As Vladimir Putin roles over Ukraine with ice in his veins, nothing in his heart, and a dark soul of a former KGB killer, here are some quotations about war that I collected over the years that speak to the moral and real-life consequences of war.

In a democracy, people will hold different views on policy (some more moral than others), but what we have been hearing from Trump, Pompeo, Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, and extreme right-wing alternative reality-makers in the Trump Republican Party is not only a reflection of Putin himself but a distortion of everything our better American angels call upon us to think, do, and be.

Today, tomorrow, and the next day are the beginnings of a great tragedy for the people of Ukraine and for the Russian soldiers ordered to do Putin’s bidding. No one will win in this war. Everyone will suffer the consequences of Putin’s lust for power and corruption of the human spirit.

I am not a pacifist. There are two legitimate reasons, in my view, for a country ever to go to war. The first is in self-defense from a direct attack, and the second is to stop a genocidal action against a group of people. Russia’s actions this week are clearly neither.

I applaud President Biden and the leaders of NATO and the European Union for unifying their response to this calumny, and I pray that the tough sanctions already put in place and those that are yet to come will deter and then stop this insanity before too many Ukrainians are killed and maimed.

The consequences of war — “He that is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.” -Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)

Hatred of war — “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity… Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. General and 34^th President of the United States(1890-1969)

Victory in war is an illusion — “No battle is ever won, he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” -William Faulkner, novelist (1897-1962)

Who are the warriors — “Once and for all / the idea of glorious victories / won by the glorious army / must be wiped out / Neither side is glorious / On either side / they’re just frightened men / messing their pants / and they all want the same thing / Not to lie under the earth / but to walk upon it / without crutches.” -Peter Weiss writer, artist, and filmmaker (1916-1982)

War is hell — “It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.” -William Tecumseh Sherman, Union General – American Civil War (1820-1891)

War and leadership — “Any leader who does not hesitate before sending young men and woman to war, doesn’t deserve to be a leader.” -Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel (1898-1978)

A short decisive war is illusion — “The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.” -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)

War and truth — “The first casualty of war is truth.” -Original author unknown

War and youth — “I hate with a murderous hatred those men who, having lived their youth, would send into war other youth, not lived, unfulfilled, to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.” -Mary Roberts Rinehart, novelist (1876-1958)

“Youth is the first victim of war – the first fruit of peace. It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only 20 seconds of war to destroy him.” -Boudewijn I, King of Belgium (1934-1993)

Great wars — “A great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.” -German proverb

This past fall, my son Daniel asked me about a box of cassette tapes that I recorded and sent to my mother, in place of letters, during the years 1973-1974 when I lived in Israel studying in my first year of rabbinic school at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. He said he would love to read them, if I would transcribe them.

My mother kept 22 cassette tapes in a small white box tucked away in a closet in her condominium. I’d forgotten completely about them until one day my brother and I prepared to move our mother to assisted living in her 95^th year some ten years ago. I brought them home and must have told Daniel about them, and he remembered.

When an adult child asks something specific of a parent, that parent ought to respond positively – I did.

So, I down-loaded a transcription App and played on my out-of-use Sony cassette tape player (I’m glad I didn’t throw it away) 19 of the tapes into my IPhone (3 tapes were damaged). I transferred the texts to my home computer and spent weeks editing what this then 23 to 24 year-old graduate student said from Ulpan Akiva in Netanya where I spent the summer of 1973 learning Hebrew, and from his dorm room at Bet HaStudent, a half-block from the President of the State of Israel’s House in the Rechavia neighborhood of Jerusalem (that dorm was converted into expensive condominiums).

As I listened to a much younger me, I was stunned by how honest and clear-thinking I was 48 years ago, how so much of what I was to become as a progressive Zionist and American Reform Rabbi was seeded in that important year in my life, and (as it turned out) in the history of the State of Israel and the United States.

Historical highlights of that year include the Watergate hearings, the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and its aftermath, the shuttle diplomacy of US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the death of the founding patriarch of the Jewish State, David Ben Gurion, the resignation of Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir and General Moshe Dayan for failure to anticipate the simultaneous attack on Israel resulting in the devastating loss of life of 2656 Israeli soldiers and the injury of another 11,656, and the Palestinian terrorist attack out of Lebanon on the northern town of Kiryat Shemona resulting in the murder of 18 Israeli women, men and children.

In addition, I came to know well my Petach Tikvah family, Devorah and Yitzhak-Tzvi Shapira (the niece and nephew of Avraham Shapira, the founding shomer of Petach Tikvah), Rav Yosef and Sarah Rozovsky (my father’s first-cousin and a Rosh Yeshiva of a religious school), and our Jerusalem family, Tamara Pinchosovich (an attorney overseeing Knesset labor and economic legislation and Avraham Shapira’s granddaughter), Morrie and Stella Bay and their children (new olim to Israel after the 1967 Six Day War), and Rachael ‘Rae’ Rivlin (known in O Jerusalem by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre (publ. 1971) as the “hostess of Jerusalem” as well as the widow of Hebrew University Professor Yosef Yoel Rivlin and mother of the future President of the State of Israel, Reuven ‘Ruvi’ Rivlin.

I was friendly during my eight weeks of study at Ulpan Akiva in Netanya with Shulamit Katznelson (1919-1999), the founding director and daughter of Berl Katznelson (1887-1944), an architect of the emerging State of Israel who founded the state’s Labor Union, Health Care System, and other institutions of the State.

Finally, I established close relationships with many rabbinic school classmates. Though our paths diverged over the years, we continue to share a bond unlike any other friendships.

As I listened and transcribed these cassettes, I vaguely recall a few of the incidents and remember many not at all. Most memorable are the close relationships I shared then with the Shapira, Rozovsky, Pinchosovich, Rivlin, and Bay families, and with events before, during, and after the Yom Kippur War.

Not only did listening, transcribing, and editing these hour-long cassettes bring the events of those years vividly to mind, as if I were transported back in time, I’m reminded of the vagaries of memory, how very much we forget, how important are our early life-experiences in who we become and what we value and care most about. I also am reminded, yet again, how important it is for each of us to record our life stories for the sake of our children, grandchildren, and the generations to come not only so that there will be a written or oral record but so that they will understand themselves as the most recent links in the chain of their family’s history.

I’m grateful to my mother (z’l) for insisting that I send these tapes in lieu of writing letters, which she knew I wouldn’t do, and for holding onto them for so long thereby preserving for my memory one of the most consequential years in my young life.

Also posted at The Times of Israel at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-frailty-of-memory/

I have always found it false and misleading to characterize Israel as an “Apartheid State,” as Amnesty International has done in a new report. Within Israel itself, though Palestinian Arab Israelis are second class citizens whose full rights must be addressed, they have the right to vote, the right to serve in the Knesset (one Arab Muslim Party is part of the ruling government coalition), the right to serve as judges (one of the Supreme Court Judges is a Palestinian Arab), and the right to use social services including hospitals, etc.

Life for Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, however, is different and harsh, but Israel’s military administration overseeing the occupied territories does NOT look like the former South African Apartheid regime. It is something else altogether, unjust to be sure, but NOT Apartheid. To call Israel an Apartheid state is to de-legitimize Israel’s right to exist by equating it with racism at its core. Israel remains, within the Green Line, the only democratic state in the Middle East, and to suggest otherwise belies deeper anti-Israel proclivities in the accuser. This is not to say that there is no merit in the AI report. There is. Palestinian rights to a state of their own alongside Israel is the only solution that can bring justice and peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.

J Street just released our statement of protest against AI calling Israel an “Apartheid State.” As J Street has done consistently over the years, advocates for a negotiated resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in two states for two peoples living peacefully and securely side by side.

See J Street’s full statement at the link below:

“The release of Amnesty International’s new report on human rights in Israel and the territory it occupies shines another bright spotlight on the injustice of Israel’s occupation and the illegality of deepening de facto annexation of the territory it has occupied since 1967. The ongoing denial of fundamental rights and freedoms to millions of Palestinians in occupied territory runs counter to the values on which Israel was founded and undermines its security and international standing. J Street does not endorse the findings or the recommendations of the report, nor do we use the word “apartheid” to describe the situation on the ground. At the same time, we urge Israel and its friends around the world not to use issues with the report as an excuse to avoid grappling with the day-in and day-out realities of occupation and the moral and strategic catastrophe it represents for Israelis and for Palestinians.”

Statement on Amnesty International Report “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians”