At this time when war is increasingly relevant and increasingly "loved", I believe rhetoric is useless, I believe every word we say must be a commitment.
If I say I am against war, then I must live it.
Otherwise, it's better to keep quiet.
We are against war because we have spent many years among people who are on the front lines, who live or have lived there, in refugee camps, and I have seen that war, being a clash of forces, makes the strong win, and not who’s right.
I am against war because it is an unacceptable instrument that puts even more power into the hands of the strongest. It makes them do even more injustice to those who have no power, to those who have no opportunity to change the situations in which they live.
We are against war because it strikes the weak: children, women, old and young people.
We are against war because war, as Don Milani said: "It's a horrible machine for making widows and orphans".
War takes all young people, kills them. In exchange for...?
Have we, as humanity, truly not yet found a way to escape this disaster?
This change, that many humans desire, will not be automatic. It will happen if someone dedicate their lives to it.
We do not automatically move towards the end of war, towards freedom, towards justice... we need someone to spend their life to make this change, and be ready to pay in person,
not ready to make others pay;
not ready to put more violence into a situation already full of violence;
not ready to put more injustice into a situation already full of injustice;
not ready to put more oppression, not ready to put more weapons;
...someone must be ready to pay in person.
We don't know how to stop hate, a disease that contaminates everyone, both in peace and in war. At the end, we don't know how to love.
This is so important. We all can feel it but we know nothing about it.
This is why we try, truly empty-handed, to live with the people which is suffering war, to spend our lives with those who live on the front lines, with those who live in cities bombed everyday all day long, with those who live next to violent neighbours, with those who live in places left to the violence of war.
I'm thinking of Colombia, Palestine, Ukraine…
We do it because those people who pay such a high price are also the ones who truly know what war is. And they can talk about it.
They know how their lives are shattered, how they are blocked, how they are wounded by this situation. By living with them we hope that some unexpected perspective, not visible now, will show up and rise.
This solidarity with those who truly pay for war seems to us the necessary path to walk on today. Enough with the rhetoric, enough with chattering, enough with a love for Peace just in words.
K
OPERAZIONE COLOMBA
