Will it end?

​In the 1800s, an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery, John Greenleaf Whittier, wrote a poem he called, ‘O Brother Man’. The poem has been around for many decades; some have renamed it as “The Tree of Peace”. It has also occasionally been turned into a hymn.
The reason I mention it is that the last verse has been stuck in my head since the escalation of the horrendous Israel - Gaza war.

I cannot comprehend the horror of this disgusting, (am I allowed to say ‘one-sided’ ?) conflict. As hospitals, schools and homes are bombed, harrowing numbers of doctors, health workers, and peacekeepers, as well as civilians are being killed daily.
The number of dead CHILDREN is now well into the thousands.
THOUSANDS!

I see that, here in Australia, social media contributors are exhorting our Prime Minister to insist on a ‘Cease Fire”. Some are even calling him ‘weak’ because he is not telling Israel to end the killing.
Have they not seen the international condemnation?
Have they not read that the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has reiterated his call for a sustained humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and the unconditional and immediate release of all hostages?
When this has no effect, there is NOTHING you or I can do. Our PM does not have the ability to stop such warfare, even though Australia is a member of the United Nations.

Most world leaders have tried – and are trying, pleading even - to stop the slaughter, but it seems that Israel is not going to stop.
This war may never end.

Visions of carnage – wrecked buildings and wrecked bodies - fill our television screens every day. We are powerless to stop it.

Sadly, it’s more than a bit hopeless to even think of a gentle peace settlement. But, until men (and it’s mostly men) continue to be warmongers, lusting after total power, all we have is words of hope; words of poetry swimming around in our minds trying to keep a scintilla of hope alive.

“Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangor
Of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease;
Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,
And in its ashes plant the tree of peace”!

*John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892)