Why War?

The Gantt Report

By Lucius Gantt

Gantt Report readers and several friends have asked me to opine about tension in the so-called Middle East.

But I’m not going to do it.

I have a lot of Jewish friends and a few Palestinian associates. I attended a mostly Jewish High School in Atlanta and my philosophical and ideological worldviews were probably formed in my teenage years.

I’m no geography expert, but in my mind, the death and destruction currently occurring in Israel and Palestine is occurring in what was once described as North Africa.

However you wish to describe the area, few news reports are asking why every few years or so the area has had armed conflicts and battles.

Haile Selassie, former Emperor of Ethiopia, explained the issues and reasoning for fighting very clearly.

Paraphrasing Selassie, he said, “Until the philosophies, ideologies, laws, rules, and procedures that hold one race, one religion, or one belief superior over another is discredited and abandoned, there will be war.

“Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all residents without regard to different ways to worship and praise God, there will be war.

“Until the color of a man’s skin, the texture of a woman’s hair or the way men and women pray, has no more significance than the color of a person’s eyes, there will be war.

“And, until that day, world citizenship, or a two-state solution, will remain just a fleeting illusion to be pursued but never attained.”

Now, news reports, commentaries, and responses from interviewed guests about evil, barbarism, and heathenism circumvent what two nations’ disagreements and military disagreements are primarily about.

Wars, rebellions, revolutions, clashes, and conflicts are almost always about land.

The Russian Revolution was about land, the French Revolution was about land and the American Revolution was about land.

The Spanish-American war was about land, the Mexican-American war was about land, and even the Civil War in America was about keeping American land from being divided into separate states. It was not about freeing slaves.

Perhaps, I should go a little deeper for my African- American readers.

The bombings, shootings and lynchings in Tulsa, Oklahoma were about land. The Rosewood Massacre in Florida was about land, the racial attacks on Black people in many Southern states were primarily about land.

And, if you don’t know, the gentrification currently going on in predominately Black cities and communities is all about land!

It is terrible for innocent seniors, women, and babies to have been victimized, injured, and killed in fights about how and where people should live and work.

The implementation and maintenance of a system of legalized racial and religious segregation in which one group of residents is deprived of political and civil rights is just as devilish as kidnappings and terrorism.

The Western world and some other nations have rallied to support Ukraine after Russia invaded Ukraine and took the Crimean part of Ukraine by force. Hence, the Russian-Ukraine war is about land.

More than a few Black people are parroting what they are hearing from so-called Black religious leaders. They tell me that in the Bible, God created Israel so any disagreement that involves Israel is an affront to God. Well, David Ben-Gurion, not God, proclaimed the modern State of Israel on May 14, 1948.

I don’t doubt God’s abilities, but I do doubt man’s words about God.

I believe God prefers peace on earth, and good will toward all men. He encourages all of us to love our neighbors in a community sense; and in a national sense.

I hope the loss of lives and destruction of homes and properties will soon end in the area described as a Holy Land.

But peace will never be sustained until the innocent people on both sides of the current conflict have pieces of land that all families can live on in peace and harmony, without walls, blockades, electricity turnoffs, and election suppressions.