Those who choose violence and chaos, would always find enough religious moorings to justify their acts of terror.
Peace and resolution require firm commitment and engagement with dialogues and matching actions. To stoke these vital life conditions with gimmick, rhetoric, and spiral waves of violence is to destabilize and disable any particular region, community, even nation. When it comes to peace, history is replete with lessons, of course, if we are willing to learn. From accord to peace, these mismatches mark a turn to discord and strife.
To condone terror by “relativizing” or “contextualizing” in the name of religion or border issues is violent and amateurish. Yet, a section of the woke group continues to demonstrate its selective amnesia towards the pain and suffering of the Jews, thereby polarising Muslims and Jews, not to forget their armchair opinions that are thrice removed from reality but enough to create chaos and turbulence in other places, that are equally far removed from the spaces where they write from and live in.
A country like Israel, which came into existence in 1948 to accommodate the survivors of the Holocaust has been continuously subjected to violence, both physical and epistemological. If Gaza has normalized fear as its quotidian life, so have Israelis. To construct a selective history of violence qualifies as an act of selective amnesia.
Hamas, an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement), represents a political group powered by military training. It was launched by Palestinian cleric Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 1987. It stands as a transnational Sunni Islamist organization that has continued to exercise its control over the Gaza strip since 2007. Hamas’ “ISIS-style brutalities” on Israeli soil have forced Israel to declare a “state of war” against Hamas. The genocidal assault has eventually exposed the fallacy of restoring democracy through mediations of violence and terrorism. The dreams of a Hamas-gov¬erned Gaza and the subsequent rendition of an economically sound region have just been shattered. The sad outcome is that this has turned out to be a very costly dream for innocent civilians and little children who were brutally tortured and murdered and thus were not even allowed to have their own dreams.
Palestinians would regret the moment they were goaded into believing in dreams that were laced with corporal violence. Wedding terrorism with freedom gave Hamas the license to play out their own gory agenda. Over the years, Hamas has accumulated enough strength and funding resources to orchestrate terror acts under the pretense of fighting against Palestinians’ “state of death, both slow and sudden.” By wide reckoning, the militarised life offered to the Palestinians by Hamas is yet another incident where peace in this region has been compromised and deliberately pushed aside to offer a “final solution” for the Muslims; the Day of Judgement as envisioned by the Hamas declaration.
How else are we to see the self-serving political nature of the Hamas group when it turned down the offer made by Avigdor Lieberman, who served Israel as the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel twice? In 2017 Lieberman laid down his idea of constructing an airport and a seaport thus pushing for the transformation of Gaza “into the Singapore of the Middle East.” The only condition put forth by Lieberman was that the Hamas group had to decimate the tunnels and abandon the rockets it had built. The sense of jingoism—the response was more aligned with its religious supremacy—made Hamas refuse that proposal citing, “If we wanted to turn Gaza into Singapore, we would have done it ourselves. We do not need favours from anyone.” Those who choose violence and chaos, would always find enough religious moorings to justify their acts of terror. What would be compromised and ignored would be the valuable lives of innocent civilians. Grief and mourning cannot be selective when we abide by the rules of terrorism. The reason is obvious, terrorism is often based on the scaffolding of religion, but it knows no religion when acts of genocide and extermination take place. It is no wonder to see the lack of Arab support for the Palestinians. Not a single Arab nation has come forward to open its borders for these ailing Palestinians. That said, West Asia is collectively responsible for this tragic moment that has turned each passing moment into one of acute trauma, grief and suffering.
Om Prakash Dwivedi teaches at Bennett University, Greater Noida.