More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed and 90,000 wounded by Israeli forces but it has not provoked the conscience of the global superpowers even a bit. Out of those killed in Gaza, more than 10,000 are women and children, who by no stretch of imagination can be called terrorists. The International Court of Justice has said these killings “appeared to be genocide”. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has condemned these killing and has said, “We have failed the people of Gaza.” There is serious outrage across the globe over these killings and even in America youngsters are raising their voices irrespective of their race and ethnicity, but the western regimes remain oblivious to the ethnic cleansing. It seems that the souls of global powers who have the capacity and firepower to stop this genocide have gone for a walk. Rather, it is better to say that they all are accomplices in the crime.
No sane person would justify killings by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023. This was a barbarous act; all those who perpetrated this crime should be brought to justice, and the most severe punishment should be given to them. No amount of condemnation is enough. But the civilisational question is — does this barbaric act give Israel licence to punish and kill the entire Palestinian population? If so then what is the difference between Hamas terrorists and Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu? If Hamas is called terrorist and barbaric, then why should the Israeli government not be called terrorist also? Can a legitimate government which calls itself democratic, that claims to follow universal human values, behave like a terrorist organisation? And how can the US and other western powers allow the Israeli government to inflict genocide? These are the same governments who get very emotional and conscientious on the issue of Ukraine and condemn Russia but they are openly supplying arms and ammunition to Israel for ethnic cleansing. And this is happening when Donald Trump is not the president of America, but a Democrat, Joe Biden, is at the helm of affairs. It seems that something has gone wrong with western civilisation; otherwise no sane leader in their senses would justify and support what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza and the West Bank.
The issue of Palestine is complicated. It is a colonial legacy. It’s part of the divide and rule politics of the western powers. There is no denying the fact that that the Jews as a nation have been living without a country for 2000 years. No other community has suffered so much in history as them. They were subjected to the Holocaust by Hitler’s Germany in which more than 6 million Jews were killed in an industrialised manner. After World War II, when it was decided by the world powers that Jews should be given their “promised land” in Palestine where Arabs had been living for centuries, not enough thinking was done about how the local population would react and how it would unfold in the future. It is a matter of great debate that the west, out of its guilt that it could not prevent the Holocaust, was in a great hurry to do penance and therefore divided Palestine into two parts.
In the imagination of Jewish society, the creation of Israel was the “redemption through sufferings”. Historian Paul Johnson writes in A History Of The Jews, “The murder of six million Jews was the prime causative factor in the creation of the state of Israel.” The problem with Arabs was that they could not reconcile with the fact that their land had been taken forcibly and instead of negotiations, they relied on war to take back their land. Johnson wrote, “The Arabs, by contrast, were a conquering race whose sacred writings both inspired and reflected a maximalist position towards other people … the very concept of negotiation towards a final settlement was to them a betrayal of principle. A truce, an armistice might be necessary and was acceptable because it preserved the option of force for use later. A treaty, on the other hand, appeared to them a kind of surrender.”
No wonder, in the war that followed after the creation of Israel, in 1948, Arabs lost 80% of land and were left with the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Since then many efforts have been made by Arab states, fighting for Palestinian’s cause, to take back the land they lost, and every time, Palestinians ended up losing more. Today, Palestinians are facing a scenario in which they could lose whatever little they have. Today Israel is led by ultra-Zionist leaders who aim for “Greater Israel”. October 7 gave them the perfect excuse to execute that plan. In the name of making Israel safe from any existential threat to Israel state, they have invoked the concept of “collective punishment” and are hell-bent on emptying Gaza of Palestinians. Seventy-five per cent of Gaza households have been flattened. It has become unliveable. There is no possibility that in the near future Palestinians will ever come back to their homes.
The Netanyahu government has also targeted the West Bank, controlled by the “Palestinian Authority” under the Fatah faction led by Mehmood Abbas. Israel is pursuing the policy of slow evacuation there, and in the long run, they want West Bank too to be free of Arabs or that they surrender totally without any rights or demands. Prof John Mearsheimer, one of the most vocal critics of the Israeli government, says that under Netanyahu, “Israeli state is an apartheid state and is pursuing genocide to secure Greater Israel.” Though he also says that Israel state is in deep crisis and its war tactic is making Israel pariah. Globally renowned New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is of the opinion that Benjamin Netanyahu, to save his political career, has risked the existence of the Jewish state itself. He wrote, “Iran has trapped Israel and Biden failed to let Netanyahu fall in the trap.” He wrote that Iran through its proxies — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah In Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq — have surrounded Israel from all sides and will bleed it to death. But at the moment Israel is unstoppable. Emboldened, it has killed Hamas chief Ismail Haniye in Tehran and Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasarallah in Lebanon.
And due to the criminal silence of the influential west, Israel is trying to replicate Gaza in Southern Lebanon. It has unleashed indiscriminate bombardment of the suburbs of Beirut, killing innocent civilians, hiding behind the excuse of annihilation of Hezbollah. France is the only western state which has asked that arms supply to Israel should stop, ceasefire should be applied, and to stop the bloodbath in future a lasting solution has to be found to the Palestine problem. The two-nation theory has been propagated since 1948 and for long-term peace that is the only option. But neither is Israel willing to accept a Palestine state, nor does Iran want an Israel state in the Middle East, amongst Arabs. Iran is all for the annihilation of Israel. Israel has vowed to teach Iran a lesson for its missile attacks. And nobody knows what direction the war between these two seemingly nuclear power states will take, but one thing is certain — if timely action is not taken then the world is heading for an apocalypse. This war has to be stopped. Palestinian genocide can’t go on. The world can’t be a mute spectator. If America has failed to give a moral leadership to the world then a new world order has to be created. This madness cannot go on and on. Believe me, like the Holocaust tormented the world later, the genocide of Palestinians will also long haunt humanity.
The writer is Co-Founder, SatyaHindi.com, and author of Hindu Rashtra. He tweets at @ashutosh83B
