ISRAEL’S BRUTALITY IN GAZA, INDIA’S PIN-DROP SILENCE
Zoya Hasan
October 7, 2024 marked one year of Israel’s war on Gaza and its relentless bombing of the Gaza Strip killing nearly 42,000 people. The prime victims of the heartless war have been civilians, women and children in Gaza, West Bank and now Lebanon; 16,705 Palestinian children have been killed, the largest in any conflict in one year.
This has brought out millions in mass demonstrations in the major cities of Europe, the United States and beyond, politicising a generation of people in opposition to Israel, and also making it one of the greatest issues of our time.
However, these genocidal actions have hardly provoked any reaction in India. The war itself was a response to Hamas’s horrific attack on Israel that killed over 1,200 people and where more than 200 people were taken hostage. But the scale of what Israel has done in response is even more horrific. Public silence in India over the brutal retaliation in Gaza, flattening the territory to rubble, and displacing the entire population several times, is deeply disturbing. This should be unacceptable, especially in a country which led the largest anti-colonial struggle in the world, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with scores of countries in their struggle for independence, and once was a true friend of Palestine. One of the first non-Arab countries to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), India today seems closer to Israel and its biggest benefactor, the U.S.
India has witnessed very few sustained protests or public expressions of distress at what is happening in Palestine. There has been nothing like the scale of anger displayed in many other countries. Kerala has seen two big rallies, in Malappuram and Kozhikode. Other than these, and a few small protests in Kolkata and Chennai, there has hardly been any in the other States. India, it seems, is not outraged at how Israel is treating the Palestinians.
No doubt, the government has curbed protests and, in many cases, banned them. There is an active attempt to prevent people from protesting against what is happening in Gaza. Cases have been filed against people for supporting or organising protests against the genocide in Palestine. Charges range from organising rallies to displaying Palestinian flags and posting pro-Palestine content on social media. But a similar crackdown on other protests has not deterred people from taking to the streets on crucial issues.
The Hindutva right’s subordination of the Palestine cause and supporting the Zionists in Israel is the most important reason for the lack of concern. India has moved from backing the Palestinians to more or less unqualified support for Israel. This shift has influenced how most Indians view the crisis in Gaza. In the radically changed political atmosphere, the violence in Palestine does not seem to evoke the same emotion as in the past. This, however, does not mean that the sentiment does not exist. But the crisis in Gaza and India’s subdued response to it points to a significant fact. The register of Hindu nationalism deliberately sees Palestine as a Muslim issue, which means any support for it can be condemned as appeasement of a community. Individual Opposition leaders have, nonetheless, spoken up in support of Palestine but hardly any Opposition party has taken an unequivocal stand on it. Left parties have unequivocally condemned Israel, organised a few modest protests, and also supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
But not just parties, even civil society response in India has been muted. This subdued response is largely attributable to the waning influence of anti-imperialism in India and the declining interest in the developing world and the periphery. Political interest is focused on the U.S. with the Indian government making every effort to maintain close relations with the U.S. and vice versa. The U.S. is especially interested in courting India as a powerful counterweight to China and promoting it as a world power. This matters greatly to the upper and middle classes that care deeply about India’s position in the global hierarchy of states. Not surprisingly, other foreign news usually gets short shrift. Yet, for the past year, the country’s television channels have provided full coverage of events in Israel and Gaza, but mostly from Israel’s perspective, invoking the prism of fighting terrorism and sidelining the core political issues. This suits the elite that supports the shifting stance on Palestine while ignoring the twin frames of colonisation and decolonisation driving this conflict.
In its place, there is much greater acceptance of the official line that the central issue is fighting terrorism. As a corollary, India must then support this given that we are victims of terrorist attacks from across the border. But the problem in Palestine did not start on October 7; there is a much wider historical context, which liberal and right-wing apologists, whether western or Indian, are reluctant to accept. The fact that the problem has been caused by settler colonialism and occupation is duly ignored, indicating an unwillingness to recognise the violent dispossession of the Palestinians out of their homeland in 1948 through expulsion and ethnic cleansing and the continuation of that violence through the last few decades. Hamas’s attack has served as an excuse for Israel to do what it wants with strong American support which has sought to control West Asia through Israel — their indispensable outpost in the Muslim world.
Ties with Israel
In the recent past, however, India tempered any expression of support for Israel with expressions of concern for the Palestinians’ plight. Not any more. The shift reflects India’s growing technological, defence and commercial ties to Israel. Cooperation between the two countries has been deepening ever since Israel provided India with military help during the Kargil war against Pakistan in 1999. The imbrication of its defence and intelligence networks with those in India serves as an important conduit for deepening India’s political alignment with the U.S., accelerating it to the point of a strategic relationship.
The massive violence that Israel has inflicted on Palestine is shocking. If we are not outraged by Israel’s lack of humanity, its illegal occupation and annexation and ethnic cleansing in Palestine, even as we watch it being live-streamed on television and on social media, then we are also complicit in it. It is as if the moral architecture of liberalism and human rights has ceased to exist.
Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University