Ceasefire. Is there another word that is more important at this point of time? Millions of voices on the streets of every country have been calling for a ceasefire.
Amid Israel’s bombing of Gaza and the killing of thousands of people, including women and children, a ceasefire is the most urgent demand.
In the United Nations General Assembly – considered the parliament of the world – 121 countries demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. This resolution also demanded the release of all civilians held captive. Fourteen countries opposed it and 44 countries, including India, abstained from voting.
While some countries who voted or abstained wanted stronger language to be used against Hamas in the resolution, it is also a fact that nuances about framing should not come in the way of calling for a ceasefire.
The Indian government also argued that the resolution did not condemn the terrorism of Hamas. Is terrorism the most important issue at this moment? Or is it the lives of the thousands of Gaza residents who are being constantly bombarded by Israel?
Terrorism is a way in which a solitary act causes fear or terror in a large population, that’s not directly or immediately impacted by that act, instilling in them a fear of uncertainty, and that it can happen to them at any moment.
Any ideology – leftist, religious nationalism or even secularism – can use terrorist methods. We have seen this many times not only in the history of the last century but also this century.
A large population can be intimidated by creating terror. Governments use this technology of terror frequently to subjugate populations. But then it is considered legitimate. For example, when on a normal day in the West Bank or in Gaza, Israeli settlers entering the house of a Palestinian and killing them or arresting them is also a terrorist act. It instils fear in the minds of other Palestinians. Israelis have committed these acts repeatedly over the last 75 years. The whole world knows this. But there is no outcry over these regular acts of terror.
What remains from that horrific act is the question of the fate of more than 200 civilians who have been taken hostage by Hamas. The world needs to intervene for their freedom. That requires negotiation and pressure. And any act of revenge, like ravaging the whole of Gaza in the name of weeding out Hamas fighters is not helping the cause of those who have been abducted. But Israel seems to be least concerned with that.
What continues is violence – Israel’s mass murder and genocide – in Gaza.
Right now, the most important thing is to save the unarmed people of Gaza. More than 8,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombings since October 8. If the deaths of children melt our hearts, Israel is killing approximately 100 children every day.
But the governments in the US and the UK are not only shamelessly watching this massacre, they are also rationalising it. They are finding justifications for this mass murder.
The US president and his cabinet have argued that the ‘cowardly’ Hamas is hiding among the Palestinians. What can poor Israel do? It is forced to kill these Palestinians.
It can also be said that the leaders of the US and the UK have provided arguments to justify Israel’s massacre in Gaza. Hamas’s attack was called the biggest attack on Jews since the ‘Holocaust’. The dishonesty of this argument is so obvious that there is no need to say anything about it separately. By saying this, Israel is seemingly granted a free licence to take any step.
There are people in Israel who have been victims of Hitler’s anti-Semitism and genocide. Many of them have repeatedly said that Western leaders are over-emphasising their commitment to anti-Semitism to hide the guilt over their own role during the times of Hitler.
It is a historical truth that European countries and the US closed their doors to those Jews who were seeking to escape Nazi violence. After the World War, these countries instead sent them to the land of the Arabs, saying that they could build their own country in Palestine. To date, Europe and America have not accepted their discrimination against the Jews. They themselves are responsible for the murder and death of millions of Jews who could have been saved had they been granted asylum.
Instead, they have helped in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The first major ethnic cleansing took place in 1948, which Palestinians remember as the Nakba. Millions of Palestinians were evicted from their land, homes, and were made refugees in their own homeland. Thousands were killed. And that’s how Israel was created. The creation of Israel was a catastrophe for the Palestinians.
Genocide has not stopped since 1948. Israel is committing this crime every day at the instigation of the world’s most powerful countries. It has been justifying its violence by delegitimising any opposition or criticism of it as anti-Semitism.
And now Israel has got an excuse to capture Gaza by calling it a response to Hamas’s ‘terror’ attack. It is difficult to support the Hamas attack. But any responsible government, after such an attack, in which more than 200 people have been taken hostage, would first think of a way to protect them and ensure their return, and not take revenge by attacking the millions of people in whose name Hamas has carried out violence.
If the answer to Israel’s daily violence against Palestinians is not to attack the people of Israel, which is what Hamas did, then how is it appropriate to respond to the Hamas attack by massacring the people of Gaza?
It is useless to say anything about the moral hollowness of those countries which oppose Hamas’s violence but justify Israel’s acts of genocide.
India has now joined this league. The silence of the Indian government will be considered as support for Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank. This is a matter of pain and shame for Indians because despite being economically weak, we were among the first countries to oppose apartheid in South Africa. We were among the first people to support the right of Palestinians to their own country. Today, we have lost that moral voice.
