Hidden History -- In The Making

ISRAEL’S SMASHING A FIGURE OF JESUS IS PART OF THEIR ONGOING ERASURE OF CHRISTIANS

If Christians In The West Want To Stand With Middle East Christians, They Must Do More Than Condemn One Grotesque Image. They Must Confront The Evil Climate That Caused It.

An Israeli soldier in southern Lebanon recently took a hammer to a figure of Jesus.

The image was startling, which is why it travelled globally. In a single frame, it captured the kind of desecration many still want to treat as aberrational: crude, visual, undeniable.

Israeli military authorities confirmed the incident in the Christian village of Debel, condemned it, and claimed it punished the soldiers involved.

But the deeper problem is not that this happened once. It is that too many still want to treat as exceptional what Christians in this land have long recognised as part of a pattern.

What happened in Lebanon did not begin in Lebanon. It exposed a posture already visible in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, a Jerusalem-based organization that monitors attacks on Christians in Israel and East Jerusalem, documented 155 anti-Christian incidents carried out by Israelis in 2025 and described a “continued and expanding pattern of intimidation and aggression.”

Physical assaults were the largest category, and clergy were the most frequent targets.

BETWEEN ‘SMASHING’ AND ‘SQUEEZING’ INCIDENTS

Rossing’s distinction between incidents that “smash” and those that “squeeze” is especially clarifying.

The smashing is what makes headlines: a desecrated statue, a vandalised church, a viral image.

The squeeze is quieter: spitting, harassment, intimidation, obstruction, and the low-grade humiliation that makes a community feel less secure and less certain that it has a future.

As a Christian, I read the image from Debel alongside the warnings we have heard for years from Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Taybeh.

Rossing’s report makes clear that Palestinian Christians are vulnerable not only as a religious minority, but also because of their national identity.

In the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, church leaders have repeatedly warned that settler attacks, movement restrictions, and a deepening climate of insecurity are pushing Christians, especially the young, to consider leaving.

The threat is not only to Christian symbols. It is to a living Christian presence. That presence has been shrinking for a long time, and for multiple reasons.

The dwindling number of Christians in the land reflects decades of cumulative pressure under Israeli occupation: displacement, emigration, slower population growth, economic hardship, and recurring cycles of violence.

A DEEPER DANGER

A 2020 survey of Palestinian Christians found that the strongest drivers of emigration were conditions tied to occupation, including checkpoints, settler attacks, and land confiscation.

Too often, Christians in the West respond more readily to an offence against an image than to the slow erosion of a people.

A shattered statue produces outrage because it is visible. A shrinking church often does not.

One gives the world a photograph; the other unfolds over years through systematic pressure, fear, restriction, economic decline, and the exhausting sense that your future in your ancestral homeland is being closed off.

This is why the image from Debel struck so many of us with such force. It did not merely depict an act of desecration; it revealed a climate.

A society does not arrive at such a moment in a vacuum. It gets there through habits of contempt, the normalisation of intimidation, and the hardening of public life against the Palestinians, including their Christian communities.

A few incidents smash, but many more squeeze, and the constant squeezing leaves a community wondering whether it still has a future.

That is the deeper danger facing Palestinian Christians today.

They are confronting an environment in which harassment becomes routine and disappearance becomes thinkable. In that climate, the question is no longer only whether Christians are protected in theory. It is whether they can endure in practice.

AN INVISIBLE REALITY

For many outside the region, especially those who speak often about Israel and Palestine, this reality remains strangely invisible.

Jesus is invoked constantly, as a symbol of civilization, prophecy, or political identity. Yet the living Christian communities of this region are too often treated as marginal to the story.

People grieve when Christ is struck in stone but say far less when the Christians in the Holy Land are hemmed in by fear and uncertainty.

Palestinian Christians are an integral part of this land’s fabric, and their erosion should alarm anyone who claims to care about the Holy Land.

They are not relics or symbolic props in someone else’s theology or politics. They are living communities with names, histories, memories, graves, and futures that can still be lost.

If Christians in the West want to stand with Christians in the region, they must do more than condemn one grotesque image. They must confront the deeper climate that made it possible.

They must listen to the warnings coming from Christians living there. And they must stop exhibiting practical indifference to the extermination of Palestinian Christian life.

The real question raised by that shattered figure of Jesus is not whether one act crossed a moral line. It is whether the world will finally notice the people who have been living under this pressure for years.

INFECTIOUS DISEASES ARE BEING WEAPONIZED BY ISRAEL IN GAZA

An Infectious Disease Specialist, Went To Gaza On A Three-Week Medical Mission In February 2026. He Found Infectious Diseases Running Rampant, All Directly Due To Israel’s Siege And Genocide.

A young man in his twenties was in the intensive care unit at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza. He was the victim of an Israeli rocket attack three weeks earlier near the yellow line. His left leg was amputated above the knee, and the part of the extremity that remained had multiple external fixators in place; he also had multiple other lacerations and suffered severe abdominal trauma requiring open laparotomy, bowel resection, and ostomy placement. He was intubated and had developed a ventilator-associated pneumonia with a multidrug-resistant bacterium called Acinetobacter. He was on a combination of antibiotics that would probably be ineffective.

In Gaza, there is a lot of what infectious disease specialists refer to as “drug-bug mismatch”—patients often get placed on antibiotics that are ineffective against the offending pathogen due to a limited antibiotic arsenal and a growing antibiotic resistance crisis.

Due in part to ongoing restrictions on the entry of lifesaving medicines by the Israeli Occupation, the antibiotic supply is severely limited in Gaza, often changing week to week based on availability of donations from the World Health Organization. Patients unnecessarily die from often treatable infections because of delays in receiving effective antibiotic therapy.

The collapse of the healthcare system, overwhelming overcrowding in and around hospitals, and breakdown of hygiene and sanitation infrastructure all conspired to facilitate the spread of multidrug-resistant bacteria and exacerbate Gaza’s antimicrobial resistance burden. Even before the genocide, Gaza suffered from high levels of antibiotic resistance, which has since accelerated. Heavy metal contamination from explosive remnants from Israeli airstrikes is also contributing to the selection of resistant bacteria in the environment.

Prior to Israel’s medicide, Gaza was home to 38 hospitals, many providing advanced specialty care; now there are only a handful of remaining hospitals functioning at a fraction of their prior capacity, for a population of over two million people in dire need.

Hospital and public health laboratory capacity is severely limited in Gaza because of targeted destruction of laboratory infrastructure and blockade of supplies by the Occupation. Microbiology laboratories struggle to perform essential, time-sensitive diagnostic tests, such as cultures to identify bacteria from various body specimens and environmental sites, and antibiotic susceptibility tests to predict the best treatment options for the individual patient and the hospital population at large. These constraints also impair infectious disease surveillance and outbreak response measures.

Infection prevention and control efforts have faced extraordinary challenges following Israeli assaults on Gaza’s hospitals and surrounding communities. Hospitals were overwhelmed with civilian casualties, making adherence to basic principles of hygiene such as handwashing, sterilization of medical equipment, and proper wound care nearly impossible. Severe overcrowding facilitated the spread of infectious diseases. Since the “ceasefire”, hospitals have continued to face severe shortages of alcohol-based hand sanitizer, solutions to sterilize medical equipment, and personal protective equipment.

The risk of infection, however, extends beyond the hospital walls. A group of volunteers was invited by a representative of the Ministry of Health to bear witness to life in the tent camps surrounding the hospital. It struck them that each of these tents was crowded with entire families who had experienced multiple displacements. The first thing some noticed was the stench of raw sewage and garbage in the air. Debris littered the ground. Latrines were dug in the sand that would overflow when it rained. These conditions increased susceptibility to communicable respiratory, skin, and diarrheal diseases.

They also created an ideal breeding ground for rodents. One of the resident doctors at Nasser Hospital, described a cluster of leptospirosis cases on the wards in early February. Leptospirosis is a serious bacterial infection that spreads from rodents to people; infection can present with pneumonia, kidney and liver failure, and result in death without proper treatment. Extensive rainfall and flooding in the tents surrounding the hospital likely exposed people to rodent urine and feces, leading to disease transmission.

Walking down the dusty streets of Khan Younis, it became apparent how Israel was attempting to make life unlivable for Gazans by destroying their built environment. The air was thick with particulate matter and smoke, making breathing labored. Patients with underlying breathing conditions were especially vulnerable to respiratory viral infections like influenza and COVID and to bacterial pneumonia; there were several patients admitted with pneumonia to Nasser Hospital.

Visiting the local grocery store, the shelves are stocked with overpriced junk food and highly processed foods. Fresh produce was rare. Even before the genocide and famine, Gaza was kept chronically food insecure, at the brink of starvation, by the Occupation. Malnutrition weakens the immune system and predisposes patients, especially young children, to infection. There was a heartbreaking scene of small children queuing up with large, empty pots outside a makeshift soup kitchen near the hospital, screaming and crying with hunger. Between manufactured malnutrition, traumatic injuries, and the burden of chronic and infectious diseases, it is not surprising that Gaza has one of the lowest life expectancies in the world.

Returning to the case of the twentysomething-year-old patient in the intensive care unit, his assault did not end with the Israeli rocket attack that tore his body apart. He was subsequently subjected to more insidious forms of violence by the Occupation: his ability to fight off infection was compromised because of malnutrition due to ongoing limitations on entry of nutritious food; he developed pneumonia from spread of bacteria in the unit due to restrictions on entry of cleaning supplies and personal protective equipment; and once he developed the pneumonia, his treatment options were severely limited due to an insufficient supply of effective antibiotics.

There are many such patients in Gaza. An elderly woman who developed an infected pressure ulcer on her hip from prolonged sitting on the hard floor of her tent resulting in sepsis and requiring surgical debridement and intravenous antibiotics; a young woman who developed a highly contagious parasitic infestation from scabies due to overcrowding and poor hygiene conditions in her family’s tent; another woman who developed severe gastroenteritis and diarrhea likely from drinking contaminated water leading to dehydration and kidney failure.

A discussion on the threat posed by infectious diseases in Gaza would be incomplete, however, without addressing frontline healthcare workers, who play essential roles in preventing and slowing the spread of infections in the healthcare setting. Gaza’s doctors, nurses, and infection preventionists have endured great difficulty during the genocide, facing multiple displacements and challenges in securing food and clean water. One of the doctors, whose best friend had been killed, said everyone in Gaza had lost someone or something precious to them.

Other hospital staff, particularly those in leadership positions, like Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, have been kidnapped, tortured, and unlawfully detained by the Occupation, while others like Dr. Hammam Alloh, a nephrologist from Al-Shifa Hospital, have been murdered, leaving critical gaps in the healthcare workforce; such gaps have been linked to increased risk of hospital-acquired infections.

Gaza’s medical students and trainees have also been denied their right to medical education, including education and training on infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship, over the preceding two and a half years of assault. This poses serious challenges to curbing and decelerating the emergence of antimicrobial resistance in Gaza’s teaching hospitals.

Addressing the growing threat of infectious diseases in Gaza requires bold, urgent action. Firstly, a true ceasefire must be enacted. This includes lifting restrictions on entry of lifesaving medical supplies and medicines, particularly antibiotics. Humanitarian workers must be allowed unimpeded access into Gaza and currently imprisoned healthcare workers must be freed. Patients requiring specialty care must be allowed medical evacuation—many of these patients succumb to infectious complications while awaiting safe passage. Resources must be allocated to rebuilding Gaza’s sanitation infrastructure, healthcare system, and laboratory capacity. Only with these prerequisites in place can hospital infection prevention and control and antimicrobial stewardship programs realize their full potential. Finally, the systems of apartheid and occupation that created the conditions for medicide must be dismantled; Israel must be held accountable for its genocidal actions in Gaza.

From the censorship of student voices to the assassinations of journalists in Gaza, the cost of telling the truth about Palestine has never been higher.

MONEY IS THE REAL REASON IRAN AND THE AMERICAN REGIME CANNOT END THE WAR

Trump Built His Iran Policy On Economic Warfare, But His Unwillingness To Give It Up Could Mean A Deal Is Never Reached, Diplomats And Analysts Say.

Before Donald Trump became president, he honed his hawkishness on Iran, complaining about the “plane loads of cash” it received under the 2015 nuclear deal. Now, his ability to end the war in the Middle East hinges, in large part, on how much money he gives Tehran.

“Money is a big part of this. It’s a key to any compromise from Iran’s point of view,” Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow and Iran expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, said.

Some American and Arab officials say that Trump’s unwillingness to loosen the purse strings is the real reason talks between the two sides are deadlocked and potentially doomed to fail.

Iran has reportedly floated a proposal for the two sides to bypass the issue of its nuclear program and enriched uranium in order to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but the nuclear issue is not the biggest sticking point, some people familiar with the talks say.

“Everyone has ideas about a compromise on enrichment [of uranium], but the hardest circle to square for Trump is lifting sanctions. My understanding is that this is more sensitive than the nuclear file,” said a former US official who has spoken with Gulf and US officials following the talks.

It’s not hard to see why.

Trump built his Iran policy over a decade by waging economic warfare on the country, using the power of the American financial system.

“Trump hasn’t helped himself,” Vatanka, at the Middle East Institute, said.

“The way he misrepresented the JCPOA from the get-go has made life harder for him now, because anything he does will be measured by what he criticised Obama for,” he added, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal by its official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

“THIS IS ECONOMIC STATECRAFT”

The JCPOA granted Iran sanctions relief in return for capping its nuclear enrichment to 3.67 percent and opening the country’s facilities up to stringent United Nations inspections. Trump unilaterally exited the deal and imposed crippling sanctions on Iran. He has shown no appetite to stop using the power of the American financial system against Iran, even amid the ceasefire.

On Friday, hours before the two sides were supposed to meet in Pakistan, the American regime rolled out new sanctions against a Chinese oil refinery and dozens of shipping firms and vessels that transport Iranian oil. The Islamabad talks fell through.

If the war ends with Iran in a better financial position than it started, this would be an embarrassment for the Trump administration, some diplomats say.

Barely a month before the American regime and Israel attacked Iran, American Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took a victory lap at the Davos Economic Forum, recounting how sanctions sent Iran’s currency, the rial, “into free fall” and the Iranian people “out on the streets”.

“This is economic statecraft – no shots fired. And things are moving in a very positive way here,” he said.

Just as Trump is boxed into waging financial warfare, Iran’s leadership desperately needs cash, experts say.

Iran has benefited from its control of the Strait of Hormuz by selling oil at higher prices amid the war. The American blockade is impacting oil sales, but in the short term, Iran can still sell the crude it has stored on ships in East Asia.

But taking a broader view, any gain from oil sales has to be measured against the roughly $300bn in economic damages wrought by Israeli and American air strikes on the Islamic Republic.

An Iranian business newspaper reported in April that reconstruction would take at least 12 years.

THE WAR ON IRAN IS PROFITING OIL, GAS AND ARMS COMPANIES

As Bills Rise Across The World, Campaigners Call Out The Fossil Fuel And Weapons Firms Raking In Mega Profits

As the death toll in Iran rose above 3,500 and the dual blockade of the vital Strait of Hormuz by the American regime and Iran continues, fossil fuel and weapons companies have seen their profits rise dramatically since the war by the American regime and Israel began two months ago.

The standoff between the American regime and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz has left 1,600 vessels and 20,000 seafarers stranded in the Gulf, as Brent crude tops $107 a barrel.

While hitting the pockets of millions in Europe, Asia and worldwide, the war has created big winners. BP’s first-quarter profit more than doubled year-on-year to $3.2 billion, the highest for the British oil ‌giant since 2023, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

Recent analysis conducted by climate charity Global Witness for the Guardian found that major oil and gas companies made over $30m an hour in the first month of the war on Iran.

This comes as UK household energy bills are projected to rise by as much as £300 ($406) a year from July due to shortages caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, with recent polling suggesting 44 percent of the public would be unable to afford these increases, as well as triggering global food insecurity.

Meanwhile, the CEOs of Britain’s biggest energy companies have seen their personal fortunes surge by millions following the crisis.

Linda Cook, chief executive of oil and gas company Harbour Energy, saw her shareholdings in the company rise by more than £4m to a total of £26m in the month after American-Israeli strikes began in late February.

In the same period, the value of Shell CEO Wael Sawan’s shares in the company increased by nearly £1.8m, to reach £13.2m, according to the End Fuel Poverty coalition. Centrica boss Chris O’Shea saw the value of his shares rise by over £300,000 and BP’s deputy chief executive Carol Howle’s stake grew by over £500,000.

Globally, Chevron chief executive Michael Wirth saw more than £44m added to the value of his stake in the company, and Equinor, the Norwegian firm that supplies much of the UK’s gas, saw its shares rise by over 45 percent.

Because oil and gas markets are globally priced, “disruptions in supply anywhere in the system raises prices everywhere,” Jagannadha Pawan Tamvada, a professor of business economics at Kingston University, said. Since demand is less flexible, this translates into higher prices for consumers and higher revenues for producers.

PROFITS FROM ARMS

A similar trend is true for defence companies. On Monday, a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) found that global military expenditure had increased to $2.887 trillion in 2025, the 11th year of consecutive rises.

As the United States spends on average $1.8bn a day paying for the war on Iran, Lockheed Martin – the largest Pentagon contractor, which often takes in more taxpayer money than the entire State Department – saw its stock price rise by nearly 40 percent at the beginning of March since the start of 2026.

“I have never seen war and conflict manipulated so nakedly for short-term profiteering… that is an element which is quite unique to the assault on Iran”

– Andrew Feinstein, arms industry researcher

“From an incentive perspective, these outcomes are predictable consequences of systems in which uncertainty and risk are directly monetised,” said Tamvada, with “expectations of future instability” leading to a rise in defence stocks.

The cost of such instability is not felt by these corporations but rather experienced as a benefit. “In effect, risk is socialized downward to consumers while upside is concentrated upwards,” Tamvada said.

“It is not that a shortage increases the companies’ costs. Instead they charge more because they can. They pocket the difference,” explained Ruth London, founding member of campaign group Fuel Poverty Action (FPA).

“The fossil fuel industry kills through poverty, through oil wars, through pollution and through climate change. It has made a killing from the war against Iran. And yet it is subsidised.”

While recent figures suggest almost 10,000 deaths are linked to cold-related health conditions due to fuel poverty every year in the UK, oil and gas bosses rake in millions, worsening inequality that is already “exceptionally high, and rising”, according to FPA.

FOSSIL FUEL TAX EVASION

“Oil and gas price shocks are like Christmas for fossil fuel companies: they can sit back and watch as their profits multiply,” Philip Evans, senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace.

“We need a bold government response to tax the profiteering of oil companies in the current crisis,” Evans said.

One way that governments can challenge these incentives is increased taxation on the companies raking in huge pay-days from global instability.

“Oil and gas price shocks are like Christmas for fossil fuel companies: they can sit back and watch as their profits multiply”

– Philip Evans, Greenpeace

Tax Justice UK, which campaigns for taxes on the super rich, sent a letter to the British government with signatories from 40 leading civil society organizations, calling on the chancellor to tackle corporate profiteering from the Iran war and levy adequate windfall taxes to avoid the economic burden falling on consumers.

“During these times of global crises, certain companies make record profits amidst human suffering in Iran and ordinary people in this country end up footing the bill,” Tax Justice UK’s deputy director, Caitlin Boswell.

“We have a tax system that is built on protecting wealth,” she said, due to lobbying from companies that allows them to avoid paying their fair share of tax and continue receiving government handouts subsidising fossil fuel energy.

While the UK government was able to introduce a windfall tax that raised £6.8bn in 2022-2023 on energy companies reaping profits from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, negative framing in the press highlighted the industry’s influence over the media.

Polling shows the cost of living crisis is the number one concern among voters. But, beyond the windfall tax on the oil and gas industry, the Labour government remains reluctant to sufficiently redistrubute the wealth of companies profiting from the energy spike, which, according to Boswell, “just goes to show the sheer power of these vested interest groups and these industries that have… too much political capture.”

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Patrick Galey, head of investigations at Global Witness, said that “the fossil fuel industry is the richest and most powerful to ever exist, and therefore also the most devious”.

Galey said the industry had gone from “decades of denial” relating to climate change, to a “repeated, sustained, designed pattern of obfuscating, of delaying” action to tackle it when the science became undeniable.

“Energy independence engenders genuine geopolitical freedom and independence because you are not having to constantly tiptoe around the autocrats”

– Patrick Galey

The war on Iran has prompted the second energy shock to consumers in the last five years – the first being the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – with forecasts suggesting the fallout from this disruption will be far sharper.

The lesson that needs to be learnt, Galey said, is that we need to pivot away from oil and gas and invest in renewables – not just for the climate, but for national security too.

“Energy independence engenders genuine geopolitical freedom and independence because you are not having to constantly tiptoe around the autocrats that you want to buy fossil fuels from,” he said, pointing to Spain as an example of where the government has been able to stand up to the Trump administration because it is not reliant on American energy.

Not doing so is a result of “government choice”, Galey said, referencing analysis showing that Labor ministers met fossil fuel lobbyists more than 500 times in their first year in power, and that the party’s new intake of MPs from the last general election took more than £45,000 in donations from oil and gas.

“OPEN PLAN OFFICE”

Fossil fuels and defence are among the most heavily subsidised industries in the UK, with an estimated £17.5bn given out in oil and gas subsidies per year, while £1bn in government science subsidies went to BAE Systems, Britain’s largest arms company.

According to Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC MP in South Africa and founding director of Shadow World Investigations, this is effectively a form of “corporate welfarism”, and a way of “privatising public money” through state subsidies and contracts.

The arms trade is a “very fertile sector for corruption”, Feinstein said, accounting for an estimated 40 percent of global trade corruption, despite representing only 0.5 percent of global trade.

He pointed to the brazen insider trading occurring in America, including on the platform Polymarket, where President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, is an investor and sits on the advisory board.

Trades placed more than $500m in oil futures bets minutes before Trump announced “very good and productive conversations” with Iran, according to the Financial Times, suggesting insider knowledge.

“I have never seen war and conflict manipulated so nakedly for short-term profiteering… that is an element which is quite unique to the assault on Iran,” Feinstein said.

“Wars are being partly fought to enable insiders to play the stock market and to profiteer in the short term on national security announcements,” he said. There is “little attempt to hide it”.

The arms industry also has the “added advantage of secrecy”, Feinstein said. In 2010, BAE Systems was fined $400m by the American regime for corrupt deals.

Nevertheless, these companies are treated as an “arm of the state”, Feinstein explained, and their CEOs have an “incredibly high security clearance” not afforded to other industries, allowing them access to sensitive information and influence over government policy.

While defence companies are privately owned, they receive “massive subsidies” with taxpayer money through the state defence budget, while profits are “appropriated privately”, Anna Stavrianakis, professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex, said.

Campaign Against Arms Trade has described the relationship between private defence companies and government as not just a “revolving door”, but an “open plan office”, illustrating the close relationship and influence the industry has over government policy.

The Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems, for example, has already carried out “direct interference… with our democratic process”, Stavrianakis said, by meeting with the Home Office amid the crackdown on direct action group Palestine Action, which has targeted Elbit.

“There is a shared set of assumptions between industry and government that protest needs to be contained and that direct action needs to be repressed,” Stavrianakis said.

HIGH GAS PRICES ARE NOT THE ONLY ECONOMIC DAMAGE OF TRUMP’S AND ISRAEL’S WAR

For The Past Six Weeks, As This American-Israeli War With Iran Has Played Out, The Economic Impact Of The Conflict Has Gotten A Lot Of Attention. And Rightfully So.

As anyone who’s consumed any news about this war knows well by now, the Strait of Hormuz is a major energy chokepoint, the Iranian government did exactly what they said they were going to do if Trump and Netanyahu ordered this attack and started blocking ships tied in any way to the government’s attacking them from passing through the Strait, and the American regime, Israeli regime, or really any other government have not been able to do anything about it.

However, throughout all of this, most of the discourse about the economic impacts of the war has focused on the rising prices drivers are facing at the gas pump. That isn’t surprising, as gas prices are an early cost that impact consumers directly.

But the emphasis on pain at the pump threatens to badly understate the economic damage of this war. And it helps feed the false impression that, if this new attempt at a ceasefire holds and the war ends somewhat quickly, gas prices will fall back down as fast as they rose, and then all the global economic turmoil the world’s been worrying about will be avoided.

It won’t. A lot of economic pain has already been locked in by this war. But to really understand it, it’s necessary to keep a few important economic truths at the front of our minds.

First is the fact that the entire purpose of the economy is to produce goods and services that consumers value enough to pay for. All of the production happening anywhere in the economy is geared towards that end.

That’s relatively straightforward with the production of consumer goods. A commercial brewer, for example, chooses to produce specific beers because they think consumers will value those beers enough to pay more money than the brewer spent producing them, making it a profitable production.

But it’s also true for all the production that is not directly tied to a finished consumer good—which is, in fact, most of the production happening in the economy. Businesses produce capital goods like industrial stainless-steel mixing tanks, rubber tractor tires, plastic packaging, or the ingredients of fertilizer because there’s demand for those goods from other businesses that produce later-stage goods and, ultimately, consumer goods.

So, returning to the brewing example, all the production that results in that finished bottle of beer doesn’t begin with the brewer. It requires grain that is planted, grown, harvested, and transported to the brewery. It also requires fermenters, Brite tanks, mash tuns, and canning or bottling systems—all of which need to be produced with other capital goods like stainless steel, which itself requires other capital goods like iron ore.

Every consumer good can be viewed as the end of a long chain of production stretching all the way back to the cultivation of raw materials like iron or timber, or the creation of basic components like resins or plastics. Economists call those basic capital goods at the beginning of the chain higher order goods.

And what’s important to remember about higher order goods is that, first, almost all of them are used in many different lines of production. Iron ore is not exclusively used to help eventually produce beer, it’s used to make a lot of goods that are themselves used to make a lot of other goods. It’s what’s called a non-specific factor of production. Any change in the production of iron ore has widespread consequences across the economy.

And second, production takes time. That’s true for the production of any given good, but it’s especially true if we look across that entire chain of production. The higher order goods that are currently being produced won’t help bring about finished consumer products until months or even years down the road.

All of this is important to understand and keep in mind because the war with Iran is, so far, primarily impacting the production of higher order goods. And it goes far beyond oil.

About 8 percent of the world’s aluminum travels through the Strait. And aluminum is used across many sectors, including construction, manufacturing, and technology. Nearly a third of the world’s helium supply comes from Qatar, which is an important component in semiconductor production as well as MRI systems.

Polyethylene and other kinds of plastics and resins are also greatly affected. More than 40 percent of the world’s polyethylene is exported from the Middle East. And these are used in all stages of production in all sorts of industries—packaging, auto parts, medical equipment, consumer containers, industrial components, electronics, and much, much more.

And there are other often-neglected but extremely important hydrocarbon products being held up, such as petroleum naphtha, which is critical for refining gasoline and producing solvents for cleaning agents and paints. Natural gas condensate is another liquid hydrocarbon used in refining and to dilute other denser hydrocarbons to make them easier to transport. There’s also liquified petroleum gas, or LPG, which is mostly composed of propane and butane. These components are also important for refining as well as residential cooking and heating in many parts of the world. Much of the world’s supply of all these products is produced in the Middle East and exported through the Strait of Hormuz.

Another often-neglected yet critical higher-order good is sulfur. About half the world’s seaborne sulfur trade moves through the Strait. It’s important for refining petroleum and minerals like copper, nickel, and zinc, which are widely used in everything from electronics to medicine.

But the other major use of sulfur is as an ingredient in fertilizer. The sulfur supply shock—along with adjacent shocks in the supply of ammonia and urea, other key fertilizer components primarily exported through the Strait of Hormuz—has created a time bomb in global food markets.

Which brings us to another economic concept that is extremely important to understand if we want to fully comprehend the situation we’re now in. The problem is not merely a rise in prices but, specifically, the destruction of supply. The strikes on production facilities and the severing of supply lines mean there is now not enough supply of the components above available to meet current levels of demand. And because, again, these higher order goods are demanded for the production of lower order and consumer goods, that means, eventually, fewer consumer goods. The rising prices are a symptom of the fact that there is now less stuff available for everyone who wants it than there was before.

The fertilizer shortage provides a good example. The fact that producers cannot get their hands on the supply of ingredients like sulfuric acid, ammonia, and urea they need to meet demand means they are forced to produce less fertilizer than their customers need. Which, in turn, means those customers—industrial and family farmers—have less fertilizer to use during this year’s spring planting season. Which means they produce fewer crops. This leads to less animal feed for livestock and produce overall, resulting in an unavoidable drop in the food supply.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to live in developed countries above the poverty line will primarily experience the shortage as higher food prices. But for the millions of people who are already struggling to secure the food they need, this drop in supply may force them to go without.

That is not a choice forced on all of us by some greedy companies, it is an unavoidable consequence of the economic destruction brought about by this war.

And that same basic process is at play with all the other commodities and higher order goods that were mentioned, as can be seen in the dramatic price increases. Aluminum prices have already surged by 10 percent. Import prices for helium have jumped 50 percent. Polyethylene prices are up 37 percent. Polypropylene is up 38 percent. And the price of petroleum naphtha has tripled since February.

Remember, these price increases are not the whole story. They are the symptom of supply shortages that will work their way through all relevant lines of production and result in fewer consumer goods down the road—all from production disruption that will be slow to start back up again, even when the war is fully over.

That means fewer containers available for goods like nail polish and, yes, beer. It means fewer medical supplies, like IV bags, syringes, and sterile packaging, all of which rely on petrochemical plastics. Also, delays in construction projects as it becomes harder to source asphalt, plastics, and aluminum inputs. And dangerous health issues going undetected because of limited MRI machine availability, and much more.

And that’s not to mention, of course, the oil and LNG shortages that people are already sufficiently focused on. These commodities power nearly all stages of all lines of production and help produce the diesel and jet fuel used to physically move everything in the economy to where it needs to be.

Unlike gas prices, these effects will take some time to develop—especially in America, where our supply chain is momentarily protected from the initial impacts. And they won’t be as clearly tied to the war in the minds of most people. But the costs of all this economic destruction are real, they are substantial, and they are already locked in.

ISRAEL’S EXPANSIONIST AMBITIONS WON’T BE STOPPED BY THE CEASEFIRE IN LEBANON

Israel’s Push For Buffer Zones And ‘Natural Borders’ Suggests The Emerging Ceasefire Is Unlikely To Halt Its Ongoing Ethnic Cleansing In Southern Lebanon.

As of the time of writing, it remains to be seen whether the ceasefire announced between Lebanon and Israel will hold. Despite the undeniable relief in many quarters, from Beirut to Tel Aviv to Washington, it still feels more like a forced, reluctant sop from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Donald Trump than a genuine turning point in Israel’s stated campaign to occupy the south of the country.

It’s not much of a sop, either: What Trump needs from Netanyahu is for him to stop bombing Lebanon, to align the mismatched expectations of Iran and the American regime under their fragile ceasefire. So far, Netanyahu has managed to initiate talks without halting the bombing, and even these talks are an anomaly in the two countries’ shared history.

Given Israel’s propensity to undermine ceasefires and negotiations — whether it is a party to them or not — and its track record of assassinating negotiators mid-process, it seems likely that the Israel-Lebanon dynamic will revert to type before long. This is especially true given that Lebanon is Netanyahu’s nearest and most convenient arena for blowing up Tehran–Washington negotiations and resuming an all-out war before American forces can withdraw.

There is, of course, a specific Israeli-Lebanese history. No other Israeli border has been as consistently restive for so long, and no outside actor has inflicted devastation on Lebanon as routinely or as dramatically as Israel: from cross-border raids in the first decades of statehood, to full-scale invasion in 1982, to the current war — the most lethal conflict in Lebanon since the devastating civil war of 1975-1990.

Lebanon has also been the unwilling setting for a more definitive strain of Israeli wars — those against the Palestinian national movement — and the site of the last major public paroxysm of Israeli conscience, when hundreds of thousands protested the Sabra and Shatila massacres, which were facilitated and enabled by the Israeli army.

There are several reasons why Israel is ignoring opportunities for a peace agreement with the Lebanese government (the current half-hearted engagement, conducted under fire, cannot yet be taken seriously) and instead prefers to bomb, invade, exploit proxies, and, as of this year, ethnically cleanse and openly promise to annex the country.

The two lesser reasons are those cited by both Israel’s supporters and its critics: David Ben-Gurion’s stale security doctrine, which holds that Israel’s natural border is the Litani River, and its stunted sibling, the buffer zone doctrine, now being deployed in both Lebanon and Gaza.

Ben-Gurion first proposed the Litani as the “natural border” of a future Jewish state back in 1918, arguing that the river marked a demographic and economic boundary between the Galilee and Mount Lebanon proper. Over the years, a particularly expansionist faction has adopted his demarcation of southern Lebanon as merely the “northern Galilee,” and the steep-banked river has acquired a new military aura as a more defensible border than the current one. Proponents of annexation and settlement in southern Lebanon invoke ideological, territorial and military arguments.

At the same time, another Israeli military doctrine — the buffer zone — has acquired a fresh lease on life as a putative endgame of the current war. Its logic is to push the front line away from Israel’s internationally recognized borders, especially from civilian communities; in contrast to a demilitarized zone, a buffer zone presumes freedom of operation for the Israeli military.

A PRETEXT FOR ETHNIC CLEANSING?

Unlike expanding Israeli sovereignty to the Litani, the buffer zone idea has been attempted before in Lebanon, during Israel’s 18-year occupation of the country from 1982 to 2000. It proved a resounding failure.

Hezbollah rockets were launched from within the buffer zone into Israeli communities even more frequently than before the occupation, while Israeli soldiers operating in southern Lebanon became constant targets. After hundreds of casualties and amid mass protests at home, the Israeli army withdrew unilaterally. Now both approaches are being proposed again, with the added claim that because Hezbollah relied on support from the civilian population, those civilians must be expelled.

Wildly misreading the lived experience of the heterogenous and interwoven Lebanese society, Israel is reportedly planning to expel only Shia residents, warning Sunni and Christian residents not to harbor their neighbors — a chilling instruction on the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Morality aside, there is no reason to assume either doctrine has become more workable in the 21st century than it was in the 20th. A river may serve as an obstacle for infantry, mechanized units, and heavy armor; it might even impede the movement of heavy artillery (though Israel is indeed the only actor utilizing artillery in this particular theater at the moment). But today, from Ukraine to Iran to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the bulk of warfare takes place in the air: Drones, rockets, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles can easily traverse rivers and proposed buffer zones alike, retaining momentum even as ground operations are minimal or deadlocked.

This should be obvious from Israel’s experience with Iranian missiles alone — fired from thousands of kilometers away — but Hezbollah has also launched rockets hundreds of kilometers into Israeli territory. That means the group can move two, three, or four times beyond the Litani and still strike Israeli communities at will.

Even if such a buffer zone were established, Israel would likely seek to retain “operational freedom” far beyond it, and it is only a matter of time before someone proposes pushing the demarcation line up, even deeper into Lebanon.

So why is Israel insisting on this antiquated plan, openly carrying out mass ethnic cleansing in its service? It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the causality is, in fact, reversed. Just as in Gaza, where buffer zones serve as a pretext to corral residents of the already crowded enclave into 12 percent of its territory; just as in the West Bank, where “security areas” and “firing zones” have been used to disrupt Palestinian agriculture and push communities off the land, what we are seeing in Lebanon is buffer zones in service of ethnic cleansing, not the other way around.

While the loudly proclaimed endgame of annexation is especially salient for expansionist elements within Netanyahu’s coalition, the “liberal” opposition can’t help but roll over when “national security” is invoked. Some, like opposition leader Yair Lapid, have even promoted the depopulated buffer zone idea as though it were a moderate, halfway measure compared to open-ended expansionist wars.

As elsewhere, the Israeli right is more than willing to let moderates meet it halfway — then halfway again, and again — until the distinction between them all but disappears.

And there is another, deeper reason for the decades-long refusal to pursue a serious, equitable peace agreement with Lebanon. For Netanyahu and many other Israelis, diplomacy and compromise devalue any achievement that could have been secured by force alone, because they suggest that further compromises might follow. In Israel, there is a near-intoxication with hegemonic power, a belief that the sacrifices and losses incurred in pursuing objectives through force are preferable to the uneasy uncertainty that comes as a result of treating other regional actors as equals.

Finally, there is a more immediate incentive for continuing attacks in Lebanon. Whether through oversight or design, the American regime initially failed to include Lebanon in the initial terms of its ceasefire with Iran (contradicting Netanyahu’s own framing of Lebanon as Iran’s forward operating base). This left Netanyahu with a wide opening to collapse the American–Iran ceasefire before it can solidify into meaningful negotiations, and, more critically, before the American regime begins drawing down forces from the Gulf.

This opening remains even as a ceasefire is announced also in Lebanon; Ceasefires are fragile, especially when one or more of the parties are compelled by external actors, and especially when it’s unclear if Hezbollah is meant to be a party to the negotiations — however indirect — or a target. Netanyahu wants the war to resume; he wants America to invade; and he wants state collapse in Iran. He appears to believe he is within reach of that outcome. If the American regime withdraws now, amid midterm pressures at home and a precarious political moment in Israel, he knows such an opportunity may not come again in his lifetime.

TRUMP NOW SAYS HE WILL NOT STRIKE IRAN WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Trump On Thursday Ruled Out Striking Iran With A Nuclear Weapon, After His Previous Threats To Completely Destroy Iranian Civilization.

“No, I wouldn’t use it,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

“Why would I use a nuclear weapon when we’ve, in a very conventional way, decimated them without it?” he asked.

“A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody.”

Trump on April 7^th issued a genocidal threat to Iran that a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back,” but within hours agreed to a ceasefire that he has since extended in the war launched by the United States and Israel.

Vice President JD Vance during the conflict warned that the United States was ready to intensify damage on Iran with weapons not previously used, but the White House denied he was threatening nuclear strikes.

Vance in failed negotiations had pushed Iran for greater concessions on its contested nuclear work.

Trump told reporters that he was seeking an Iran “without a nuclear weapon that’s going to try and blow up one of our cities or blow up the entire Middle East.”

Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon and the UN nuclear watchdog says that an atomic bomb was not imminent before the war.

The United States is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in combat, obliterating the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, killing some 214,000 people.

Israel is widely known to have nuclear weapons but does not publicly acknowledge them.

Trump’s blanket statement against any nuclear use would appear to be at odds with longstanding American nuclear doctrine, which reserves the right to use nuclear weapons.

Trump has previously called for an end to an American moratorium on nuclear testing in response to American allegations of secret testing by China and Russia.

Former president Barack Obama had called for an eventual goal of a world without nuclear weapons, but his administration also said that so long as they existed, the American arsenal would serve as a deterrent.

The United States has rejected calls to declare that it will never use nuclear weapons first in a conflict.

A LEBANESE INFANT WAS SLAIN IN AN ISRAELI STRIKE ON HER FATHER’S FUNERAL

An Israeli Strike On A Funeral Killed Four People From The Same Family Over The Weekend, Including Infant Under Two Years Old Who Was There For Her Father’s Funeral.

Saeed’s father was killed on Wednesday, during an attack on her family home in the village of Srifa. The attack was one of hundreds of Israeli strikes carried out on Wednesday, the first day of the ceasefire, which killed hundreds of people across Lebanon.

The funeral wasn’t just for her father, but for multiple other family members who were also killed in the strikes. Her father was slain along with six others in that strike, and then Taleen and three other relatives were killed in the attack on the funeral.

Multiple members of the Saeed family were wounded in the attack on the Srifa home, and multiple more were wounded in the funeral strike. This brings the toll to 11 killed and numerous others wounded between the strikes, and with the Saeed family still needing to hold a funeral for the people killed in the last funeral, leaving open the question of whether that funeral will be targeted as well.

The real open question though is why the home in Srifa was targeted in the first place, let along the attack on the funeral for the people killed in Srifa. While Israel is increasingly lionizing their attacks as being about fighting Hezbollah, and tends to label anyone they happen to kill as a Hezbollah figure, they have yet to comment at all on the Srifa strike to try to justify it, nor have they attempted to label Taleen and her relatives, killed at the funeral, as anything to do with Hezbollah either.

As Israel has escalated the rate of attacks in the past week, since the ceasefire was announced, they’ve been killing a larger number of people per day, and subsequently are giving less time to explaining each individual killing. Taleen Saeed’s death will likely remain unjustified.

IN ISRAEL’S PRISONS SEXUAL VIOLENCE IS AN “ORGANIZED STATE POLICY”

Palestinian Testimonies Reveal How Sexual Violence, Including Rape Using Objects And Dogs, Is Approved By ‘Highest Levels’ Of Israeli Leadership.

Sexual torture of Palestinian detainees from Gaza in Israeli prisons is an “organised state policy”, endorsed by the “highest, political, military, and judicial authorities”, a new report has revealed.

The report is based on testimonies from Palestinian former prisoners gathered by the rights watchdog Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

It reveals how the scope of sexual violence of Palestinian prisoners, including rape using objects and trained military dogs, constitutes an “organized state policy”, aided and abetted by Israeli institutions and leadership.

One former detainee, a 42-year-old woman from north Gaza who was held in the notorious Sde Teiman detention centre, said she was bound naked to a metal table and repeatedly raped by two masked soldiers over the course of two days.

She recalled that she was left shackled, naked and bleeding throughout the night before the soldiers returned the next day to continue raping her.

She said she wished for death and likened her experience to “another genocide behind walls”.

Throughout her ordeal, she was filmed. Soldiers later showed her the footage while she was hung by her wrists under interrogation, threatening to publish the videos if she did not “cooperate”.

Amir, a 35-year-old Palestinian man also held at Sde Teiman, recounted how soldiers forced him to strip naked, before their dogs urinated on him and raped him.

He described how the dog “penetrated my anus in a trained manner while I was being beaten”.

“This continued for several minutes. I felt profoundly humiliated and violated.”

Khaled Mahajna, an attorney with the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, described how a soldier in Sde Teiman inserted a fire extinguisher nozzle into a Palestinian prisoner’s anus and then discharged its contents into his body, resulting in severe internal injuries and intense pain.

“ETCHED INTO THEIR MEMORY”

Another former prisoner, 43-year-old Wajdi, recounted being shackled to a metal bed and repeatedly raped by soldiers and a trained dog.

“I felt severe pain in my anus and screamed, but every time I screamed, I was beaten. This continued for several minutes, while soldiers filmed and mocked me, Wajdi said.

“The soldier left after ejaculating inside me. I was left in a humiliating position. I wished for death. I was bleeding.”

He said he was then untied and raped by the dog. Later, another soldier forced his penis into the victim’s mouth and urinated on him. Over the following days, the abuse continued, with repeated rapes carried out by multiple soldiers.

“This case is particularly devastating because it reflects an accumulation of almost every form of torture, physical, psychological, and moral, layered with systematic humiliation,” Khaled Ahmed, a Euro-Med field researcher said.

“It also includes the deliberate use of multiple perpetrators and trained dogs as instruments of sexual violence. The result is not a single act of abuse, but an extended pattern of cruelty designed to destroy dignity, bodily integrity, and any sense of safety. These are acts that defy comprehension.”

Victims said the attacks were filmed and often conducted in “well-equipped institutional logistical settings… intentionally designed to enable torture and sexual violence”. The report said this evidenced the institutionalised nature of the violence.

Ahmed, who conducted some of the interviews with the victims, said the process was “by no means an easy task”.

“The soldier left after ejaculating inside me. I was left in a humiliating position. I wished for death. I was bleeding”

-Wajdi, former prisoner

“The details the survivors described and the way they relived the emotions and events were overwhelming,” Ahmed said.

He described how some interviewees broke down in crying fits while recounting their stories, noting that the participants’ fear of reprisals and social stigmas around sexual abuse stopped some of them from speaking altogether.

“But what we noticed was that all of them spoke about what happened as if they were seeing it in front of them,” Ahmed said.

“They remembered every detail, as though the scene had been etched into their memory and could never leave it.”

Ahmed said that most of the victims he spoke to were men, as women who experience sexual violence face a much deeper and more complex stigma in Palestinian society, “making it nearly impossible for a woman or her family to disclose that she has been assaulted”.

He noted that, while the sexual violence used against men and women is largely similar, women’s bodies in particular were used as a means to blackmail men.

“We documented several cases of sexual assault against women due to their familial ties to wanted individuals,” Ahmed said.

“A COMPLEX CRIME”

Euro-Med monitor concluded that the testimonies are not isolated incidents but stand as evidence “of a policy supported by senior civilian and military leaders, either through direct orders or by tacit approval and a climate of impunity”.

It said that the scale of the abuse was made possible by legislation, military directives and emergency regulations, such as the “Unlawful Combatants Law”, which vastly expanded detention powers without judicial oversight and stripped detainees of any legal protections.

These legal mechanisms turbocharged enforced disappearances of Palestinian detainees and transformed Israeli detention centers into unaccountable “black holes” in the aftermath of October 7^th 2023. Notable among them is Sde Teiman prison, where multiple reports have found torture, rape and murder to be rife, while the Red Cross and lawyers are denied access.

The report insists that responsibility for the abuse does not stop with its perpetrators; it is facilitated by the collusion of medical and legal personnel and the Israeli judicial system.

Euro-Med reported that doctors have helped to obscure incidents of torture by hiding the perpetrators’ identities, burying the victims’ injuries in medical records and issuing them “fit for interrogation” certificates.

Meanwhile, the Israeli justice system has shielded perpetrators by restricting evidence given by victims and witnesses, and reclassifying serious incidents as minor offences, resulting in the dismissal of charges.

In March, the Israeli military announced it was dropping charges against five soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman, despite leaked CCTV footage showing soldiers surrounding the detainee as he was pinned against a wall.

The report said that these abuses breach the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as they have caused serious harm to group members and are aimed at preventing births within the group – “all within a larger objective of partially or fully destroying the Palestinian community in the Gaza Strip”.

It emphasised that responsibility for these crimes extends “beyond the direct perpetrators, encompassing leadership and institutions that shelter them”.

Numerous reports by rights groups and investigations by news sites have extensively documented the widespread use of sexual violence and rape of Palestinian detainees across the Israeli prison system.

A United Nations inquiry accused Israel of using sexualised torture and rape as “a method of war… to destabilize, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people”.

Ahmed emphasised that the proliferation of sexual violence in Israeli prisons serves a specific purpose, “because it encompasses almost all types of torture”.

“It keeps the victim trapped in a cycle of violence, unable to escape it, even after the violence has practically stopped,” Ahmed said.

“It continues to accompany the victim throughout their life. The survivor keeps experiencing both physical and psychological pain, and in many cases feelings of shame, humiliation, self-blame, inferiority, loss of dignity, and a lack of safety.”

He noted that the trauma does not stop with the victim, but spreads to their family and community.

“Especially in a conservative society where anything related to sexual assault is seen as an attack on the dignity of the entire family. It is a complex crime that deeply impacts and fractures the very fabric of society.”

AT THE PRAYER VIGIL FOR PEACE POPE LEO SAID “STOP PLANNING ARMS AND DEATH”

The Pope Appeals To Leaders Of Nations To Stop And Sit At The Table Of Dialogue And Mediation, “Not At The Table Where Rearmament Is Planned And Deadly Actions Are Decided!”

He also insists that the Church will always advance in calling for peace “even when rejecting the logic of war may lead to misunderstanding and scorn,” and will always instil “obedience to God rather than any human authority.”

“I receive countless letters from children in areas of conflict. In reading them, one perceives, through the lens of innocence, all the horror and inhumanity of actions that some adults boast of with pride.”

Pope Leo XIV gave this chilling reminder during the Prayer Vigil for Peace he led on Saturday evening in the Vatican, as he urged, “Let us listen to the voices of children!”

PRAYER CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS

People around the world joined the Holy Father in praying the Glorious mysteries of the Rosary, in person and remotely, with meditations from various Church Fathers, including St. Augustine of Hippo, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Ambrose of Milan. During the Rosary, faithful from different continents lit candles with the flame from the Lamp of Peace in Assisi, which burns perpetually at the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi.

The Pope thanked all those present and all those praying from afar for praying for peace, noting that their prayer is an expression of that faith which, as Jesus reminded, moves mountains. He began by recalling that: “War divides; hope unites. Arrogance tramples upon others; love lifts up. Idolatry blinds us; the living God enlightens.”

Yet, he reassured, “all it takes is a little faith, a mere ‘crumb’ of faith, in order to face this dramatic hour in history together — as humanity and alongside humanity.” He emphasized that prayer is not “a refuge in which to hide from our responsibilities, nor an anesthetic to numb the pain provoked by so much injustice,” but rather is “the most selfless, universal and transformative response to death.”

NOTHING CAN CONFINE US TO A PREDETERMINED FATE

In this context, he argued, “Nothing can confine us to a predetermined fate, not even in this world where there never seem to be enough graves, for people continue to crucify one another and eliminate life, with no regard to justice and mercy.”

Pope Leo remembered Saint Pope John Paul II’s adamant appeals for “no more war” and his insistence on our responsibility to do everything possible to counter it.

As we pursue peace, the Holy Father marveled how prayer teaches us how to act.

“In prayer,” Pope Leo marveled, “our limited human possibilities are joined to the infinite possibilities of God.” Moreover, he reflected, thoughts, words and deeds then “break the demonic cycle of evil and are placed at the service of the Kingdom of God. A Kingdom in which there is no sword, no drone, no vengeance, no trivialization of evil, no unjust profit, but only dignity, understanding and forgiveness.”

TRUE STRENGTH COMES FROM SERVING LIFE, NOT FROM DISPLAYS OF POWER

The Pope warned likewise against the idolatry of self and money.

“Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength,” rather he said, “is shown in serving life.”

Thus the Pope encouraged, let us “unite the moral and spiritual strength of the millions and billions of men and women, young and old, who today choose to believe in peace, caring for the wounds and repairing the damage left behind by the madness of war.”

In this context, he recalled the traumatic effects on innocent children who suffer the terror of war, and called on humanity to hear their cry and protect them.

APPEAL TO THE LEADERS OF NATIONS TO PURSUE DIALOGUE AND MEDIATION

The Pope reaffirmed the “certainly binding responsibilities that fall to the leaders of nations.”

“To them we cry out,” Pope Leo said, “Stop! It is time for peace! Sit at the table of dialogue and mediation, not at the table where rearmament is planned and deadly actions are decided!”

Yet, he noted, an equally significant responsibility falls to all of us men and women from all over the world, to reject war, not only in word, but in deed.

Prayer calls us to leave behind whatever violence remains in our hearts and minds. Let us turn to a Kingdom of peace that is built up day by day — in our homes, schools, neighborhoods, and civil and religious communities.

Such a Kingdom, he added, is to counter polemics and resignation through friendship and a culture of encounter.

LET US BELIEVE AGAIN IN MODERATION AND GOOD POLITICS

“Let us believe once again in love, moderation and good politics. We must form ourselves and get personally involved, each following our own calling. Everyone has a place in the mosaic of peace!”

He went on to observe that the Rosary, like other ancient forms of prayer, united the faithful this evening in its steady rhythm built on repetition, pointing out that peace gains ground in the same way, “word by word, deed by deed, just as a rock is hollowed out drop by drop, or fabric woven stitch by stitch.”

The Holy Father reminded that these are the slow rhythms of life, a sign of God’s patience.

“We must not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the pace of a world that does not know what it is chasing. Rather,” he suggested, “we must return to serving the rhythm of life, the harmony of creation and healing its wounds.”

CHURCH INSTILLS OBEDIENCE TO GOD RATHER THAN ANY HUMAN AUTHORITY

The Pope therefore said we are to all return home having made a commitment to pray without ceasing and without growing weary, and to a profound conversion of heart.

Recalling the Church as a great people at the service of reconciliation and peace, the Pope pointed out that She advances without hesitation, “even when rejecting the logic of war may lead to misunderstanding and scorn.”

Moreover, he upheld, “She proclaims the Gospel of peace and instills obedience to God rather than any human authority, especially when the inherent dignity of other human beings is threatened by continuous violations of international law.”

Thus, the Pope expressed his hope that throughout the world, every community become a ‘house of peace,’ where one learns how to defuse hostility through dialogue, where justice is practiced and forgiveness is cherished. Now more than ever, he recognized, we must show that peace is not a utopia.

A PRAYER TO THE LORD WHO CONQUERED DEATH WITHOUT WEAPONS OR VIOLENCE

The Pope said that all brothers and sisters of every language, people and nation are one family that weeps, hopes and rises again, and thus, he again called on that family to embrace the appeal of his predecessor Pope, Saint John Paul II, to declare together, “No more war, a journey with no return; no more war, a vicious cycle of grief and violence.”