We Were All Once One: A Call to End the Madness of War

Before borders, before armies, before ideologies,

there was only family.

A great human family walking under the same sky,

drinking from the same rivers,

gathering around sacred fires,

and whispering prayers into the wind

in different tongues, but with the same longing:

to belong, to be safe, to be seen.

The truth is, what we call the Middle East today was once a cradle,

not of division, but of creation.

It birthed the first alphabets, the first laws, the first temples,

the first farmers, the first seekers of God.

The peoples of that land, Arameans, Canaanites, Hebrews, Arabs, Assyrians, Chaldeans,

were not strangers.

They shared languages, bloodlines, customs, and landscapes.

They intermarried. They traded.

They fought, yes, but they also healed together, dreamed together, worshipped together.

So when did we forget?

When did we become obsessed with lines on maps

and forget the rivers in our veins that still flow from the same Source?

When did we trade ancient kinship for modern conflict,

and claim that we are enemies,

when in truth, we are cousins?

Every war in the Middle East is a civil war of the spirit.

Brother against brother.

Sister against sister.

All of us, children of the same ancestral soil.

The prophets we revere, whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim,

they all spoke of peace, mercy, compassion, and justice.

Not one of them preached bombs.

Not one of them sanctified walls over love.

We cannot call ourselves spiritual,

and still dehumanize our neighbor.

We cannot claim sacred land,

while shedding sacred blood upon it.

The solution is not political.

It is remembrance.

We must remember the truth beneath the propaganda,

the humanness beneath the label,

the shared sorrow beneath the rage.

We are not just from the land.

We are from each other.

And if we are to heal this fractured world,

we must become again what we always were:

One people under One sky.

Let this be the generation that refuses to forget.

Let this be the generation that plants olive trees

instead of burying children.

Let this be the generation that speaks, at last,

with the voice of peace, ancient and eternal.

Because we were all once one.

And in the eyes of God, we still are.