Provoking underdog Palestine is fraught with Hamas retaliation | Faraz Ahmad

There is a memorable scene in the Hindi movie Sholay, which I suppose any Indian and many foreigners would have seen umpteen times. The villain Gabbar Singh after shooting down ruthlessly his three gangmen in his lair for fleeing away from just two men hired by Thakur to save Ramgarh, charges with his entire team of dacoits into the village in the midst of Holi celebrations shooting and plundering. Having subdued every one, he turns his attention to the two, Veeru and Jai who had scared away Kalia and his two associates.

Standing colossus like on a high platform he orders Jai and Veeru to fall at his feet, rub their noses on his boots and seek forgiveness. Gabbar is so drunk in power, he can’t imagine anyone daring to do otherwise. But a smart Jai, quietly walks up to him at his bidding, even surprising Veeru, bends down and throws up mud into Gabbar’s eyes, causing panic in the dacoit gang and eventually forcing Gabbar to flee with his entire team. The lesson: Arrogance of power can sometimes, result in the powerful being overawed and beaten by his ‘weak’ adversary.

There is a popular Kishore Kumar song from 1983 Hindi movie ‘Mohabbat’. With some editing it could be a lesson to our arrogant, drunk in power, political class the world over, but Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu specifically in this situation. It would go like this: “Dahshat (terror) se nahin, taqat se nahin, mohabbat se chalti hai duniya. But who is listening? Leaders of the western world led by the United States of America (USA) have turned a blind eye to what caused the audacious Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. True there is no excuse for killing innocent civilians, women and children, even by Hamas, whatever the provocation. But none would care to tell Netanyahu that “Violence begets violence” however weak the opponent be perceived.

Having beaten the enslaved and besieged Palestinians to pulp, over 75 years, some less but mostly more, the Zionists were content and satisfied with the plight of the Palestinians. A corrupt and dishonourable Netanyahu has managed to return to power on the strength of extreme right-wing political groups openly campaigning for total annihilation of Palestine and Palestinians, avenging their mythical war with the Palestinians from the times of Abraham. Sounds familiar to we Indians at the moment! That’s a coincidence.

The Zionists are promoting the spyware Pegasus to hack and control the target’s mobile phones the world over. They have the best equipment and gadgetry to keep an eye 24 hours on the entire open-air prison called Gaza strip. Leading Israeli daily Haaretz two days ago wrote the other day, “The failure of Israel’s intelligence and poor preparedness weren’t the only problems – it seems that Israel’s operational defensive conception in Gaza has shattered. Netanyahu will have to pay a political price for his Hamas policy after the war.”

Netanyahu has ordered more than a million Gazans to migrate to South if they cared for their lives because, the Israeli forces were preparing to conquer Northern Gaza to obliterate the very existence of Hamas. We Indians would do well to remind Netanyahu the tragic consequences of June 4-6, 1984 Operation Blue Star of Indian military in Amritsar, attempting to clear Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed militia, out of Harminder Sahib, in which the Indian forces finally succeeded but at what cost—Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her security guards and the killing of thousands of poor innocent Sikhs in presumed retaliation for her killing.

Similarly, while the Sri Lankan forces finally succeeded in catching and killing LTTE supremo V. Prabhakaran, and annihilate the entire cadre of Liberation of Tamil Tigers Eelam (LTTE). Mahinda Rajapaksa took the credit for complete suppression and abject surrender of Tamils of Jaffna and adjoining Northern Sri Lanka habitat of the Tamil population. But just last year the people of Sri Lanka, Sinhalese and Tamils together captured the Presidential Palace in Colombo, forcing their president Gotabya Rajapaksa to flee after Sri Lanka became bankrupt, spending only on crushing the Tamils.

There is no doubt that Israel has enough muscle and firepower to obliterate Palestinians from Gaza for which the extreme right-wing has propped him up never mind his corruption and authoritarianism. Add to that the immediate replenishment of their arsenal by the US with tons and tons of most modern and lethal armaments to wipe out Palestinians from whatever little Palestinian enclave is left of the once peaceful, prospering Palestine state where non-white Jews, Christians and Muslims coexisted happily.

But while the Western leaders are with Netanyahu in this enterprise, widespread demonstrations are being held in almost all Western nations in support of the Palestinians, condemning Netanyahu and his apartheid policies. Sir Gerald Kaufman an orthodox Jew and a self-confessed one-time Zionist told British Parliament, “My grandmother did not die (of Nazi bullets in Poland) to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for the murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious but the lives of Palestinians do not count….Israel was born of Jewish terrorism.”

Reacting to the latest events, the other day, a European Union leader condemned the EU Commission president thus: “Two weeks ago, the European Union’s Embassy in Israel released a video by the President of European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, to commemorate the establishment of the foundation of the Israeli state. Nearly every single thing she said, was a lie. Its time those lies were called out directly” What did President Ursula say, “75 years ago a dream was realized with Israel’s Independence Day.” The European leader rubbished that saying, “Between 1947 and 1949, three quarters of all Palestinians living in historic Palestine were systematically uprooted and violently expelled from their homes and villages by Zionist militias. Nearly four million acres of land stolen, four hundred towns destroyed, hundreds of Palestinians massacred during the event that led to the creation of Israeli state. This may have been the realization of a dream for Zionists but for Palestinians, this was the beginning of a nightmare that has continued for over 70 years: the invasion and destruction of their homeland and their transformation into a colonized people. These events are known to them not as Israeli independence but as ‘the Nakba,’ the catastrophe. Describing the Nakba is a ‘provocation,’ a deliberate and cruel insult to millions of Palestinians all over the world. It is unacceptable and must be condemned. A German politician (Ursula) describing the holocaust as “a tragedy” is a holocaust revisionism. It’s a denial of responsibility for carrying out that crime. A ‘tragedy’ is a terrible but unavoidable event for which no one is really responsible. The holocaust however was the most ambitious act of deliberate mass murder in history, the extermination of most of Europe’s Jews by Nazi Germany. That’s not a tragedy. It’s a genocide, a crime against humanity. German politicians are the leading Zionists in Europe today. From Right to Left the German class backed Israel through thick and thin. In return, the Israeli state is expected to help the German establishment to leave its Holocaust guilt in the past. But the Holocaust cannot be shrugged off like this and Israel’s crime against cannot and will not be ignored.”