Yes, I know. I should be writing about Manipur, not Gaza. But by way of explanation, I have two things to say. Firstly, I have written about Manipur before and will continue to write about it, especially if things don’t get better in the troubled state.
And secondly, I am not really writing about Gaza this week. I’ve never been to Israel, nor I am an expert in foreign relations. And if you want to know what’s happening in that region, then all you have to do is click on one of the foreign news sites covering the conflict with such distinction. That’s much more useful than any perspective any of us can provide from here in Delhi, and especially in Noida.
My concern this week is not with events in Israel and the West Bank but with how we, in India, are responding to them.
Let’s first of all dismiss the responses from mindless Islamophobes who always take the side of anybody who is in conflict with any Muslim entities. These people are not someone we should take seriously. Their views are based on prejudice, not reason and even then, there is very little consistency to them. What can you say about people who claim to support Israel but also admire Hitler and the Nazis? Or of people who declare proudly that they are opposed to murder and violence for political ends but also believe that Nathuram Godse was a great patriot who should be honoured?
Fortunately, despite the clamour on social media, these people are a minority. The vast majority of Indians feel a more complex range of emotions.
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India’s support of Palestine
A little historical perspective may help. Traditionally, India has been on the side of the Palestinians and didn’t even accord full diplomatic recognition to Israel until the 1990s. It was a policy that arose out of our belief in Afro-Asian unity, our friendship with Egypt, our belief that Israel was a colonial creation, and our desire to see the Palestinians get justice.
When we first adopted this policy, in the years immediately after Independence, it made sense. But over the years, it began to seem a little out of date. By the late 1970s, even the Arabs were rethinking their attitude to Israel. In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem and began the process of normalising relations with Israel.
Nor was it ever clear that our Israel policy — high-minded though it might have been — actually advanced Indian interests. Whenever there was a war with Pakistan, most Arab countries either took Pakistan’s side or remained neutral. In 1973, when the Arabs finally used oil as a weapon by instituting an embargo, India received no special treatment and suffered a huge economic setback, until we protested.
By the end of the 1980s, it was clear that even the Arab world was reconciled to Israel’s continued existence and in 1991, the Congress government established full diplomatic relations with Israel. Though we continued to support the Palestinian cause, we were no longer strongly anti-Israel.
There was one other contributing factor. In the 1960s, Palestinians and their supporters began hijacking passenger airliners. Eventually, a full-fledged terrorist movement emerged from the Middle East. Indians watched all this with mounting horror, especially when Pakistanis began joining these groups and adopting their methods.
In 1971, an Indian Airlines plane was hijacked and taken to Lahore where it was later torched. In 1976, another plane was hijacked to Lahore. In 1981, yet another plane was hijacked and taken to Pakistan.
All this was before the Punjab militancy of the early 1980s and the beginnings of the Kashmir insurgency in 1989. As those movements became stronger, Indians developed an abhorrence for terrorism, especially because we were often the victims of the terror. The Palestinians, in whose name many global terrorists operated, began to be seen less and less as the victims of a great historical injustice.
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India’s hatred of terrorism
By the beginning of this century, despite some attempts to whip up support for the Palestinian cause on a religious basis, most Indians had moved on. The characterisation of Israel as a colonial creation had faded. More and more Indians found jobs in Arab countries and discovered that their employers, barring some exceptions, were not terribly pro-Palestine or anti-Israel any longer.
None of this was fair to the Palestinians, the vast majority of whom were not terrorists but ordinary people who felt that their country had been stolen from them. Despite endless global summits and talk of a two-state solution, they were short-changed and betrayed at nearly every turn.
Today, life in Gaza is hard: over two million Palestinians are crammed into an area of 365 sq km, the third most densely populated space in the world. Officially, the area is run by the Palestinian Authority but in reality, it is governed by Hamas, a terrorist organisation, which is in constant conflict with the Israeli government that treats Gaza as enemy territory.
Under the current Israeli hardline government, international law has been violated, say the Palestinians. And yet, the world has just watched as agreements that were supposed to provide justice to them have been ignored.
This should make us, in India, sympathetic to the Palestinians with whom we have historical links and who have a genuine grievance. But the Palestinians do not always get the sympathy they deserve, I suspect, because Indians have a visceral hatred for and a deep-rooted fear of terrorism. And—let’s be honest—even liberals fear that global jihadi tendencies could flow from the Middle East and take root here.
Sadly for the Palestinian cause, the response of fundamentalist Muslims around the globe can sometimes be terrifying. Who can watch videos of Muslims protesting in Sydney and chanting “Gas the Jews” and not be appalled?
Then there is the nature of the Hamas attack. From all accounts, the terrorists hunted down and shot innocent civilians. They kidnapped women and children. Hundreds of ordinary, defenceless Israelis were murdered in cold blood.
In these circumstances, what are Indians going to say? “These people are conscienceless terrorists and murderers”? Or “But think about how badly the Palestinians are being treated in Gaza”?
The answer is obvious.
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Terrorism must be condemned
Despite the criticism it has evoked from a vocal minority, the Indian government’s response to the terror attack—we stand with Israel—is appropriate. To have said anything else would have been wildly inappropriate. Think of 9/11. Did you expect our Prime Minister to say: “We condemn the attack but, you know, America has also done very bad things.”
Obviously not. Not only is a condemnation of any terror attack morally necessary, but it also probably reflects the views of most Indians.
I don’t dispute that the Palestinians have been wronged. I think it is impossible for any fair-minded person to support what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said and done over the past few months. And the vengeance being rained down on innocent civilians in Gaza by the Israeli authorities is disgraceful and morally repugnant.
But that’s not the immediate issue. Terrorism is. And as long as the likes of Hamas continue to kill in the name of Palestinians, they will lose global sympathy for the Palestine cause. As long as radical Islamists chant slogans like “Death to Jews” (note: not ‘to Israelis’ but all Jews), the world will regard them as beyond the pale.
To condemn Osama bin Laden in the aftermath of 9/11 was not to approve of America’s often dubious role in Middle Eastern politics. To condemn ISIS is not to endorse the invasion of Iraq. It has nothing to do with Islam or with the victims of oppression. It is to stand against all terror directed at innocent civilians.
Yes. There is a lot of bigotry in India and a worrying amount of Islamophobia. But our responses to Hamas’s terrorism go beyond that. We have reacted as all human beings must when armed men murder and kidnap innocent women and children.
Muslim, Jews, Palestinians, Israelis: it really does not make a difference. Terrorism is terrorism wherever we may see it.
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)