Israel’s war of vengeance — the deafening silence

Hamas positively responds to plan that lack any credible enforcement mechanism in case of Israeli recalcitrance

In the previous two columns, a sincere effort was made to highlight the human tragedy because of Israeli war of genocide that is now targeting refugee camps in Rafah – yes refugee camps for Palestinians uprooted umpteenth number of times, and with nowhere to go. The politico-diplomatic implications of this conflict and its immediate and recurring cost for the World Jewry – itself the victims of the Holocaust, the state of Israel and its unrelenting backer, the USA – would unfold over years.

On Tuesday, the UNSC voted in a ceasefire plan for Gaza that was ostensibly checked with Israel by the US, before tabling in the SC. Israel’s lukewarm acquiescence, under compulsion, has already caused some hardline resignations in Netanyahu’s ultraright cabinet. Hamas positively responded to plan specifics that lacked any credible enforcement mechanism in case of Israeli recalcitrance…that is too often the case in this conflict.

The conflict will cast its dark shadow over the US vis-à-vis Iran. Iran being the ultimate winner. With the only country having the spine to stand up to the US-Israel combine, Iran has enlarged its geostrategic space and perceptual dominance manifolds. The deafening silence by the so called ummah on the Palestinian genocide, apparently because of their dislike of pro-Tehran Hamas, notwithstanding.

So far, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards walk taller from this multilateral conflict…for humbling the mighty Israel, rubbishing its strategy of ‘escalation dominance’ and overcoming its nuclear deterrence; for pushing Israel towards internationally unacceptable ethical and military behavior i.e. using excessive force indiscriminately; for championing the Arab and Muslim Street against their spineless and interdicted leadership; for reviving Iran’s reason to pursue its own nuclear weapons; for changing the face of conflict in the ME through effective use of proxies and cost-effective technologies; for looking good by siding with the underdog; for helping to put the Palestinian situation upfront in international public perception; for complicating the Abraham Accords and the US’s pivot to Asia; and for cementing its Sino-Russia-North Korea-Persia Alliance. The list is long.

Israel domestically gets away with keeping its Arab citizens in second class status, as it does not have a constitution. A ‘constitution’ in a so-called ‘democracy’ that does not grant equal rights to all citizens, as Israel does, is not likeable in the contemporary world. Therefore, the Jewish State has decided to have none. So, practically Israel is not a state where Palestinians and Jews are equal in number and equal in rights. And this cannot legally be challenged as it does not violate a constitution, there being none. Contemporary Israel is also a worst apartheid state as reported by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B’Tselem, a leading human rights group inside Israel. Bishop Desmund Tutu of South Africa, who lived under apartheid in South Africa, also argues that the Israeli apartheid system is worse.

One of the consequences of this conflict has been the slipping of narrative-control from Israel and its lobby in the US/Europe. This slow process was ushered in by new historians and others in the elite camp, who thought differently about the creation of Israel and Israel’s behavior. Then came the internet and social media. Although Israel and its extended lobbies can influence most print media like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the various news channels, think-tanks and other platforms, it cannot impact platforms like TikTok, that is a nightmare for Israel, hence the drive to ban it in the US. Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), is on record lamenting TikTok, Israel’s PR disaster. Interestingly, in this world of uncontrolled media, Israelis themselves are filming doing horrible things to Palestinians, and then uploading it on social media.

There are now more converts in the West Plus to the Palestinian cause, and serious questions are being asked about the Holocaust. Antisemitism is on the rise and some fringe elements are sadly if loudly justifying the human tragedy of the Holocaust, given Israel’s unsatiable anger and its own vengeful genocide of a people with no role in the Holocaust. As of 7th October, around 500,000 Israelis have left the country, and that includes a sizeable number of prisoners of conscience. Warsaw reports, more and more Israelis applying for Polish citizenship.

James Kirchick in his guest essay in The New York Times on 27 May 2024 reports that for the past several months “wide swaths of the literary world [are] effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel”. And this is the case in progressive spaces like academia, politics, cultural organisations and in the intellectual publishing, with robust Jewish presence. Instead of wailing and hiding behind clichés as the writer does, it is time for the World Jewry to sense the turning tides (detailed by Mr Kirchick) and take corrective actions and do so fast.

For a long time, the policy establishment and business in the West Plus have been dominated by Jewish cerebral power. The killing of thousands of children in Gaza and maiming of thousands more by Israeli bombs is beginning to change this perceptual hold. People are challenging this stranglehold, which is not good for the Jewry itself. Discontent with Jewish domination – social, commercial and intellectual – has historically led to the unfortunate historic continuum of Jewish people’s exclusion and expulsions. Their refrain of ‘never again’ needs to ensure ‘never this’ too.

Early this month, IDF took “tactical control” of a zone, known as the ‘Philadelphi Corridor’, along Egypt’s Sinai border with Israel. Cairo repeatedly asserted that Israeli “occupation” of a buffer zone on the Egypt-Gaza border would be unacceptable. Yet Israel did exactly that, with IDF offensive touching such southernmost point in decades. An Egypt keen to protect its 1979 Camp David peace treaty, ensure military and intelligence cooperation with Israel against Egyptian insurgents, safeguard supply of Israeli natural gas and continue dollar-laden relationship with Washington, chose to stay quiet.

So, dear Palestinians! While the heart bleeds for you, disregard the deafening silence of ummah. You are alone but not alone. You have the power of just cause, the support of human conscience from all over the world across religious, ethnic or geographic lines, including the conscientious segments of the World Jewry, and the divinity of innocence of kids in pieces in the laps of their mothers.

The sun will shine! There will be a day of reckoning…Jews too believe in that.