These are my political facts and questions.
I suppose I am quasi political. I’m a reasonable iconoclast. I believe in breaking rules not because that’s ‘hip’ and makes me look ‘cool’; but because I think some rules are like myths and if not broken, there is the danger of them perpetuating into facts. Like Napoleon Bonaparte once famously said, ‘History is myths agreed upon.’
Therefore, what I do believe is that – I have opinions. And that opinions need to be stated.
I had a little discussion (rather short) with someone on here on this site. How she was condemning and mourning the ‘atrocities’ that were being meted out to the Palestinians in Gaza; and how she was aghast at the ‘barbaric’ nature of Israelis who were milking their favourable position as a young, rebellious child nation of this century, a hot favourite of the powers to be – massacring their weaker nemesis in a manner that their death toll just crossed the one thousand mark.
Let’s just say that war, is bloodied by its very nature. And that war of any sort, results in agony, brutality and grief for both parties, and that’s not rocket science.
But the important question is – Why did someone have to go to war at all? Is war a thrill the strong like to indulge in, or it born like everything else, out of necessity?
I’m by inclination Pro-Israel. That’s clear. Too much, oh too much have we of this generation, at least of the curious bend of mind have read, heard and processed of what has been the great iniquity to have befallen the human race in recent times – the Holocaust. And how did we ever wonder that the scratching sounds of hapless victims being roasted alive in ovens of Buchenwald and Auschwitz might not haunt the generations to come, in more petrifying manners than one – is beyond my ability to understand.
Recently I cried all over again when I read the (ghastly) personal memoirs of a concentration camp victim turned Nobel Prize winner Jewish writer, Elie Wiesel (of the ‘Night’ fame), who says, ‘In my lifetime if I had to write only one book, this would be the one.’
A slim volume of barely 120 pages, but one so harrowing that it took me three days to be able to read it in parts, and never full; for those who can ‘imagine’, and let that imagination overcome their senses in a way that the stench of burning flesh wafts across decades, and travels up the nostrils in a nausea inducing sickness - this wasn’t a book meant for the faint hearted.
To have witnessed such human depravity in imagination, I don’t want to imagine a world where an evil of this magnitude had come to pass for real.
Jewish persecution was for real – it’s not a ‘myth agreed upon history’ but one that I fervently wish was. To turn a son in to a feeble caricature of his previous self, only a mysteriously, evilly savage concentration/death camp could have done that - such that he angered upon his dying, choleric father – why the father had to moan and make petulant noises – calling out for his son, thus provoking the bloodied Nazis into a fit of slothful fury, and leading to his inevitable death by being crushed under the blows of merciless boots – and, the danger of being exposed to the famous Nazi wrath - for his son – ‘haunted’ just got itself a new dimension.
It’s clearly established that the Holocaust was for real. The scars of the most vicious evil meted out to a people, barely seventy years ago have faded, but not enough to not leave imprints on the conduct of the generations that will follow.
Their Biblical claims aside, the Jews of the world needed a home. Israel belonged to them as much as it belonged to the Arabs, who as Muslims came much later than the Jews. Just because tomorrow there are more Muslims in India, that doesn’t mean that India will stop belonging to the Hindus. As descendants of the Aryans, (damn the word) India belongs to the Hindus by birth. That we are predisposed to co-exist is another ball game altogether. Please don’t call me ‘saffron’, I’m not. I’m just being most naturally logical.
By exacting accurate Roman census the occupants/residents/owners of the land South of Beirut, East of the Jordan past Philadelphia and Aman, South through the desert to Duba and East to Tabuk, and West across the Sinai were over 90% Hebrew in faith, and over 75% Hebrew in their tribal/family origin. This was for over two millennium before Saladin sacked Jerusalem.
It’s amazing to me that so called educated people can accept 1300+years of Muslim War/violence/Slavery & Terror. In 1946 British Palestine was about 50/50 Jew and Arab. When hostilities were imminent the Israelis offered the Arabs money to stay, the Egyptians offered more money to move out, with the promise of "why have half, move out, we will destroy them, and you will have it all".
(Source – cbsnews.com user)
In 1948 the young state of Israel was born – it was besieged by the Arabs from all sides, but fresh wounds flared and their retribution was swift. Surrounded by enemies who refused to accept its sovereignty on all sides, and, by the sea on the one that was left – the most popular belief in the Arab world was, and still is I’m afraid, to ‘Push Israel into the Sea,’ - the collaborative effort of Egypt, Syria, Jordan; with troops pitched in by Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, the Israelis won the six days war in 1967 due to their skill at pre-emptive strike and superior Military co-ordination and control. At the war's end, Israel had gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. The results of the war affect the geopolitics of the region to this day.
The 1982 Lebanon War, called by Israel the Operation Peace of the Galilee, and later colloquially also known in Israel as the First Lebanon War, began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon. The Government of Israel ordered the invasion as a response to the assassination attempt against Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov, by the Abu Nidal Organization.
After attacking the PLO, as well as Syrian and Muslim Lebanese forces, Israel occupied southern Lebanon. Surrounded in West Beirut and subjected to heavy bombardment, the PLO and the Syrian forces negotiated passage from Lebanon with the aid of international peacekeepers.
The Oslo Accords, officially called the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements or Declaration of Principles (DOP) was a milestone in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was the first direct, face-to-face agreement between Israel and political representatives of Palestinians. It was intended to be a framework for the future relations between Israel and the anticipated Palestinian state, when all outstanding final status issues between the two states would be addressed and resolved in one agreement.
The Accords were finalized in Oslo, Norway on 20 August 1993, and subsequently officially signed at a public ceremony in Washington D.C. on 13 September 1993, with Yasser Arafat signing for the Palestine Liberation Organization and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signing for the State of Israel. It was witnessed by Warren Christopher for the United States and Andrei Kozyrev for Russia, in the presence of US President Bill Clinton.
The Oslo Accords were a framework for the future relations between the two parties. The Accords provided for the creation of a Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority would have responsibility for the administration of the territory under its control. The Accords also called for the withdrawal of the Israel Defence Forces from parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
The 2006 Lebanon War, known in Lebanon as the July War and in Israel as the Second Lebanon War was a 33-day military conflict in Lebanon and northern Israel. The principal parties were Hezbollah paramilitary forces and the Israeli military. The conflict started on 12 July 2006, and continued until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect in the morning on 14 August 2006, though it formally ended on 8 September 2006 when Israel lifted its naval blockade of Lebanon.
The conflict began when Hezbollah militants purposely fired rockets at Israeli border towns as a diversion for an anti-tank missile attack on two armoured Humvees patrolling the Israeli side of the border fence. Of the seven Israeli soldiers in the two jeeps, two were wounded, three were killed, and two were kidnapped and taken to Lebanon. Five more were killed in a failed Israeli rescue attempt. Israel responded with massive airstrikes and artillery fire on targets in Lebanon that damaged Lebanese civilian infrastructure, including Beirut's Rafic Hariri International Airport (which Israel alleged that Hezbollah used to import weapons and supplies), an air and naval blockade, and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah then launched more rockets into northern Israel and engaged the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in guerrilla warfare from hardened positions.
The conflict killed over a thousand people, mostly Lebanese civilians, severely damaged Lebanese civil infrastructure, and displaced approximately one million Lebanese and 300,000–500,000 Israelis, although most were able to return to their homes. After the ceasefire, some parts of Southern Lebanon remained uninhabitable due to Israeli unexploded cluster bomblets.
But things have been going downhill ever since, and the Oslo Accords have fallen out of favour with both the Israeli people as well as the Palestinians. At some junctures, Israel is even blamed to have flagrantly disregarded the tenets of the Oslo accords, so on and so forth.
Now, we’re facing a situation where an imminent war like crisis is assailing Middle East yet again and so far over four thousand Palestinian civilians have already been brutally, and let me emphasis, BRUTALLY assaulted by Israelis who in my personal opinion have learnt well from an Old Jew of Venice, who infamously remarked something about –
‘Still have I borne it with an ancient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.’
And, ‘Because Jewish people have to put up with things and that is what distinguishes us,’
And, ‘I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same
food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter
and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If
you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the
rest, we will resemble you in that.’
Courtesy, the Bard of all times, going on to show that the common prejudice against Jews is as old as civilization itself, God knows why.
Now that they have the – technology, a resilient army, one of the most sophisticated and swift Para-military/military retribution systems in the world, they are the monsters; frankly we’ve all created over the span of two thousand years and more. Welcome home Frankenstein!
Now, 1300 year of aggression upon the Jews and the constant petulant behaviour of the Arabs and an assortment of their terrorist like outfits is no problem with some folks; but a strike to stop rocket attacks is intolerable. People, that prejudiced are dangerous; when rockets start landing in one’s own backyards then I suppose one no longer care about rights of others and specifically, *human* rights.
What I would really like know is what were the ‘Human rights watch’ (crying hoarse now that they’re banned by Israel to enter the war torn area) – were doing when Hamas were launching rockets at the Israeli civilians?
Anyway. Truth is that some people believe that Hamas and their like – are the chosen Democratic government of the people of Palestine. That they build houses, roads, provide medical aid etcetera to their people and are something akin to ‘freedom fighters’ for the Palestinian people; and that one should refrain from being misled by the airbrushed western media whore that’s trying to sully the image of these freedom fighters who want nothing less than sovereignty for Palestine, and its rights etc back.
I do understand that people have harboured stranger point of views, but I will *never* subscribe to the belief that Lashkar-e-toiba, that functions un-banned in Lahore and may be funding a flight of Madarsas; and imparting zealot like training camp education to misled youth (who later conduct siege attacks on another country’s financial capital) – they might be highly religious and may be attached with ideals that are often identified with ‘freedom fighters’; kill me, but to me they are good ‘ole terrorists and a nice rocket attack on their headquarters might make my day like nothing else.
Let’s face the facts: Hamas are terrorists in the conventional sense. That they have won the majority and are democratically elected, it well goes on to show how twisted things can get in today’s world. Another example of such is – Indian politics. The less said about its state of affairs, the better it is.
It is well established that the Hamas are not really doing much for a common Palestinian who is still languishing in refugee camps. Hamas’s war with Israel is personal, and very, mostly political in nature. No one’s anyone’s freedom fighter here. And that’s that.
According to latest news, Israel (cabinet) is even pitching to vote for a cease fire in Gaza, in an initiative/process initiated by Egypt:
The truce would begin a phased process in which Israel stops the assault and gauges the reaction from Hamas militants, according to the official. Israel would resume the offensive if the militants continue to fire rockets.
Under the deal, Egypt would shut down weapons smuggling routes with international help, and discussions on the opening of Gaza's blockaded border crossings would take place at a later date.
But a senior Hamas official says Palestinians will continue to fight. Sami Abu Zuhri also says Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is not authorized to represent Hamas in any peace talks. He says "we will continue fighting despite our limited means." Zuhri was speaking at a news conference Saturday in Istanbul as fighting continues between Israeli forces and Hamas militants in Gaza.
Well, what can one say? So much for peace for the people of Palestine. The shells will fly and the bullets will rain away.
Apart from this, an event that grossly bothered me was the use of White Phosphorus by Israeli Military on the refugee camps on Gaza. It was reported that almost ten victims were reported to be suffering from burns which are caused by the above chemical-weapon like material which causes a sort of burn where the skin peels down to the bones. The human right watch mongers were crying hoarse but quite frankly I think they’re the most biased lot. But that does not mean I condone Israel’s action – definitely NOT one like this.
In any sort of war, I think any nation, and that’s ANY nation should conscientiously follow the International Geneva Protocols on Weapon use. Really, use the sub machine guns, and tanks and rockets etc – let’s all keep away from the *C* and *N* word. And it’s best for all of us if we do. It doesn’t really matter if you aren’t a signatory to the third protocol and if you don’t consider White Phosphorus as a chemical weapon; with the sort of after effects one sees when a material like that is used on *civilians* - it IS chemical warfare. And damn the US for using it in Iraq. That’s a show of provoked offensive and unabashed superiority trip. I think it sucks that Israel did that. No excuses are good enough.
I suppose the generation of Israelis who sported the ‘Concentration camps numbers’; lifted in compassion and steeped in self defence but in a humbled way, is giving way to a generation that is tripping on its rebel rogue nation child status. Well, I think that might be the start of the end of Israel. They need to do a reality check as well to make note of the fact that they were more sinned against the sinning and they should never let go of their superior moral majority over the world by becoming, and ever becoming transgressors of the sort where they will be culpable of such crimes as were once committed against them.
The incidences quotes by the Media where the Israeli soldiers showed the lowest levels of consideration (I suppose that’s oxymoron-ish in nature, compassion-in-war), with stories spilling the pages where they kept parents of a dead, half eaten four year old Palestinian girl away from her body by shelling for four days – gross.
People forget their own histories easy.
In this – the people of Palestine have my compassion. The Israelis must begin to start remembering that they are not infallible. That they have the might, the system, the will and the means – but then I think one should never forget. I don’t think Israel is guilty of any crime except these sporadic incidences of organized cruelties upon civilian war refugees.
War’s only boundary is the next place of attack, someone said. The play of bullet spray in Middle East is common. They will initiate a peace process now and after a six month vicious wait, another round of a mini war would follow. Quite hopeless if you ask me. And for all the people who like to sit and pass judgement on the one’s who have to face this fire day in and night out, I would suggest they should first dispense with their voyeur like thrills, peace might follow shortly, or there is always the option of complete annihilation.
I do have a propensity for Israel, but if I’d pray, I do it for Israel and its enemies. Because Israel is nothing, but people, and so are its enemies. Who I do hope are razed to ground, completely destroyed are the liked of Hamas and the sort who killed, maimed, orphaned and terrorized in Mumbai last year.
Let them face the wrath of Israel. I’d cheer on.
May God bless you all and Israel. Although I believe it's obvious that he has.
Shalom :-)
