No war, Rearm, Genocide, Autoritarism
Casa della Pace joins the Stop ReArm Europe movement—a movement made up of various groups, associations, and individuals who firmly distance themselves from the arms race promoted by the European Union.
We live in a world where war is increasingly present: from Ukraine to Sudan, to Israel’s attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, the West Bank, and Iran—which is now retaliating by striking Tel Aviv.
The horrors of war are plain for all of us to see, especially when it comes to the genocide of the Gazan population. We witness the deaths of thousands of innocent women, children, and men, as well as journalists and healthcare workers. And yet, condemnation from those in power is slow to come. Many in the West continue to stand by Israel, hypocritically speaking of its right to self-defense—a country that, with weapons supplied by the United States and many European nations, carries out extermination and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
In the face of this devastation and unchecked violence, the response from our governments is to arm even more. To rearm again, allegedly to protect against threats from Putin’s Russia.
Others argue for the strengthening of diplomacy—but diplomatic efforts seem to hold less and less weight in a world dominated by a logic of self-protection at any cost, and by the concurrent resurgence of nationalist and fundamentalist far-right ideologies.
At Casa della Pace, perhaps naively, but with passion and deep sensitivity, we seek to promote a radical change born in the hearts and minds of ordinary people—of each of us. Let us begin with ourselves, from the ground up, exploring how the pursuit of self-security in our relationships is the root of pain, division, and conflict.
Let us begin by disarming our hearts of those defensive and deterrent mechanisms that can so easily become tools of attack and harm.
Let us discover within ourselves and in our everyday relationships whether it is possible to go beyond all this and uncover the true meaning of peace with ourselves and with others—the true meaning of love.Let us cooperate, think together, explore and experiment in a protected space of care and mutual attention—and then, let us sow into the world what we can discover here together at Casa della Pace.
This is how Casa della Pace joins the Stop ReArm Europe movement, hoping to be able to contribute, in its own small way, to building a world free of weapons, war, and all nationalistic, ethnic or religious divisions. Change starts with each one of us.