ROVER’S DIARY: Freedom Flotilla and Gaza —Babar Ayaz

The struggle for Palestinian rights is a pure and simple secular struggle and not a conflict between Islam and Judaism. There are a number of Jews in the world who condemn the Israeli atrocities like we do

A sigh of relief as Talat Hussain and his colleagues arrived home safely. But this is a short sigh of relief. People around the world have painfully held their breath for the last 62 years over the plight of the Palestinians. Those who were killed in a brutal attack on the boat were also our people; hence anger of all the peace loving people cannot be assuaged by the release of the Freedom Flotilla passengers.

Freedom Flotilla was jointly organised by right and left wing activists. They have achieved their objective of drawing international attention to the inhuman blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt. Commenting on the incident, UN Assistant Secretary General Oscar Fernandez said: “If repeated calls on Israel to end the counter-productive and unacceptable blockade had been heeded,” this situation would not have arisen. But the UN Security Council resolution was watered down by the US government. The Turkey-led resolution had proposed an investigation on the lines of the Goldstone Commission’s inquiry of the Israeli attack on Gaza. The Israeli government did not like the report of this commission because it put the blame for atrocities on it.

Let us look at all these aspects dispassionately. Gaza is suffering from the continuous economic blockade by Israel since 2007. Even UN trucks with humanitarian aid were not allowed by Israel into Gaza. Only 25 percent of supplies to Gaza before the blockade are now allowed in by Israel. The timing of Freedom Flotilla has also highlighted that the US-sponsored talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority cannot be successful without involving the people of Gaza and Hamas.

It was a major mistake of Israel and its masters not to accept the Hamas government. Any student of political history knows that in most cases an extremist leadership acts responsibly once they are in power. The coalition government they formed with Fatah collapsed. Avi Shlaim, a Jewish professor at Oxford University, said in a scathing article against Israel in The Guardian: “Aggressive American neo-conservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007.”

The Gaza issue is directly linked with the universally accepted demand that Israel should withdraw from the areas occupied by it in 1967. An Israeli census had put the Gaza population at 380,000, at least half of which were refugees from Israel. Today, the population stands at about 1.5 million. According to the UN, over one million are refugees and their descendants.

In June 2007, Hamas violently seized control of Gaza after routing forces loyal to the rival Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas, which was a major mistake and only helped the Israeli hawks. Hamas has divided the Palestinian movement and is supported by some Islamic countries. On December 19, 2008 Hamas formally declared that the truce was over and started firing rockets on Israel. This move was a miscalculation and without taking into account that it would bring death and misery to the Gaza inhabitants.

The struggle for Palestinian rights is a pure and simple secular struggle and not a conflict between Islam and Judaism. There are a number of Jews in the world who condemn the Israeli atrocities like we do. There are more processions against Israel’s aggressive policies in the west where people from all religions participate. Recently, a leading critic of Israel, Noam Chomsky, who is of Jewish descent, was denied entry into Gaza by the Israeli government. And the leadership on both sides of the divide is truly secular. This is important because the extremist Jews believe that God has given them this land and till they do not have total control over it the Messiah would not come. This is also supported by some US evangelists. Rabin tried to overrule this element and he was shot.

Realistically speaking, a workable solution has to be based on the acceptance of the fact that the two nations would have to learn coexistence. A Palestinian refugee in Nobel Laureate Le Clezio’s novel Wandering Star wonders, “Does the sun not shine for us all?” Well, so far it has not. But this would only be possible if the US and European countries pressurise Israel’s leadership to abide by the previous truce terms and withdraw to the pre-1967 position.

The problem with states created in the name of religion is that they are held hostage by the rabbis and mullahs. The genesis of these states gives these extremists enough political space. Such religious extremists take their inspiration and guidance from their respective theology and not from today’s value system that provides for equal rights to all without any discrimination.

To sum up, let me quote from Karen Armstrong’s book, The History of Jerusalem. She says: “On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein gunned down at least 48 Palestinian worshipers in the Cave of the Patriarch in Hebron; today, he is revered as a martyr of Israel by the far right. Another martyr is the young woman member of the Islamic Group of Hamas, who died in the suicide bombing of a Jerusalem bus on August 25, 1995, killing five people and injuring 107. Such actions are a travesty of religion…As soon as the prime duty to respect the divinity enshrined in other human beings is forgotten, ‘God’ can be made to give the divine seal of absolute approval to our prejudices and desires. Religion then becomes a breeding ground for violence and cruelty.” (Closer to home, we have also seen this on Black Friday).

The writer can be reached at ayazbabar@gmail.com