The (IN)Human Rights Of HAMAS

What if you walked into Maratha Mandir theatre and found that instead of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Mughal-e-Azam was playing instead? One part of you would be happy that the droning on and on and on of the former had ended. But the other part would be horrified that an even older film, which you had hoped had shot its bolt for good was back with a vengeance. Perhaps Messrs. Putin and Zelensky experienced similar emotions because they were summarily replaced from center stage by some of the oldest players in the Old Testament, the Jews, and the Palestinians, aka the Philistines, in their new avatar.

 Nothing kills the weekend vibe faster than waking up feeling thankful that the sun has finally appeared, only to be confronted with the news of a terrorist attack which has killed more than a thousand people, albeit half way across the world. You absorb the general gloom by osmosis, which is swiftly made worse by gruesome images and videos which sneak their way into your smart phone. “You may run but cannot hide” pounds in your head until you are left with a jumble of emotions, guaranteed to bring on a pounding headache, with an accompanying nasty, queasy feeling. What makes you want to lie down in a darkened room with a cool cloth over your eyes is the realization that this loop of depravity at its worse is not going away any time soon. There will be retaliation, condemnations, and the worst of it all, endless debates on who is right and who is wrong.

I think it is strange how people are now ‘woke up’ instead of ‘woken up.’ Perhaps they are losing much more than a sense of grammar. They are in grave danger of losing ALL sense, the commonest of course being common sense! It is no wonder that the panda is the universal sign of the endangered. Me thinks it has been chosen for its black and white color scheme among other things. Because today’s world refuses to acknowledge these two unfortunate colors. They have been combined into a single grey leaving all of us in the eye of the storm.

I had never truly understood why the commonest adjective to describe grey was ‘murky’ or ‘stormy,’ until now. But after hearing people shouting themselves hoarse in defense of the indefensible, even the eye of the storm blinds with its crystal- clear clarity. Media of all kinds has left little to the imagination in the attack on civilian Jews by HAMAS, a radical Muslim organization in Palestine. If people sitting thousands of miles away can feel the outrage and anger caused by the massacre of babies, the supposed ‘Knee-Jerk’ reaction of the Israeli government in calling for a no-holds barred decimation of HAMAS is certainly not abnormal. Besides, as Golda Meir, the former prime minister of Israel poetically put it, the Jews have nowhere else to go, and thus, any attempt to rub them up the wrong way is a one- way ticket to the hereafter before you can say ‘blast.’

But perhaps the world never could be divided neatly into right and wrong. Somehow, the onus of the massacre of human rights has landed on the Jewish doorstep, trailing the entrails of the ‘woke’ who claim Israel to be a terrorist state which has encroached upon the land of the ‘poor Palestinians’ and converted Gaza into the world’s largest open- air prison. Making a peaceful community revolt against decades of suppression and usurpation. Calls for the rest of the Muslim world to stand in solidarity against Israel have already resulted in knifings in France, clashes in Canada, eruptions in England, grumbling in Germany and smoldering fires in Sweden.

Never mind that the original settlers of the land of Cannan were the Jews, who were hounded out by Arab conquerors whose greed for land was not satiated even after swallowing the Persians, the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, and the Romans! Possession in this case was the ABSOLUTE law, not just nine tenths of it. Never mind that in recent history the Ottoman Turks were forced to cede this land and of course, never mind that Israel was provoked into fighting three wars, winning them all and adding to its territory.  Never mind that it restored the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, which REFUSED to take over Gaza! Never mind that the rest of Israel’s neighbors covertly armed and funded the Palestinians, encouraging them to fight a proxy war on their behalf, putting paid to any negotiations for lasting peace.

Of course, HAMAS has human rights if they were to join the human race in the first place! Kidnapping the old and infirm, burning babies alive, parading naked dead bodies and indiscriminate killings need to be defended as if they were defensible crimes. And HAMAS has been smart. They are the eternal victims who are being defended by their champions who woke up very early, whether in Harvard, Yale, Turkey, good old God’s own country Kerala, the Aligarh Muslim University or the working committee of the grand old party of India.

There are those bleeding hearts who were proponents of peace between the powers that were in Gaza and Israel, who were kidnapped by HAMAS to use as hostages and were later disposed off like so many flies. But then again, it is the world of the woke or so they think. What terrorist organizations excel at is propaganda which is as insidious as low dose arsenic, which succeeds in endorsing its fake victim card before you can say Aadhar. While the true master minds bring their nefarious plans to fruition from far away safe havens, they have the advantage of the double whammy. By sacrificing dispensable front lines as cannon fodder, they portray the actual victims as the oppressors, making them fight two battles: of weapons and of morals. It is a win- win situation for them. For the world generally loves to fete the have-nots. We have heard and seen it in the classic beginning of most childhood tales, “There once was a kind poor man and a wicked rich man.” The Jews of Israel are still trying to live down the reputation foisted on them by William Shakespeare’s Shylock.

Perhaps, it is time for us Indians to turn to our ancient wisdom, where wrong and right were more clearly demarcated and punishment meted out accordingly, to angels and demons alike. For until the world wakes from its slumber of wokeism, HAMAS will continue to exercise its (in)human rights.

(This article is Part 1 of the series called Tentacles of Terror: Connecting Bharat, Israel and Persia)