The tragedy of history is geography. Power is the cartographer. Ancient ghosts haunt blood-soaked lands where war determines tenancy. In late May, India did not back the UN resolution calling for a permanent commission to probe human rights violations in Gaza, West Bank and Palestine. The ballad of Palestine is the lament of dispossessed, their subaltern torment milked by outsiders who memorialise suffering on the gravestones of the forgotten.
In India, liberals saw support for Israel as nationalist arrogance since they can be as intolerant as rightist rabble-rousers. It did not matter that for decades, India had stood with Arab nations which wanted to “throw Israel into the sea”. Israel is fighting for its life. It has been so since the Romans suppressed their revolt in 70 AD and exiled the Jews. The Palestinians argue that Israel was carved from their land and that Muslims are the rightful owners since Saladin took Jerusalem in the 6th century. Rubbish.
The Jews had lived there since 1200 BC when there was neither Islam nor Arabs, who now claim Israel is theirs. Historically, Palestine was never a distinct Arab country. The Jews originated in the Levant, then called the Land of Israel during the Late Bronze Age. The Palestinians, or the Philistines as they were called then, probably came from Greece in 1200 BC and head-butted the Jews. Palestinians were hardened warriors who formed a sort of Invaders Club Med after unsuccessfully storming Egypt. Israel’s King David quelled their expansionist ambitions in 10th century BC.
The liberals are clamouring for Israel to be tried for human rights crimes, but not the Hamas which fired over 4,000 rockets into the Jewish homeland. The rise of the radical Jew who calls for the annexation of Palestine is a victimhood reaction to historical hate. The first post-World War II terrorists belonged to the PLO which had a single aim—destroy Israel and enrich their leadership with shady money from the Soviets and petro-Arabs while their young men died or languished in Israeli prisons.
The PLO assassinated Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics. They blew up aircraft. They murdered and kidnapped innocents. In 2002, a Hamas suicide bomber killed 30 Israelis after which the IDF moved into the West Bank and wiped out the terrorists. In 2003, PLO’s Yasser Arafat rejected a two-state solution that envisaged an Arab capital in East Jerusalem. The barbarians have already crossed Palestine’s gates—in Gaza, a Hamas court ruled in February that an unmarried woman cannot travel without the permission of a male guardian. Hamas sponsor Iran has a similar law. Palestine’s Islamisation and Arabification, and Teheran’s geo-ambitions are keeping the unrest alive.
Corruption destroyed the PLO. For a while, Hamas has been the merciless landlord of the squalor-ridden Palestinian refugee camps. The names of Gaza’s dead are mere footnotes in the exploitative litany of mythical nationalism. The rootlessness and powerlessness of Palestinian youth are fodder for terror recruiters. Palestine is the playground of Iran, radical Arabs, Islamist radicals, corrupt politicians, anti-Semites, arms dealers and human traffickers who keep revenge alive. It took the murder of six million Jews in Hitler’s concentration camps for the Israelites to get back their land. Terror has no patriotism. It is never too late for the Palestinians to recognise their true enemy. It is not Israel.
Ravi Shankar
ravi@newindianexpress.com