By Yasser Latif Hamdani
The recent events in the Middle East in all that I hold dear about the western civilization. It seems that the fine ideals that we have come to associate with the west ie justice, fair play and equality before law are still a long way away from maturity and realization.
Today on Ashur, the day on which Muslims around the world commemorate the sacrifice of Imam Hussain (AS) on the battlefield of Karbala, spare a thouight for the hapless Palestinians caught up in a conflict imposed on them and the world that has refused to take note of their plight. We do not condone the actions of Hamas but there is no justification for what Israel is doing now and against non-combatants no less.
The world maintains an eerie silence. All of western civilization’s finest aspirations and hopes are now being trampled under the weight of Israeli Tanks. Today Western civilization needs a commitment of Hussaini proportions to resurrect itself. No, not Barack Hussain Obama who does nothing for to do the right thing would not be politically expedient. There is a system in place- a system that checks the impulse to do the right thing in the name of politically expediency.
Meanwhile the attacks in Gaza fuel anger- anger that is now being channeled against pro-west elements in the Muslim world. Through its inaction western civilization continues to lose its greatest allies. We live in a world now more defined by a clash of civilizations and those who promote dialogue are in peril. Now more than ever the west should pay heed to Yasser Arafat’s “olive branch and the gun” speech.
Israel has every right to exist and as a Jewish state. For many this is a bitter reality but one that is now firmly established. Similarly Palestinians too have a right to their homeland. It is already a much diminished homeland- one which is at best a compromise for many Palestinians. Still only a stable Palestine is the only guarantee of peace and security of Israel. Take the grievance away- starve those who prey on injustice. No question of identity and no cause can continue in perpetuity especially if an alternative is given to them. If Palestine becomes a prosperous state, and Palestinians have a future worth living for, there is no reason why in a few generation the more extreme point of views amongst them will vanish altogether.
Now consider the dead end that a perpetual conflict that I atleast have seen for as long as I can remember: violence, invasion, death and destruction.
It is time that the good people of Israel and the civil society there takes a stand- for the sake of Palestinians and for themselves.
Kudos to the Israeli High Court which ordered the Israeli Defence Forces to open up Gaza to journalists. Alas, even there the court’s orders are of little importance in face of national security.
22 Comments
January 8, 2009 at 3:11 am
And Mumbai, the magic success of Pakistan ?
January 8, 2009 at 3:47 am
YLH
Imam Hussain (a.s.) made a major sacrifice in which he lost his life, but kept Islam alive.
He embodies the struggle of the mazloomeen against the zalimeen. The most unfortunate part for the Muslim world is that even if they sympathize with Palestine, it does not translate into action.
It is like the Kufans who told Imam Hussain (a.s.), “Our hearts are with you, but our swords are with Banu Umayya”.
We fervently hope that somebody comes to the aid of the hapless Palestinians.
January 8, 2009 at 5:41 am
YLH the pictures do not show up but I do not need to see them to know what they will be about.I see them daily in all their brutal details in the Gulf papers.The family that lost 5 daughters in one attack, the father mourning his three small children,all less than 5 years of age,the mother dying in her children’s lap,the child buried in the rubble……..
This is a colossal failure and apart from other things one fails to understand the apathy of the Arab leaders.The max they do is give donations,send medical supplies,donate blood and strongly ‘condemn’ Israel !!!!
How does Israel intend to kill only Hamas militants amidst 1.5 million poor,impoverished and hemmed in Palestinians is beyond all logic?
I feel that the Palestinians are the western and Arab world’s favorite football.No one seriously cares or intends to give them a homeland……all just use the ‘Plaestinian cause’to further their agendas.
January 8, 2009 at 5:48 am
well the onus is on the palestine ppl to root hamas out…they can no longer feign innocence or naievity..the war is not imposed on them they have brought it upon themselves…All the efforts of poor Yasser Arafat has gone waste
January 8, 2009 at 5:51 am
feedback: yes the pics dont show up
January 8, 2009 at 6:46 am
Alok,
You’ve spoken like a mini-president Bush.
Do you think the force is proportional? Do you think it is alright for Israelis to go in and kill non-combatants in the UN school?
And btw- I think your hypocrisy is showing in your unreserved support for Israel- a state founded on religion and a millenial religious ideology since you seem to have that objection against Pakistan (though I have explained elsewhere why your objection is invalid). Seems like your sense of what is parochial and what is not has different standards for Jews and Hindus and different ones for Muslims or Christians.
And what about your alleged Gandhism? An eye for an eye blah blah? Does that not apply to when Hamas or some other terrorist group attacks Israel? I see it only applies when your eye hasn’t been poked out eh?
All I can say is that you are a hypocrite like the whole lot of them!
January 8, 2009 at 7:51 am
yes i am the biggest hypocrite in the world but lets not waste time discussing about my personality traits
there is no unreserved support for Israel nor for killing of innocent civilians but i often wonder what can democratic countries like Israel do in wake of the rocket attacks by hamas?(probably i think in similar vein what should India do after the bombay attacks?)
1. Why does hamas fire rockets into Israeli civilian territory. who will ensure that there will be an end to it. Why do the Palestinians not rise against hamas tactics of violence?
There has been credible information of how hamas has used women and children as shield in the secret ammunition factories. How disgusting!!
YLH: pls note
1)Perhaps you have forgotten about holocaust.had there been no holocaust there would have been no need of creation of Israel. The conditions of jews was extremely deplorable both in the christian world and the muslim world. (perhaps not in India
There was no genocide of muslims in India before partition and nor were they second rate citizens then (unlike jews elsewhere) not now also.
(listen my dear friend we have had enough discussion let India-pak issue rest here.)
Gandhi:
I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence….I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.
But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment. Forgiveness adorns a soldier…But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is the power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature….
But I do not believe India to be helpless….I do not believe myself to be a helpless creature….Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
January 8, 2009 at 9:59 am
Hypocrite you should try and see what happens.
The reason why Israel gets away with its aggression is because Palestinians are hapless and defenceless.
So think all you want but India cannot replicate Israel’s reign of terror in South Asia.
January 8, 2009 at 12:28 pm
the only thing i dont understand is if somebody has a problem with israelis go to israel and fight.if somebody has a problem with america go there and bomb.y the hell should these people come to india to kill israelis and americans
January 8, 2009 at 12:28 pm
The reason why Israel gets away with its aggression is because Palestinians are hapless and defenceless.
and also because it has the never ending support of the US, no country can dare to do anything against israel as long as the former is behind the it.
Perhaps you have forgotten about holocaust.had there been no holocaust there would have been no need of creation of Israel.
pardon me if the question seems a little irrelevant or stupid but because there was holocaust(truly reprehensible), does this mean that the israel government should subject the innocent palestinian civilians to the same harsh, callous, savage n inhumane treatment?
January 8, 2009 at 12:30 pm
India cant and wont replicate israel in south asia.If we go to war we will have finite end points.No reason in entering a 100 year war with people who knows nothing else but to fight
January 8, 2009 at 1:00 pm
ylh, a serious question for you. You do seem to support the Pakistani army’s military operations in FATA. You must be aware that the Gaza operation has quite a bit in common with the FATA operations especially with regard to the number of civilian casualties incurred. Why do you think the FATA operation is different than the Gaza operation?
January 8, 2009 at 2:38 pm
ylh,
i wholeheratedly aree with west s duplicity….but i think each and every one of us are like that….i presume the hurt and anger felt by an average indian was not felt by a pakistani after 26/11….both of us pay nothing more than lip service(do v do even that) to the carnage taking place in sudan or which took place in congo.everybody talks about justice,equality and fair play only when people we identify with ourselves are involved…me and u included..atleast me included
January 8, 2009 at 4:22 pm
The odds that Hamas faces today against Israel are the same that the forces of Imam Hussain (a.s.) faced against ibne Saad’s army.
Like him, they too are mazloom. Just as the Kufans let down Imam Hussain (a.s.) because although their hearts were with him, their swords were with Banu Ummaya, the Arab nations have let down Palestine.
January 8, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Nikita if Israel would have been able to distinguish between hamas hudlooms and Palestinian civilians then the civilian casualities could have been avoided. i sincerely FEEL they would have tried to do their best but in operations of this magnitude lines get blurred
videos uploaded on you tube show ammunition hid in mosque, rocket launchers near civilian apartments. I do not know what to say
In July, on a visit to Sderot, Barack Obama unequivocally condemned the rocket attacks from Gaza on the Israeli town. “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that,” Obama said. “And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”
and mind you this was the new president who fought against all that Bush stood for.
YLH perhaps you could have said mini obama. sounds lot better.
It will be wrong on your part for you to assume that my heart does not bleed when i saw a Palestinian child being buried by its parent and the anguish and helplessness of these people
but i feel helpless both for palestinian civilians and the people of israel who are subjected to rockets.
Perhaps if had a system where i could write ‘DELETE’ against ‘HAMAS’ and press ‘ENTER’ i would do so ASAP
January 8, 2009 at 4:34 pm
milind kher!…seriously is it your love for hamas….or erudition in theology….or your panache at similies and metaphors!
January 8, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Alok,
It is not so much love for Hamas as it is a deep anguish for the way in which Israel is conducting this one sided battle.
The parallel is only to highlight the plight of the Hamas, and in no way implies that they are even remotely close to the stature of Imam Hussain (a.s.)
January 8, 2009 at 5:09 pm
“Mini obama”
Yeah ok. No.
January 9, 2009 at 2:00 am
alok,
Even Israel is using Palestinian families as human shields ( http://tinyurl.com/9unqrt )
Also Hamas fires rockets into Israel from Gaza…ironically their rockets land on their own land…it was the land they were kicked out from illegally…I would advise you to have a gander at this article written by King Abdullah in 1947. It was written much earlier than the current situation and IMO is required reading to understand the current conflict which did not start 10 or 20 or 30 years ago as many people would think. (http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/kabd_eng.html)
As you will read the Jews were never ever persecuted in the muslim world. It is the Christian West which was responsible for the Haulocast, so why should the poor Palestinians pay for it?
January 9, 2009 at 4:16 pm
It has been 61 years of persecution for the Palestinians, and there is yet no respite for them.
They are sandwiched between a hostile Israel and an indifferent Arab world.
At least some countries had murmured a small protest when Iraq was invaded because it is oil rich, whereas Palestine does not even have that.
January 11, 2009 at 6:09 pm
BTW holocaust was caused by the Europeans( mainly Germans) and not by the Palestinians.The west assuaged its guilt by ‘giving’ the Jews a homeland but only by taking from Palestinians their homeland.
January 13, 2009 at 9:40 am
The No-State Solution (Wall Street Journal)
Hamas cares more about Shariah than ‘Palestine.’By BRET STEPHENS
Of all the errors in the West’s understanding of Hamas, none is more fundamental than the routine characterization of the group as a Palestinian movement. It is nothing of the sort.
This isn’t to say that the Islamic Resistance Movement — to use Hamas’s proper name — isn’t led by Palestinians, or that it’s unpopular among them. On the contrary: Even before the current fighting, Hamas was almost certainly more popular than its secular rival Fatah throughout the Palestinian Authority, including the West Bank. The only difference with Gaza is that Israel remains a presence on the West Bank, able to prevent Hamas from gaining sufficient strength to rout Fatah in an armed contest.
Hamas’s claim on Palestinian hearts has only gained force in the last three weeks, though whether the feeling lasts will depend largely on how it emerges from the war. But the test of Hamas’s Palestinian-ness, as it were, has nothing to do with its popularity. The test is whether it actually believes in something called Palestine. There is scant evidence that it does.
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Bear in mind that there has never previously been an independent state by that name; politically, it remains a notional place. The idea of a Palestinian people, referring to the Arab inhabitants of the land, is also of relatively recent vintage. (The late, great Israeli pianist David Bar-Ilan, my predecessor as editor of the Jerusalem Post, was known, as a Jewish child during the British Mandate, as the “Palestinian piano prodigy.”)
This isn’t to deny, as Golda Meir famously did, the existence of a Palestinian people. But it is to say that a Palestinian people — as opposed to merely an Arab one — exists only as a kind of counterpart, perhaps a twin, to the Israeli people. Put simply: No Israel, no Palestine.
That’s why the creation of the Palestinian Authority, on the basis of the 1993 Oslo Accords, could only happen once Yasser Arafat’s PLO had recognized Israel’s right to exist. Israel later learned, at great cost, that Arafat’s “recognition” had been a lie. Yet the principle remains valid regardless of the lie.
Hamas, to its perverse credit, does not lie, at least not on fundamental issues. It has never accepted the Oslo Accords. It is sworn to Israel’s destruction. Its charter is nakedly and aggressively anti-Semitic; no fig leaf of “anti-Zionism” there. The closest it has ever come to terms with the Jewish state is the offer of a long-term hudna, on the model of the Prophet’s 10-year truce with the tribes of seventh century Arabia. “Anyone who thinks Hamas will change is wrong,” said supreme leader Khaled Mashal in 2006. Could he be any clearer?
Of course, Hamas enjoys “democratic legitimacy” by virtue of its parliamentary victory in January 2006. And with the quiet expiration last week of Mahmoud Abbas’s presidential term, it is the only Palestinian party that enjoys such legitimacy. But this turns out to be no legitimacy at all, since Hamas refuses to recognize the legal basis of the Authority it purports to represent. And this is to say nothing of the putsch through which Hamas came to power in Gaza.
Still, it isn’t merely Israel’s right to exist, or the Palestinian Authority’s, that Hamas denies. It denies Palestine’s as well.