Let’s be a devil’s advocate today and seek answers to some hard questions about the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.
Why did Hamas attack Israel when it knew well that Israel would retaliate with utmost power and unleash its horrific, brutal airstrikes killing innocent civilians, women, children, and the elderly? And after about a month of its deadliest war on Gaza, Israel is not stopping its gory carnage of poor and beleaguered Palestinians. So, should we assume that it was a big and miscalculated mistake of Hamas which caused a big harm to the just Palestinian cause?
Secondly, Hamas also killed Israeli children and abducted women and the elderly, wasn’t it a barbaric act? Shouldn’t it be condemned unequivocally?
One more question: if Palestinians have to regain their own lost territory from the occupying force, it is necessary to have a calculated and visionary strategy and fruitful line of action and not a misadventure like that of Oct. 7 attack.
Before going to answer these questions, it is quite necessary to unravel the hidden hypotheses behind the scene. For example, one who asks these questions certainly has presumed that before Oct. 7, the Palestinian masses, though under a brutal Israeli occupation,nonetheless, were somehow living a peaceful life. They would get up in the morning daily and would go to work, earn a livelihood return in the evening, and be with their children. And with Oct. 7 attack, they got nothing except huge destruction, merciless killing, and Gaza’s leveling.
Bassam Yousuf, a famed Egyptian political comedian, answering to a CNN anchor Paier Morgon, demolished this argument, saying: Okay, what Hamas did is condemnable yet let us talk about the West Bank which is not ruled by Hamas nevertheless Israelis recently killed more than 200 people including childrenin the West Bank. So, to make us believe that before Hamas’s attack, there was a normal life for Palestinians is a big lie. The Western and Indian mainstream media not only buy it but are propagating this lie very eagerly, which is incredible.
The second supposition belongs to the “terrorism” committed by Hamas.
Anchors who are subscribing to the Israeli story call the protagonists of the Palestinian cause to their talk shows and play with them “don’t you condemn Hamas” game. Saying if you do not condemn Hamas unequivocally, you have no right to condemn Israel either. The comparison simply is misleading. This comparison is based on giving Israel’s notorious army a license and justification for what it is doing in Palestinian territories. While the Palestinians’ stand is clear that if there is a terrorist in the region, it is IDF that had occupied Palestine’s lands, a proven fact by Western reports and UN resolutions. Against this backdrop, when the media focuses on Hamas’s attack, its intention is to give Israel a blank check that it has full right to bomb Palestinian towns in the garb of self-defense.
However, why hasn’t a single Western anchor ever called up Israeli supporters and dared them to question why you people do not denounce your ruthless army bombing civilians?
This is the double standard because of which we do not condemn Hamas.
Let’s now discuss the strategy question in a more nuanced manner. Some supportersof Palestinian cause argue that this complete devastation may have been avoided if resistance forces had adopted a more sensible and effective plan. Alright, then you folks lead the way and put forth any such plan on their behalf so that the Palestinians can successfully end the occupation and live in dignity and respect!Why do you ignore the fact that when Hamas fought the legislative election in 2006, which resulted in a Hamas victory; the election was fair; nonetheless Israel backed by the US and EU, did not accept the democratically elected Hamas government? And don’t mistake, before Hamas, the PLO led by legendry Yasir Arafat tried his best to somehow secure a peaceful two-state solution for his people through signing the Oslo peace accord, which was literally sabotaged by noother than current Israeli PM Netanyahu.
What channel remains for the Palestinians except to work as a resistance movement then?
Some will say that “might is right” is a bitter fact of life no matter whether you concede or not. I believe it’s true yet it isn’t a wisdom. I think, when atrocities are committed before your eyes, the first thing to do for an intellectual is to raise his voice against that atrocity and for the rights of the oppressed one, loud and clear. If he doesn’t do that and excuses that there is no use in criticizing the mighty oppressor and rising for the oppressed, he is standing on the wrong side of history. Because with this lame excuse, he is indirectly siding with the forces of torture, hegemony, and abuse of power. This is what many professors of American universities are doing right now,for they are unable to speak for Palestinian rights. Their liberalism is limited only to the anti-women laws implemented in Iran. As for Israel, their liberal values become void and null! This is why these professors are unable to back their own students at Harvard who have signed a resolution for Palestinian human rights and are now on the receiving end as university authorities are taking action against them.
The people in the West are the most hypocritical ever! The West as a whole, including the US, is supporting Israel. America is supplying it with a vast array of armaments, planes, and troops. Hamas is a tiny group with extremely little funding. But the Westerners miss no chance of declaring Hamas a terrorist body. Yet they don’t see that Israel has killed 10,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including more than 3,000 children. The entire Western media and the Indian media tell a one-sided story. However, the Al Jazeera has done so far very objective reporting. But the civilized West doesn’t even allow that. Now the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is telling Qatar that Al-Jazeera should downplay its language and covering of Gaza. Their flagrance is so much so that to American President Joe Biden the number of victims in Gaza is being exaggerated!
The 1993 Oslo Accord, which called for the creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, is one of the conflict’s many significant elements. However, what really occurred was the Judaization of East Jerusalem and the growth of illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinianlands, and thus completely obscuring the future state of Palestine, with the full backing of the US and its stooge in the East and the West. Blocking all economic activities in Gaza for the previous 16 years and imposing an apartheid wall and hundreds of Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks on the West Bank. This explains the true reason for the October 7 strike by Hamas.
The only ray of hope at the end of the tunnel is changing mass opinion against the ruler’s policies towards the Palestinian issue, which is demonstrated by the pro-Palestine rallies and protests we are seeing in major world cities nowadays.
[The writer is Research Associate with Tahzibul Akhlaq & Nishant, AMU, Aligarh]