Dr John Mohan Razu
If we go back to October 7th 2023, scenes from Hamas’s sudden ambush on a music festival farming communities, those visitors wanting to participate in the fest and army outposts in southern Israel were drowned into to shock, unbearable grief, totally awestruck and pushed them to be drowned in disarray. The attack has pushed them deep into national psyche and unbelief.
Blood stained bodies of young men and women lying on a highway where they were gunned down. Many old and young women squeezed between two gunmen on motorcycles taken to the Gaza Strip as hostages. 1,200 Israelis were killed on that day and 200-plus Israelis taken as hostages. As part of exchange deal captives were exchanged by both the parties
Israelis could not digest the ambush of the Hamas. The pain endures for those who lost their dear ones and those families whose family members are still being held by the Hamas. The scenario is more as the Palestinians lost many in their families in huge numbers that outnumbers in disproportionate ways to that of Israeli losses. As mark of 100-day vigil the Israeli in large numbers protested before the office of PM Netanyahu for the release of their dear and near ones; peace, ceasefire, and mutual co-existence. Barring minuscule percentage or number, most of the Israelis want the government of Israel to carry through the military offensive in Gaza until Hamas is eliminated. However, this number is gradually dwindling
And yet, the far-right and PM Netanyahu continue their rage in bombarding and firing rockets, artillery, and missiles. The images that come to the fore are horrifying and devastating. The rage and fury could be felt the ways with which Israeli forces pounded, pulverized, and destroyed everything that includes 24,000 human lives out of which children number more than others, hospitals, schools, infrastructure, and UN shelters. The occupying forces went to the extent of liquidating the journalist, medical doctors, paramedics, and UN staff involved in humanitarian initiatives/efforts. Gazans were pushed to run helter-skelter like rates and cockroaches from Gaza North to the Central, and to the South. Basic amenities and medical supplies were totally cut-off.
Roughly one percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people is wiped-off. Government of Israel keep advising to evacuate from one place to another; rescuers dig through smoldering piles of concrete, stone and dust looking for survivors of airstrikes and shelling.
Wherever there are empty piece of land tent camps have sprawled. Huge crows taking their plates and vessels run for food whenever they see trucks carrying food because hardly they have one meal a day as the data shows that one in four people in Gaza starving under Israel’s siege of the territory. The War Committee of Israel nowadays keep repeating that their offensive would continue through 2024. Israeli forces keep destroying everything detonating entire blocks in Gaza, saying they are demolishing Hamas tunnels.
Hamas attack on Israel that too inside Israel has completely rattled the ruling dispensation as well as the Israelis. More than anything Hamas’s entry into Israel and carrying out the massacre in a fraction of time hoodwinking its intelligence and security had totally wilted its resolve and resilience. Never in its 75 years of existence, has the State of Israel become so vulnerable and totally shaken. Hundreds and thousands of Israelis are protesting in Israel as the government for having failed to bring back the hostages held by Hamas and also incapable of demolishing Hamas. The core war objectives of PM Netanyahu and his government have miserably disappointed the people of Israel especially those who lost their dear ones and held by Hamas as captives. The effects have been traumatic and compelling to Israel to accept the changing reality.
Both in Israel and Gaza and in other parts of occupied territories there has been collective sense of grief. At the same time there are few pockets wherein tolerance and co-existence keep resonating. By and large, the current scenario has further crisis of faith and humanity. The current scenario has brought to the fore the West duplicity and hypocrisy Over and above, the global comity of nations have failed in collective action. West on platter allowed Israel to go ahead indiscriminately and unceasingly kill the Palestinians and watching. How many lives does the West want so that it could intervene and vote for ceasefire? To put it succinctly, how many lives you need to wipe-off the historical guilt of holocaust.
This conflict is supposedly the worst since 1948 Nakba. Generations both in Israel and Palestine would be psychologically dramatized. Jewish Zionists and Christian Zionists located in Israel, Europe, United States, and other parts of the world. Rohini Hensman’s succinct summary is that “Anti-Semitism is racism against the Jews. Zionism is racism against the Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims.” It is an irony that the countries that support the state of Israel are Christians especially the Christian West has created the problem for decades and thus supported the genocidal project of Israel. The West historically is known for imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. As part of expansionist strategy, the government Israel wants to annex all the territories from the River to the Sea. The countries in the West, United States, and Israel keep invoking the Christian Scriptures for its advantage.
Zionists Jews and Zionist Christians tend invoke the Bible to justify their actions. They employ reductionist approach selecting verses and interpret those verses that suit them. For example, “For lo, I will command and shake the house of Israel among all the nations, as one shakes with a slave, but no pebbles shall fall to the ground” (Amos 9:7). Zionist both the Jews and Christians take up from the same book verse 15 that “I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up, out of the land that I have given them, says the Lord your God.” Jewish and Christen Zionists have forgotten the core biblical message that ‘God loves all nations’.
PM Netanyahu while justifying his war on Gaza invoked a part of a verse from Ecclesiastes 3: 8b that “… a time for war, and a time for peace”. Holy Scriptures are used left and right to justify the actions of those who failed to go through the core essence of the texts. They refrain from going further by taking up “The is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one ins Christ Jesus (Gal3:28). Therefore, Zionists should desist from quoting the Bible to justify the brazen killings of the innocent people of any race. Israel could perhaps be a nuclear power state and is one of the major producers of weaponry and spyware, but Gazans completely de-coded and thus exposed Israel .
The genocide in Gaza is a testimony and proof of hoaw a victor turned guest, then settlers, and finally the predator can unleash terror on the innocent civilians. Though many nation-states expressed their position for ceasefire, nothing has happened thus far. People across the world continue their demonstration in millions in the last hundreds days expressing their protests shouting slogans against their political dispensation to enforce ceasefire. These visuals seem to have fallen into the deaf years. India like others is engaged in covert deals with Israel.
It is nuclear-armed state. Israel is the major producer of weaponry and spyware.
HAS CHANGED GLOBAL POLITICAL EQUATIONS
