If you want peace, prepare for war.

The biblical Psalmist admonishes us to hate evil, not negotiate with it.

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There are circumstances of the human condition that are beyond our will or power.

For example, we all want good health. Yet, illness occurs despite our best efforts at diet and exercise and doctor’s advice. Hence, some people pray for good health. We pray for those things that are not attainable through human agency.

Among those things that we pray for is peace. We can march for peace and sing for peace but, like good health, it is a matter of grace; it is granted. Perhaps, that is why Jeremiah warned people of the false priests and prophets who proclaim peace.

In ancient Israel, the priest was not only an ecclesiastical functionary; he was also the healer or physician. Hence, the false priest was like the contemporary medical huckster or shaman advocating her own cures for a price. Everyone wants to be cured of their ailments and many people are lured by such false claims.

Peace and the Hebrew word shalom have two different connotations. Peace from the Latin pax as in pax Romana was imposed upon the world by Rome. Implied is the sense that not everyone was in harmony. Nevertheless, Rome was not at war with any other nation.

On the other hand, shalom is derived from the notion of wholeness or completeness. Peace in the Latin sense is the cessation of hostilities. Shalom, in the Hebrew sense, is much more. It is a transformation of a broken polity whose healing begins within. Shalom is fundamentally a spiritual achievement. It is this intrapersonal aspect that is actually the source of any kind of well-being or wholeness in the world.

Almost 80 years ago, Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman wrote his bestseller “Peace of Mind” and, in the following decades the quest for such peace has been pursued by psychologists and theologians. But, with little success.

Like wellness, peace implies a kind of social-moral homeostasis. Jews accepted a moral dictum to pursue peace and to always try to make peace. Perhaps this is what drives the peace activist. It is something worth pursuing forever. Clearly, the peacenik believes peace begins with the individual.

However, peace is also a dangerous idea because it lures good people into what often turns out to be a false hope. Just as the medical huckster profits from false hope, so too does the peace activist and their well-funded organizations.

Can hope ever be false? The difference between real hope and faith and false hope or magical thinking is that in genuine faith there is doubt. Translated into Israel’s national life, it would be summarized in Kate Smith’s memorable song lyrics, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”

If the true peace activist were to sincerely pursue peace, it would be while well-armed and prepared. Si vis pacem, para bellum — “If you want peace, prepare for war.” — wrote Roman author Publius Flavius in the fourth or fifth century. George Washington certainly agreed.

And perhaps among the causes of the Second World War was Britain and America’s total lack of preparedness, holding on to Chamberlain’s seductive illusion “peace in our time.”

The true peace activist understands that peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of harmony. Peace, like war, is a costly business in terms of the waste of human life. We believed our border with Gaza was quiet until October 7th.

Most peace negotiations end in more negotiations as the terms become more difficult — North and South Korea, Viet Nam, and Afghanistan, to name only a very few. Even the horrible American Civil War did not allow for a negotiated end because basic values were in conflict.

Peace is an easy word to say; it is seductive to the soul but often destructive. Question: Should true peace have a price? Or, does peace evolve simply from its mutual pursuit?Can one really negotiate for it? What must I give up in a silly give and take over my own existence?

Can I give up my security by allowing for a Palestinian state governed by people whose raison d’etre (“reason for being”) is my destruction? Who believes that the sovereign borders of a Palestinian state would be impermeable to the malign ideology of millions of Muslims beyond those borders? Must I share my home with my enemy?

And, if I did share my space, would such a situation be real peace or just some temporary silence?

Peace is a condition; a state of mind. One cannot fight for peace because it is not attainable by any victory. It must be pursued also by reasoned argument that illuminates and eliminates the ideological causes of war.

The Second World War ended in the destruction of Germany and Japan, but peace only evolved out of the allied occupation when the allies changed the minds of millions of Germans by changing the curriculum in German schools and by censoring German media.

Peace required the elimination of their malicious ideology. There was no negotiation because the allies understood that they were dealing with evil. The biblical Psalmist admonishes us to hate evil, not negotiate with it.

I remember the Oslo Accords and the exhilaration that accompanied the thought that we could live in peace with our Muslim neighbors. No doubt that there are enlightened Palestinians willing to hold conversations with Israelis about peace. I hope that they enjoy what seems to be no more than an intellectual exercise, also an excursion into some kind of political sophistry.

Our enemies, including an American administration, are trying to impose upon us a peace (surrender) plan. Our friends realize that real peace only emerges from peaceful people and that peace of mind can only be attained when the bad ideas that led them to murder are replaced by healthy values. Jihad is not a healthy value, and Islam — much like Nazism — seeks first to control the minds of men and women and then the world.

The world, historian Charles Beard once wrote, is ruled by ideas. Moreover, such ideas, even if not in accord with historical facts, may become true in practice. One such idea is Jefferson’s famous bon mot that “all men are created equal.” This idea has become a powerful influence in world affairs, despite the fact that there are obvious wide ranging discrepancies in the physical, mental, and social positions of people.

How has this come about? Ideas contain energy, as the French philosopher Alfred Jules Émile Fouillée wrote:

“Every idea is a force tending more and more to realize its individual end. In other words it is not a mere intellectual conception; it contains within itself a dynamic power to move individuals and nations, to drive them in the direction of effecting the ends and institutions implicit in it.”

Political correctness is another idea that has altered our reality. It proclaims the negative value of false equality. There is no longer right and wrong, good and bad. In a time when political correctness was not yet a dogma and people had greater intellectual freedom, people began to realize that Germany would be a threat because it had lost its soul to Nazism, a quasi-religious-political ideology.

The Nazis established a religious-like cult in which their own rituals replaced Christian baptism, marriage, and other rites of passage usually commemorated and sanctified by church clergy.

Of course, there were the altruists and those determined to keep Britain and the United States out of war at all costs; they paid a tragic cost in blood and treasure. During the 20th century and prior to both world wars, there were those who believed in peace.

Islam, too, is a religious-political movement that has absolutely captured the minds and hearts of billions. The enemy we would have hoped to make peace with cherishes a theology of lies and of illusion.

As with Nazism and communism, engaging the enemy demands an ideological strategy. Just as we have fought to convince Europeans and Americans that Nazism and communism are evil, we must work to enlighten the world about the evils of Islam.

Just as Nazism or communism, quasi-religious movements, were boldly attacked, we must deconstruct a pernicious religious ideology. Above all, we must remember that the barbarians never negotiate and never surrender.

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