Western leaders are heading to Israel to show solidarity. That’s fine. But why can’t they show 1/10th of their compassion and kindness towards the Palestinians in Gaza?
If someone kills our loved ones, we are shocked. We are saddened. We are enraged. We want to punish the attacker. That’s natural human reaction. That’s understandable. The same is true about national leaders. When outsiders kill the citizens of a nation, its leaders, shocked and furious, vow to punish the perpetrators. When Al Qaeda operatives blew up the twin towers in New York on 11 September 2001 in an unprecedented terrorist attack taking more than 3,400 innocent American lives, President George Bush launched America’s war on terror.
The US put in place the most stringent security checks, meticulously pursued the trail of the terrorists over several years and, one by one, killed over 220 Al-Qaeda operatives around the world. Eventually, the US Navy Seals eliminated Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan on 11 May 2011. Though all the terrorists killed in this anti-terrorist campaign happened to be Muslims, the US government didn’t conclude, and rightly so, that all Muslims the world over were essentially terrorists. Rushing to punish Muslims collectively for terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda would have been a huge blunder. Remaining calm and retaining rationality in the face of the most brazen provocation and responding in measured and mature manner isn’t easy but that’s what great leaders are made of.
The land, sea and air attacks on Israel on 7 October on Sukkot holiday, one of the three major Israeli festivals and randomly killing over a thousand civilians including women and children and taking hostages was a heinous crime no matter of how many decades’ anger, bitterness and frustration Hamas might have nursed against the Israelis. It was an unforgivable act of terrorism which must be condemned by all. None can question Israel’s right to punish the perpetrators. The anguish of Israeli mothers whose children have been killed in the attacks by Hamas or taken hostage is understandable. No words of shock and condemnation can compensate their unexpected loss.
But should crimes, killings and human losses be viewed through the prism of religion, political ideology and location? In this Age of Reason (title of one of Jean-Paul Sartre’s book) it shouldn’t. But we seem to have put an Iron in the Soul (Title of Sartre’s another book) and are doing exactly that. When Hamas launches rockets at Israeli sites, they kill innocent people including children. And when Israeli air force conducts air strikes on Gaza , it not only reduces buildings to rubbles, it kills many civilians and children. If it doesn’t, how come over 3,000 Palestinians including over 700 children have lost their lives in Israeli counter-offensive? This shouldn’t be dismissed. Just because Western media and the countries that blindly follow it don’t report fully the loss of lives in Gaza doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. It seems too much to expect the media world over to maintain a degree of impartiality, neutrality and intellectual honesty while reporting the ongoing man made human crises in which the worst sufferers are innocent civilians on both sides who had no role in triggering off the crises in the first place. Why should the pain and sorrow of a Palestinian mother in Gaza be of less significance than the pain and sorrow of an Israeli mother? For Gandhiji, truth was akin to God. In the intensity of our anger, let us not abandon the truth and let us not tinker with facts.
While reporting about hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza fleeing with their women, elderly and children to the mirage of safety in Southern Gaza abandoning the ruins of their homes, many reporters sound so one-sided as if Gaza Palestinians’ humiliation, helplessness and indignity mean nothing. All those who want the return of peace and normalcy should let the facts and narratives of both sides be known to the international community without colouring them with prejudices, personal or religious or of any other kind. The Israeli leadership should realize that every innocent Palestinian killed in their air strike gives birth to ten future terrorists; the anger, bitterness and hatred of the families is passed on to the next generation.
Ironically, those who are projecting themselves as peace makers have committed much graver crimes against innocent civilians who were, in their eyes, mere collateral damage.
In February 2003, a five-star general serving as the Secretary of State of the most powerful nation that never tires of talking of its exceptionalism, told the UNSC that Saddam Hussein had amassed WMD piles, was in touch with Al Qaeda and posed an imminent threat to the national security of the US. All the claims turned out to be totally false but led to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003; it involved dropping of bombs by B52 bombers, use of Tomahawk Cruise missiles and carpet bombing for days resulting in the killing of civilians including women and children but till today, none has given official figures of the loss of human lives. One of the most developed nations in the Arab world was reduced to rubble; in its prison was born the ISIS. Did the Western media shed tears for the thousands of innocent Iraqis who lost their lives in that unjustified attack or the manner in which the Iraqi soldiers were insulted and humiliated in Abu Ghraib prison of Baghdad?
The leader of another country with the largest nuclear warheads whose ideological empire once had influence over half of the world, two years back, invaded its neighbor, Ukraine, in flagrant violation of her sovereignty, territorial integrity and the UN charter, turned 9 million of its citizens as refugees, reduced hundreds of cities to rubble, committed war crimes as in Bucha, caused shortages of food grain fertilizer and energy and has occupied 1/5th of Ukrainian territory. He is trying to mediate between Israel and Hamas. With this kind of peacenicks what sort of peace can be achieved between Israel and Hamas?
If they were serious, while signing the Abraham accord, the Arab leaders should have pressed Israel for initiating political dialogue with the Palestinian Authority and take concrete steps for the establishment of a free, independent and sovereign Palestinian state which has been agreed upon in Oslo agreements by Rabin and Arafat and UNSC Resolution 242 which has been flagged by various Arab summits. Saudi Arabia should have weighed in .Cessation of humiliating treatment of thousands of Palestinians on daily basis and an end of the expansion of settlements on occupied territories would have neutralized the narrative of Hamas and strengthen the legitimacy and standing of the PA. But the kings and sheikhs of the Middle East aren’t too comfortable with the democratic ways of the PA; this might dismantle their own regimes. So, they confine themselves to offering lip service to the Palestinian cause instead of pressing for a Palestinian State.
Western leaders are heading to Israel to show solidarity. That’s fine. But why can’t they show 1/10th of their compassion and kindness towards the Palestinians in Gaza? Aren’t they human beings? Don’t their sorrows and sufferings matter?
Surendra Kumar is a former ambassador of India.