As India drags its feet over Gaza...

Last week, when I re-tweeted a story from the British daily The Independent detailing how doctors had successfully delivered a baby girl through C-section after the mother had died in an air raid in Gaza, the expected hate replies were tweeted in quick succession about how the Palestinians got what they deserved, how Muslims are “savages”, terrorists and the like. But one response was hateful enough to block the guy. He wondered at the use of saving a girl child who would grow up only to give birth to several terrorists. 

Perhaps he’d have celebrated the news that the newborn survived for barely a few days.

As the merciless aerial attacks and hammering by the ground troops on a defenceless civilian people, who might willingly or have been forced to give shelter to Hamas militants continued, and we watched one of the best militarily equipped powers punch huge holes into makeshift shelters and humble homes, the bombing last week of a UN school shook the collective conscience of the world. 

While the superpowers continued their chanting of how Israel has the right to defend itself and how this latest assault on Gaza had been triggered by Hamas militants launching rocket attacks on Israeli territory through a network of tunnels, came the heartbreaking attack on a UN-manned school in Gaza. It was impossible to remain dry-eyed watching the TV footage of the UN official in charge of the school break down, his body racked by sobs as he put his head on the table and wept… over his helplessness in preventing the massacre of 16 civilians, including children. More than anybody else, he had realised how the ‘UN’ label guaranteed nothing.

Israel’s first reaction was to demand the dismissal of the UN official, terming him “biased”; later, as world condemnation came in thick and fast, it promised to apologise if indeed Israeli firepower had caused this attack on innocent women and children. Even the US, Israel’s greatest friend, called the attack “totally unacceptable and indefensible”.

Not that this condemnation has changed anything. On Sunday, even as there were signs of Israel scaling down its ground offensive in Gaza — about 1,700 Palestinians have already been killed — an air strike outside another UN school killed 10, including 8-year-old Saqer, who had stepped outside to buy ice cream from a street vendor, a luxury in Gaza these days. For Israel, of course, it was nothing more than a “successful strike on a target” — three militants riding past the school on a motorcycle.

Once again UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as well as the US spokesperson, termed this attack a “moral outrage”, condemned the “disgraceful shelling” and so on. Once again Israel was asked to avoid civilian casualties. The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by warning the Hamas on Sunday night that it would pay “an intolerable price” for its assaults on Israel. As though terrorists speak the language of reason… Hamas launched as many as 55 rockets on Sunday.

As the ceasefires, which have now become a joke, barely last a few hours, the devastated Palestinians are getting hardly any time to evacuate before their homes are attacked. A calm voice on the line names the resident and asks her/him to “evacuate” within 60-120 seconds flat.

TV footage shows hapless Palestinians wondering what to pack up before they flee: Their wedding albums? Their children’s books or certificates? Jewellery or cash? Some food and water? But once they’ve got these, where are they supposed to flee? There isn’t a “safe” place left in Gaza. The Rafah border with Egypt has been firmly sealed and UN facilities are straining to accommodate and provide food and drinking water to nearly 200,000 Palestinians who know that they may not be safe here either.

 As always the Europeans have been more conscionable than the Americans in responding to and condemning the crisis in Gaza where both the Hamas and the Israelis have been violating the ceasefires within hours of their declaration.

Hate-filled messages are circulating on social media of Hitler declaring that while immediate history would condemn him for the genocide of the Jews, he had left “behind 10 per cent for the world to understand why I killed them”.

  In the anti-Israel protests that have erupted across Europe, a synagogue was attacked in Paris with slogans of “Jews to the gas chambers”. In Berlin as an imam called for the murder of “Zionist Jews”, the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, was quoted by BBC News as saying, “They pursue the Jews in the streets of Berlin as if it were in 1938.”

But while most western nations have condemned the killing of civilians, India has been dragging its feet and failed to strongly condemn the massacre of innocent women and children in Gaza. A far cry from the Vajpayee government passing a parliamentary resolution to condemn the US-led attacks on Iraq and which made India a darling in several Islamic countries. I saw its positive impact first in Iraq in 2003 and later in Afghanistan in 2005. And this happened at a time when the Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf did a complete u-turn and “allied” with the US to destroy the Saddam Hussein regime.

Over the years, India’s engagement with Israel has grown manifold, particularly in military equipment and agriculture, and even though last week India backed the United Nations Human Rights Council call for investigating the present onslaught in Gaza, this was more a symbolic vote. What matters is that soon after Israel’s assault began, the BJP successfully blocked a parliamentary resolution condemning Israeli action.

With our official line being that India has friendly relations with both Israel and Palestine, on Monday a desperate Palestinian envoy to India, Adli Hasan Sadeq, urged the Modi Government to play a “bigger role” to end the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. Addressing a press conference in Hyderabad, he recalled India’s “historic ties” with Palestine and appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take up this issue when he meets the US president in September.

Perhaps emboldened by the Modi Government’s indifference, an army of “Hindu nationalists” on Twitter continue to pounce on anybody who has a sigh or a tear for the hapless and helpless Palestinians. The greatest tragedy is that violence is endorsed or condemned based on its religious colour.