The war between Israel and Hamas may appear as though it is far removed from our reality. After all, the bloody settling of scores is taking place virtually on another continent. That too, on a sliver of Europe and Africa facing barely arable land on the edge of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
We might have perhaps continued to live under this delusion, had the Americans not drawn our collective attention to the link between India and the Israel-Hamas war hiding in plain sight.
Indeed, Antony Blinken, America’s Secretary of State (US equivalent of our Minister of External Affairs) has given a lot to think about by drawing a palpable parallel between Hamas and Lashkar-e-Taiba that carried out the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai in 2008.
Blinken said, “…all acts of terrorism are unlawful and unjustifiable, whether they target people in Nairobi, Bali…Istanbul or Mumbai, in New York or Kibbutz Be’eri.”
Blinken’s analogy will of course not appeal to many on the ideological left in India and abroad. This is because, for narrow political gains, they have chosen to ignore the facts and paint Israel as the villain. For this group, Hamas fighters are the flag-bearers of a resistance movement launched to reclaim their holy land from the clutches of an alleged occupier.
There are several examples of this mischievous attempt at drawing a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for one, has publicly cast Hamas as a principled set of “warriors”. Many here in India share the same view.
But the ecosystem’s whataboutery aside, Blinken’s analogy is significant on three counts. First, it casts India very firmly as a subcontinental Israel. One under siege from Islamists that want to destroy Bharat’s secular foundations in the pursuit of a revanchist desire to re-establish Islamic rule across South Asia.
Second, Blinken’s use of the phrase “unlawful and unjustifiable” is aimed at delegitimising the often-used “root cause” argument to rationalise everyday acts of terror against the Indian state and Indians. For far too long, these brazen acts of terror have been insidiously passed off as acts of “resistance” against the “Indian occupation” of Kashmir. The unresolved “root cause” if you like. Blinken’s unequivocal hyphenation of Hamas to 26/11 mastermind LeT will help India blunt Pakistan’s mendacity in international fora where Islamabad has often used Western monkey balancing on Kashmir to its advantage.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, Blinken brackets Hindus with Jews, suggesting that they are the victims of xenophobia that originates from one common fount: the pulpit of a bigoted outlook. This will make it doubly difficult for many in the US who constantly rant about rising Islamophobia in India.
Those still unconvinced can acquaint themselves with the manifestoes of Hamas and Lashkar-e-Taiba. A cursory reading will easily settle the debate in favour of those who think that Indians and Israelis are the unprovoked victims of a fundamentally deep-seated Islamist chauvinism: the refusal to accept the rights of either the Jewish or Hindu belief system to exist as an alternative idea.
Comments
0 comment