This war which is being waged against the children of Gaza is a huge stain of shame on the collective consciousness of humanity because it has been going on for almost a month. Nearly 30 days that residential blocks, schools, places of worship, refugee camps, markets, open squares or roads, hospitals, even ambulances have been bombed, shelled or even machine-gunned. A stain on the collective soul of humanity because the bombing or shelling of residential blocks, schools and hospitals used by civilians is not only a war crime but also a crime against humanity given that there is no doubt that it is being done intentionally as some places in Gaza have been bombed several times in spite of their coordinates having been transmitted to the Israeli military beforehand.

The politicians in the so-called West who have provided the perpetrators a blank-cheque to carry out such horrors by flying over to Tel Aviv, meeting on site the war criminal Netanyahu (who in the 1980s had already suggested that he would not have any qualms about bombing hospitals) and announcing to the whole world that Israel had the right to respond militarily (which they do not have according to international law, read ‘Scott Ritter: Russia, Israel and the Law of War Regarding Civilians’ [version from the Internet Archive as the Sputnik News website is not available in most Western countries]) are complicit and should therefore also be judged for their role in such crimes against humanity.

Given that our politicians are not willing to stop the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza, apart from demonstrations in the streets in the vicinity of the seats of political power or in front of the embassy of the country that is perpetrating such war crimes, phone calls to the offices of the politicians who are allowing such massacres to take place, there remains a spiritual weapon: collective praying. According to some researchers, the ‘magic formula’ in this case is the square root of one percent of the population (the so-called ‘Maharishi effect’ [explanation here, here or here). A number so small that it is worth trying, no?

As such, I can only salute the following instance of a collective prayer which will take place a few hours from now:

Christian children in Gaza ask children in the world to pray for peace

As 7,000 children from the five continents prepare to meet Pope Francis for the "Learning from Children” event on November 6, their peers in the Holy Family Catholic Parish in besieged Gaza ask them to pray for peace, and in particular for children living under the war in the Holy Land.

By Vatican News staff reporter

Some 7,000 children hailing from 84 countries are expected to converge in Rome on Monday, 6 November, to meet Pope Francis at the Paul VI Hall in the Vatican.

The pilgrimage is part of an event titled "Learning from Children” organized by the  Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education with the aim to rediscover the purity, hope, and dreams children bring to a world marred by division, discord and conflict.

[...]
As of 3 November, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health 2,326 women and 3,760 children have been killed in the Gaza Strip, representing 67 per cent of all casualties, while thousands more have been injured. This means that 420 children are killed or injured every day, some of them only a few months old.
[...]
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2023-11/children-in-gaza-ask-children-in-the-world-to-pray-for-peace.html

 
May this prayer be successful! [7,000 children: this figure corresponds roughly to the square root of one percent of the world population.]

Please note that a prayer for peace is available on this blog here. However, you can invent your own prayer — say ‘May this war end very soon and the plight of the Palestinian people belong to the past; may their legitimate longing for a state of their own be granted; may those who have lost a family member or, worse, several loved ones see their grief abate as much and as quickly as possible; in short, may the bereaved and those who have been wounded be able to reconstruct their lives through external help as well as through the mobilisation of internal resources to the largest extent possible. Amen.’ Apparently, what matters the most is that the prayer comes from one’s heart, with some even claiming that the people who pray in this way must ‘feel’ that the outcome they desire has already been answered within their own self! [Click on the magnifying glass on the left hand side of the picture of the page to display all instances of this word.]