They say blessed are the peacemakers. But history tells a bloodier truth.
Yitzhak Rabin was shot after singing a song of peace. Gandhi was gunned down for embracing Muslims. JFK's head was blown open after hinting at pulling out of Vietnam. Every time someone dares to build bridges, someone else reaches for a bullet.
You start to wonder if the real enemies of war aren't the terrorists or the generals — but the ones who dare to say, “enough.”
Peace, then punishment
Let's be honest: the world doesn't hate war — it hates interruptions to war. The arms dealers, the lobbyists, the ideologues, the flag-waving fanatics — they thrive on conflict. Peace is an existential threat to them.
Rabin realized this the hard way. A decorated Israeli general who spent most of his life at war, he changed course in the '90s and tried to make peace with the Palestinians. The Oslo Accords were flawed, but they were a start. He shook hands with Arafat. He talked about compromise.
And then he was murdered. Not by a Palestinian terrorist, but by a far-right Jewish zealot — a man radicalized by rabbis and egged on by politicians who treated Rabin as a traitor. Some even dressed him up as a Nazi in protest signs.
That's the pattern. Real peacemakers aren't killed by the enemy. They're killed by their own.
The Betrayal of Pacifists
We pretend we love peace. We hang up white doves and award Nobel Prizes. But when people actually speak out — like Assange or conscientious objectors — we call them naive, dangerous, even treasonous.
Take Obama: awarded the Peace Prize in 2009, then predicted over drone strikes, secret wars, and assassinations across sovereign borders. Meanwhile, actual peace activists got prison, exile, or a bullet.
“Pacifist” has become a slur. A stand-in for coward, traitor, or fool. But maybe the cowardice lies in us — in our inability to imagine a world that doesn't need a standing army or a preemptive strike.
The assassin always has backup
Rabin's granddaughter, Noa Ben Artzi, described the man who killed her grandfather as just a “gun” — a vessel of hate, programmed by an extremist machine. But that's how political assassinations work. There's always more than one finger on the trigger.
And the worst part? It works. Rabin's death collapsed the Israeli peace camp. His killer succeeded. The same way Gandhi's killers did. The same way whoever pulled the strings in Dallas did.
The assassin always wins. Not because he's brave — but because the rest of us fall silently afterwards.
Maybe peace is still possible. But not without martyrs.
So yes, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” But let's not lie to ourselves — they are rarely celebrated in their lifetime. They're stalked. Mocked. Silenced. Their blood fertilizes the very soil of future hope.
Maybe that's what makes them holy.
Maybe that's the problem.
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