounced Vei-ya-do-LEED. Once you know, it seems obvious.

He was only 54. Did a lot in a few years. Also wrote a lot, as you probably know. If he were alive today, he might have a blog “Chrisis54.blog”. Possible.

Speaking of Spain, do you know that 500,000 people were killed in the Spanish Civil War? Quite a large number, right? But remember that over 600,000 were killed during our Civil War, and about 700,000 died in the Battle of Stalingrad (USSR v Nazi Germany in WWII) alone. And of course, close to 100,000,000 in World War II (yes, you read that right).

In fact, if you go to the wonderfully titled Wikipedia article “List of Anthropogenic Disasters by Death Toll” (and by the way, my computer does not recognize “anthropogenic’ as a word), you will find listed 116 wars in which more than 100,000 people were killed. You can break this down and find that in over 20 of these wars, more than 100,000 civilians were killed. You will also find that over 170,000,000 people have been killed by major outbreaks of disease or famines that humans have caused or failed to stop when they could have. And you will find a listing of over 4,000,000 people in China alone who have died by human caused floods.

Gee, Art, you say. You must be in a good mood this morning.

Well, I go through this listing for a number of reasons. First, to imagine the large scale horrors that human beings have brought on each other throughout recorded history. Second, to put today’s tragedies into perspective. For every death we see today is no more tragic than each of the deaths, say, in Chinese floods or Russian famines, or Spanish Civil Wars, or European wars of aggression. Each of these deaths is an equal tragedy – whoever they are, wherever they lived, whenever they were killed. And of course, I am talking about deaths here; I am not talking about injuries, or dislocations, or property destruction, or anything else. We could repeat these numbers in other categories (if we had the data, which we might) and see the numbers grow so much higher. For example, the United Nations estimates that there are over 115,000,000 today worldwide, who have been displaced by war.

Yes, war is an awful thing. And every war is started by human beings, and carried on by human beings. This includes, of course, the war today in Gaza.

Will there ever be a time with no wars being fought? My guess is that that time will never come. But there will always be striving for such a time. Remember, in Vietnam, where you had to destroy a village in order to save it? Remember World War I, the war to end all wars? And I am sure there were other wars where such sentiments have been expressed. Even today, Prime Minister Netanyahu says that the Gaza war is to ensure that an invasion such as occurred on October 7 will never occur again. And that the way to do this is to obliterate Hamas, whatever the cost.

Well, guess what, Prime Minister Netanyahu. You may win this war, but your ultimate goal will not be met. Hamas will sprout up again, maybe as Hamas, maybe under a different name, and will continue to threaten Israel as long as Israel exists. And to ensure its continued existence, Israel will be required to respond, and each response will polarize the world – for or against the Israelis, and for or against the Jews. And each time Israel has to defend itself, it will in effect lose each war that it wins.

And of course Israel, by ever increasing West Bank settlement for the most part, simply attracts more of these wars. If Israel wants the land to be Jewish “from the river to the sea”, it invites the Arabs to want the land to be Muslim “from the river to the sea”. The only way to stop this from continuing recurrence is to set boundaries for Israel and say “no further” – and that of course may mean telling some settlers to leave the land they have settled, or to tell them (per some sort of agreement) that they can stay, but that they will be governed by Palestinians, not by Israelis.

We have seen, more and more over the years, how impossible this is. So what is to be done?

Years ago (decades ago), we went to a lecture given by the late George Washington University professor Howard Sachar, a scholar of modern Jewish history. The subject was, of course, the Palestinian-Israeli problem. He boldly declared that the two populations were unable to solved the problem on their own, and that they would never be, and that there would be a never ending cycle of violence, time and time again.

He said, and I really disagreed with him at the time, although now I think he was probably 100% right, that the solution would have to be designed by parties other than the two parties to the dispute. That the United States, Europe, the Muslim middle east – all would have to work together to come up with a solution to the problem and then would have to inform the parties : This is the solution and this is what each of you have to do. Full stop.

Now, can this be done? Probably not. But maybe. And it is time to give it a try. Let’s have conversations regarding solutions, leaving Israel and the Palestinians outside of those talks. Maybe we can actually get somewhere.