israeli-retribution-on-palestinians-has-gone-too-far

By Vimal Sumbly

 

It is a fact that Israel is fighting a perennial existential battle while being surrounded by hostile nations. Yet, it is surviving against all odds. It is also a fact that the current war that Israel has unleashed on Gaza was provoked by Hamas on October 7, 2023, when its terrorists attacked Israel, killing 1,200 innocent people and taking 200 hostages. The Hamas terrorists were brutal and barbaric in their attack.

 

Since then, slightly less than two years on, Israel has been continuing with its brutal and ruthless retributory offensive. It has killed several Hamas commanders and thousands of terrorists. When it unleashed the retribution against Hamas during which several innocents were also killed, the world looked the other way, which it should not have. But still during the counter-terrorists’ operations, some collateral damage is understandable, though avoidable and unacceptable.

 

But what Israel is doing now is beyond any justification and highly condemnable. It has already destroyed the entire Hamas terror infrastructure. What Israel is doing now, by killing innocent people who are dying otherwise also by starvation as Israel has completely blocked the food and other aid supplies to Gaza, is beyond justification and calls for condemnation.

 

Israel apparently does not know where to stop. The brutality of the October 7, 2023, attack was too severe to be forgotten. It challenged the very existence of the Jewish state, and broke the myth of intelligence superiority of Israel and the impregnability of its security apparatus. Everything came crashing that day. It actually was both the intelligence as well as the security failure. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, is famous for its precision intelligence-gathering and resorting to pre-emptive actions. But that day Mossad was taken by shock and surprise.

 

While Israel’s intelligence agency failed to gather any advance clue of such a devastating attack, the Israelis were targeted like sitting ducks. There was no security arrangement in place that could defend and protect the innocent people. It was actually a fatal failure for the country that prides itself in possessing the best intelligence network and an equally best security set up. In October 2023, both failed.

 

By now, Israel has already stuck with devastating retribution on Hamas and its supporters. Israel apparently justifies its continuous Gaza operations in the belief that the entire Palestine population has been supportive of Hamas and its terrorist action of October 7. That is quite possible. Given the profound hostility and enmity between the Israelis and Palestinians, it is quite natural that the latter must have been supportive of Hamas’ action.

 

The Palestinians’ support for Hamas in no way justifies the wanton killing of people in Gaza. Israel must realise or must be made to realise that there has to be an end to its war on Gaza. It cannot go on forever. There has to be a limit to everything. Retribution cannot be stretched beyond certain limits. After all, Israel has to live and survive along with the Palestinians. It cannot wish them away. It cannot completely wipe them off.

 

As many as 150 countries across the world, including Russia, China, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, the Arab and African countries, have repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza. India has also favoured a ceasefire, although it abstained during the last voting that took place in the United Nations on June 11. That was because Israel was the only country that stood by India during its hostilities with Pakistan in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack. That obviously was a momentary decision. India’s considered position has been of peace as also the two-nation solution.

 

Interestingly, US President Donald Trump, who claims to have brokered the ceasefire between India and Pakistan within just four days of the breaking out of the hostilities, remains vague and ambiguous about the Israel-Palestine conflict. If he really wants, he can enforce peace in the Middle East. Israel is completely dependent on the United States’ support. It cannot carry on with its war in Gaza in case the US asks it not to.

 

Also read: Truce won't help as Gaza kids go without schooling for 2 years

 

Quite tragically, even the Arab/Muslim world has also observed complete silence and maintained an indifference towards the plight of Palestinians. Except for token verbal protests and the UN vote against war, the Arab countries or the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) has also failed to prevail on the global community to help in stopping the war in Gaza.

 

The United Nations has been rendered completely ineffective. Its repeated resolutions go unheard. Gaza is a tragic example of despair and helplessness on the one hand and the brute might on the other, where innocent people are made to die of starvation and those who survive starvation are bombed to death.

 

Israel does have a right to dignified survival. Israel has the right to defend itself. But it does not have any right to kill innocent and helpless people just under the impression that they have been or they are the supporters of its enemy. The continued war by Israel is not going to win it any friends but instead it risks losing and alienating its long-time friends like the European nations, which have been repeatedly asking for ceasefire and have even warned of consequences.

 

As long as Israel has the US support, which it should have, the country will not care for anyone else’s opinion. Trump’s failure in stopping the Russia-Ukraine War is understandable because Putin is too tough to be prevailed upon. He can at least prevail upon Israel and ask it to stop the war.

 

As long as Israel continues pounding Gaza with bombs, Trump’s claims of brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, will hold no ground. If he cannot stop Israel, which is fully dependent on the US, how can it force a country like India to call off the hostilities by dangling the “trade-tariff” carrot and stick?

 

As of now, the world has completely failed the people of Gaza. We, as fellow human beings, owe empathy and support to them. By watching them getting killed so wantonly, with such cold indifference, we need to question ourselves whether this is really the “human civilisation” we are part of. Israel, the country of Jews who themselves faced annihilation about 90 years ago, should have been more empathetic towards the helpless Palestinians.

 

It is an irony that when the world hounded the Jews, as they were being persecuted by the Christians in Europe and the Tsar in Russia in the 19th century, it was only the Palestinians who had provided them shelter at that time, and that is when and how they started to resettle in the land that belonged to them about 2000 years ago.