Today is May 7, 2026. Eighty one years ago today, Germany surrendered, ending World War II in Europe. We all know what happened then. Germany was divided into four parts. One was occupied by the USSR, and it eventually became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), a part of the Soviet block of Communist Nations, and the other three were each occupied by three other Allied nations, France, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. From 1945 to 1949, these three parts of western Germany were separately occupied, but in 1949, they combined to form the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). In October 1990, East Germany and West Germany united to form one nation, also called the Federal Republic (Bundesrepublik), which obviously still exists today.

In addition to that, after the end of the war, Austria was reconstituted as a separate country (also occupied by the Allies at first), the Sudetenland was returned to Czechoslovakia, and Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France. On the other hand, the parts of Germany that had been lopped off by Poland remained with Poland, and the parts of Nazi Germany that extended furthest east, the Konigsberg region, became the Kaliningrad Oblast of the Soviet Union. Finally, Berlin, which had been the capital of Nazi Germany, and which was also occupied by the four Allied powers, each in its own quadrant, did not become united until Germany as a whole became reunited in 1990.

I recount all of this because, even though it involved quite a bit of political movement, it was relatively speaking (only relatively) pretty easy. Yes, the Communist east and the capitalist west stayed apart for another 45 years, but within each of these two regions, things were quite peaceable. What had been a vicious Nazi government became peaceful capitalist and communist governments, with old Nazis and old liberals figuring out a way to get along, and more importantly, to leave their warring and, on the one side, abominable pasts behind them. And, after 1990, and the fall of Communism in general, everyone pretty much got along in a primarily capitalist and certainly democratic society.

Although, in 1945, Japan did not surrender for several more months (and after the dropping of two atomic bombs), and although Japan was occupied in 1952, the story there is similar. Within a relatively short period, Japan too joined the world of democratic powers, giving up all semblances of its recent militaristic past.

In other words: there was war……and then there was peace.

Today, I would expect the same thing will happen once the current war, now four years old, between Ukraine and Russia ends. There will be peace, the countries will become friends, and they will most likely jointly prosper. I would bet that, for the next generations of Ukrainians and Russians, today’s war might be unimaginable.

But can you reach the same conclusion in the Middle East? Can you come up with a scenario where Israel and its neighbors will be at peace, will become allies, will develop a way not only to live together, but to respect each other and prosper together? When you add in the rivalry in the Islamic world between Sunnis and Shiites (i.e., between the powers on the Arabian peninsula and Iran), can you imagine that any of these countries will become post-occupation Germany or Japan? It seems to me that we are a long way from that.

But that is what we need to envision. It does little good to imagine an isolated Israel surrounded by neighbors who deny the rightfulness of its existence, even if there can be peace treaties, or border agreements. This is just a way to put off conflict until the next time it erupts. We need to go well beyond that, and of course, we are nowhere on this process, as even the Abrahamic Accords seem unable to move peace forward and in fact may increase rivalry between Shiite and Sunni, which at time seems to equal the differences between Muslim and Jew.

When peace was declared in Europe and Japan, suddenly militarism and Naziism were left behind. Everyone was ready to move ahead. Is that even a vague possibility in the Middle East? In Europe and Japan, there were clear victors and losers, and the victors took political control for 4 years in one case, 7 in the other. None of this will, in the short range, be the case in the Middle East. How will true peace ever come about?

We need the visionaries. They need to be politicians, and religious leaders, and academics, and writers and artists, and they all need to be working together to envision a post-war Middle East, along the lines of a post-war Europe and a post-war Japan. And there needs to be a lot of them.

And when I say there needs to be a lot of them, I mean a lot more than there are today. How many are there today? I count zero. Am I wrong?

Digression: I gave a talk this morning to my Thursday morning group about my relationship to Rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen (1482-1565), the Chief rabbi of Padua (and Venice). I had written a blog post about him on Jan 14. My friend Milt Shinberg asked if I was going to post about him this morning. I said that I wasn’t. He asked what I was going to write about. I told him I did not know. I told the truth. But when I saw it was V-E Day……