Dr John Mohan Razu
The dictum ‘Right to Defend’ has become the powerful narrative in the past one year. This narrative has been widely used by the imperial and neo-colonial powers to justify their support and legitimizing thesupply arms and ammunition to Israel. Between 2023-24 huge cargo airplanes made more than 1200 trips to Israel carrying ammunition and war machines. Along with those military experts travelled together to fix thoseand to demonstrate. For instance, UK supplied 645 surveillance systems and many others to Israel. Therefore, it should be noted that the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Cyprus, Greece and others keep extending their intelligence, war materials, technological support like AI and financial aids to Israel.
Continuous attacks on all front where the Palestinians stay has resulted in the killing of 43,000 inhabitants in Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and West Bank. Israel is a proxyfor the Western powers in the Middle-East. Displacement, famine, hunger, roof over their heads, basic essentials and many others have become the regular feature since October 7, 2023. Israel and the West headed by the United States have no right in absolute terms to kill the innocent civilians. In this case, power being asymmetrical is being employed over Palestinians and diabolically exercised against those innocent women, children and civilians. Israel being the settlers’ colony acts like a colonizer which is again being supported by the colonial and imperial forces to hit their so-called colony the Palestine harder.
The occupying power Israel has no legal power to receive and use the war materials because it is against the international law. A clear violation that the State Israel(receiver) and sending countries have been flouting. Even NATO and others are keeping quiet showing complicity and impunity.Empire builders, neo-colonizers, and mega corporations that are involved in the armament production and tech-companies that controls AI and others have their economic interests and thus being benefitted hugely.
Israel war and the support extendedagainst Palestiniansby those powers is totally illegal and the ways with which it is being pursued is highly questionable. These forces want to make the land of Palestinians like those colonies where the indigenous people live in Australia—a settler’s colony, but it should the other way.Ruthless power. economic and political monopoly need to be challenged and thus changed.
More importantly it is to be noted that Israel is Judaism, but in the past twenty years the construction seems to be changing in this way: Israelism is Jewish Zionism. This has been the radical shift in the understanding and practice of the ruling dispensation in Israel. Israel in the past used to be premised on Torah—Israelis basic religious scripture and their fundamental tenant from where their moral principles and ethical values emanate. As Christian Zionism spreads across the world includingIndia the usage of dispensationalism—an evangelical theological system that emphasizes the literal interpretation of Biblical prophecy.Jewish Zionists and Christian Zionists view the war going that is currently going on in the Middle East interpret that ‘we are in end times’— ‘the biblical prophecy is fulfilled. This understanding posits fanaticism and fails to enter into the principles of biblical hermeneutics and strait-jacketed approach leaving aside the unfolding of history. This war has ripped open the entire gamut of dispensationalism. Intense debates are taking place on both the sides.
Israel once a land of values—respect to one another, justice, peace, freedom, and co-existence is now a militarized state filled with xenophobic, Islamophobic, and genocidal intent attributes. Israelism and Zionism are now intertwined and thus used by the far-right political parties and biblical literalist across Israel, United States, India, and in other parts as well. Settlements and expansionism are part of Jewish Zionism. Annexation of parts of Palestine is the agenda and dictum of Israelism—the biblical prophecy of Greater Israel or rhetoric or vision—” from the river to the sea” be fulfilled. It is a political phrase that refers geographical area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an area historically called Palestine, which today includes Israel and the Israel-occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza.
The world we live positsthe failure of accountability mechanism. One rule for the dominant and the other rule for the dominated. There is no serious commitment to abide by international law and ethical morality. The values and virtues that ought to be followed are gradually waning and thus in jeopardy. Israel per se would have failed long ago against Hamas and still survives because of the US and others. Those Jewish Zionists and Christian Zionistshave failed in their common understanding, theological basis and ethical argumentation, as they hardly substantiate their arguments by basing global moral order and ethical principles because these imperial forces keep flouting the international moral codes and legal requirements.
We live in times where global or international frames of law and rules have failed. Number of UNresolutions, majority of countries voting against the behavior of Israel, and strictures issued against those who head the government of Israel by ICJ and ICC, and a number of international agencies voicing their dissent against Israel, months of demonstrations and protests across the world by the young students have been discarded and being shown scant respect show there the growing complicity and impunity by those powers that supports Israel. Precisely because of these reasons they are unable to question those who take similar route to exercise their might on others. Paradoxically, we are back to Darwinian equation:we live in a world which is regulated by the laws of jungle and survival of the fittest.
