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A popular Kishore Kumar song from a 1983 Hindi movie Mohabbat could be a lesson to arrogant, power-drunk political elites the world over, and would particularly apply to Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu. The song goes: “Dahshat se nahin, taqat se nahin, mohabbat se chalti hai duniya.” (The world cannot be run by terror or fear, but only by love.) It may sound utopian, but it is not far from the truth. Western nations led by the US have turned a blind eye to the events which led to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. True, there is no excuse for killing innocent civilians, women and children, whatever the provocation. But no one is caring to tell Netanyahu that violence begets violence, however weak the opponent may be.
Having beaten the Palestinians to submission for over 75 years, Zionist ideologues have brutally succeeded in their project. But a corrupt and dishonourable Netanyahu has managed to further humiliate and dehumanise the Palestinians in the name of a mythical war against them dating from the time of Abraham. This may sound somewhat familiar to Indians at the moment!
The Israeli military is armed with deadly military spyware like Pegasus. They have the best equipment to keep an eye around the clock on the entire open prison called the Gaza Strip. Yet, there was a colossal intelligence failure. The leading Israeli daily Haaretz said 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 the South if they care for their lives. Israeli forces are preparing to conquer northern Gaza and obliterate Hamas. Netanyahu wants a million people to vacate North Gaza in 24 hours, which the UN says is not only unfeasible but a violation of international law.
The events unfolding are a reminder of the tragic consequences of Operation Blue Star, when the Indian military in June 1984 tried to clear Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed militia out of the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The Indian army finally succeeded, but at what cost — Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her security guards and the killing of thousands of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere in north India in ‘retaliation’ for her killing. The cycle of violence never ends. Who will tell Netanyahu this? Certainly not the Americans or Europeans.
There is no doubt that Israel has enough muscle and firepower to obliterate Palestinians from Gaza, the task for which the extreme right-wing has propped up Netanyahu, and never mind his gross corruption and authoritarian behaviour. Add to that the immediate replenishment of their arsenal by the US with tons of lethal armaments, to equip Netanyahu to wipe out Palestinians from whatever little is left of their enclave.
But while 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. More pertinently, Israel has vowed to change the politics of the Middle East permanently. No one clearly knows what the Israeli government means by this. The Americans and Europeans have also not clarified what Netanyahu’s final objective is. There will be more clarity in the coming weeks as to where the dystopian world of Netanyahu is headed.
Faraz Ahmad is a senior journalist in Delhi.