When the bombs fall and the borders harden, one truth remains buried beneath the rubble: we all bleed red.
The sky darkens on the horizon – not with turbulent thundershower clouds, but with heavy, silent grief of the universal wound of man. Down here, amidst bottomless grooves etched by trenches and craters of ruined homes, fighters on both sides of Israel and Iran reach for common truths: “We bleed red. We are human.” But, between us, long-standing resentments burn like wildfire, consuming sense.
1. The Iron Lines We Draw
In the theatre of conflict, both sides believe they have truth—divinely ordained, ethically unassailable. But as asphalt burns and rockets scream overhead, truth diverges into shards, and each is jagged enough to open fresh gashes. In Tehran or Gaza, Tel Aviv or Iranian high country, mothers gaze upon their young, fathers inter their sons, and on both sides of barbed wire, the same question rings out: Why?
Tribalism tempts our better nature to stray, whispering “they” are other, lesser than us. But pay attention: we have all had a taste of loss, the silence beyond the siren, the memory of youth torn from us by violence. Could there not come a time, then, when each one glimpses his or her grief within our neighbor?
2. Compromise as Act of Sacrifice
What do we mean, really, when we say “getting along?” Too often, we yearn for compromise—not surrender, but the power to see our enemies, if nothing else, as our equals. Out there, in the Middle East, we mean negotiating among rockets, signing treaties despite distrust, finding the common good not in the stillness after muted guns, but among children playing once more and their giggles.
Compromise requires humility. Compromise forces soldiers to lower guns long enough to shake hands. Compromise requires leaders to lay pride aside like a jacket on the floor. Trust plantings itself within that fragile space—in speech, in water sharing, even a nod of consciousness between opposing eyes.
3. The Human Heart Doesn’t Know Countries
Today, across desert and mountains, the suffering is one: blood oozed into ground, mourning children spirits never known, chests pounding with terror. Border lines may define a safety of origins, but not the capacity of the heart to suffer or to love.
Imagine a woman from Palestine cradling an infant as sirens sound—the Iranian grandmother on the other side of countless miles cradles her namesake and is told of missiles fired. They do not speak a common language, but between sob and gasp, they do. Their tears are not separated by nation.
4. “We Bleed Red”—A Whisper Heard Too Softly
This truth—the one you yearn for the world to know—is simple, but likely the hardest to understand: under bigger flags and belief sets, we are flesh and bone, bound with blood and breath. This truth goes beyond de-humanizing the “other”—it makes the boundary non-existent.
But there is a catch: understanding does not eradicate ambition, fear, or quantum leaps of suspicion. Our mind is set to fear the unknown. But compassion—real, unflinching compassion—questions: what if said soldier on the other side, who is pointing his gun at me, fights because he fears extermination, as I do?
5. Shadows and Starlight: Riding Out the Storm
Picture the Gaza sky—blackened, ablaze, infused with smoke. Stars are nonexistent there. Picture the same sky above Tehran—stars can twinkle, yet inside homes, parents gaze upwards and question whether peace is merely an illusion.
What would it be like to have hope with us on into that evening? Not the naive hope of “peace comes tomorrow,” but a stubborn insistence: every moment of violence must have response with concrete tries to reach out. Back-channel negotiations. Humanitarian cease-fires. Cooperations on COVID-19—even amidst missiles. All acts of cooperation on a small scale issue a proof of the unspoken truth we all carry: “I am human. You are human. Both of us feel.”
We grasp on to hope like a lifeline during a storm—no magic, no fairy dust, but stubborn belief that common humanity can illuminate paths even under the blackest violence.
6. Why Isn’t That Enough?
Since the amount of blood we have in common isn’t where we fight—the fight is fought over fear, power, ideology—the strength of it is outside of us. Logic of urgency: if they are dead, then we are alive. If our bombs silence them, then they cannot hurt us anymore. But this zero-sum logic, this cold arithmetic of death, only adds up to another round of butchery.
The world is wired for cooperation—an unspoken agreement beneath all argument. Children trade lollipops with strangers. Doctors cure whomever walks through the door. Even on black nights, fires remain bright within frames of windows; hearts remain hopeful.
But that wiring is fragile. It can be over-ridden. Whenever leaders choose division over conversation, synthesis over severing, they invoke the storm.
7. The Storm Breaks, If We Let It
Storms can wash clean. Storms can sow renewal seeds. In the Gulf, an instant—a combined ceasefire, a humanitarian agreement, a mutually commemorative memory of the 1990 quake reconciliation between Iran and nearby states—can remind both sides that after the storm and the lightning, coalitions may form not on ideological common ground, but on common survival.
What if, when rockets cease, we communalize waters? What if Israeli doctors arrived in Tehran to cure children, and Iranian engineers came to help repair wells in Gaza? These are tiny things. But amidst the ripples of kindness, budding treaties are sown.
The final test: can we treat every human being, even an opponent, as an end in itself? Not to be sacrificed, but to be heard as a person?
Final Reckoning
War does not stop with rational decree. War stops with human computation. War stops when men and women realize victory resides not in obliterating another’s aspirations, but lifting humanity as a group. War stops when we whisper that common truth—that we bleed crimson—so loudly rockets halt mid-flight.
In this maelstrom brewing now between Iran and Israel, the world watches, with thumping heartbeat. We pray, we plead, but with no accountability that mixes sorrow and awe—without wanting to barter on principle without ceasing to have principle—peace is not attained. But there is this alternative.
The gale blows. The lightning splits the heavens. But somewhither beyond the battle-field, beneath common skies and common blood, gentler clouds are gathering. We may let the storm wash over us and not consume us, if we dare. For, above all, the ultimate truth is: we are human.
By Randy W. Armstrong