Earlier this month in a “rampage in a West Bank settlement,” a Palestinian man, Moussa Tayet, killed an Israeli child and injured another. The murderer confessed and even turned in the knife used, but that doesn’t seem to change much. An innocent child is still dead, and a family will never be the same. After the attack, a Palestinian group falsely claimed responsibility, as if they were proud, as if they would have been happy if it was their killing. The killing was premeditative, as an article in the Chicago Times said, and Tayet said it was religiously motivated. I don’t know any religion that would say to kill an innocent child, and although I am not religious, it insults me that people try to misinterpret religion to justify killing.

Although the murder occurred the day after Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's new Prime Minister, took office, his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said “there is no reason to begin negotiations on a final peace accord with the Palestinians” because they “shouldn't be freed from their obligations”. But why? Tayet should not be vindicated from his responsibility for murdering a 13 year old boy, but in order to stop the killings to come, some sort of peace must be reached. The Middle East’s violence is not going to stop unless proactive measures are taken. Just like any other war, there will not be change unless both sides are willing to work together. This is clearly more easily said than done, but unless people and countries are willing to try, peace remains a distant thought, an idea of what the world could be like, an image that doesn’t seem real. A proverb says that “he who sweats more in peace, bleeds less in war.” If we are not willing to work for peace, then we should be expecting war. Peace is not something that happens on a whim, but it seems like war is. We know war is bad; we know it is so bad that we aren’t even willing to admit it. With numerous US wars in our history, an actual declaration of war has sparsely been made. We are currently in a “War on Terror,” but technically, it is not a war. To put an end to war, we must first be willing to end it.

War, what is it good for? If innocent children are being killed and countries aren’t even trying to resolve their problems, then absolutely nothing.