The killing fields of Gaza

Human conscience was brutally bruised when Caine killed his brother, Abel. The conscience is maimed since then. To resurrect humaneness, Abel went into serious “regret”. He committed himself to reform. Since this event, mankind has oscillated between extreme behaviour of loss of conscience to the other end of the spectrum, where as testimony stands, the glory of human goodness.

‘Killing fields’ is an idiomatic coinage that emerged from the ruthless killing of over 3 million people by the government of Cambodia ( Kampuchea) between 1976-1978, when the inhuman Marxist dictator Pol Pot proudly displayed a hill of human skulls heaped upon each other, reaching a height of over 8-10 feet. The systematic genocide of the innocent got bracketed as ‘killing fields’. Even in that era, that is pre-9/11, the hatred for Muslims was on the rise— 70-80% Cambodian Muslims were exterminated. The genocide by Israel is a locus of Cambodian violence. Gaza today is a scene of mass murder.

History is replete with chaos, anarchy, wars, battles and all forms of confrontation between people. Encapsulated on the pages of blood soaked history of human behaviour is the tyranny unleashed by one human upon the other. The adage ‘one man’s hero is another man’s tyrant’ is at play all through. In equal measure is the miracle of humanity at its best behaviour of kindness, empathy, love and affection.

Historians spin cobwebs of imagination to make bad actions look good. However no individual can justify the ordering of a tower to be built upon live men, who were stacked and cemented together with bricks. Queen Mary, who reinstalled Catholicism in Britain, following her marriage to Phillip II of Spain, put hundreds of Protestants on the pyre, from which she earned the infamous title of “Bloody Mary”. She showed no sympathy; this characteristic was absent in her.

Again gleaning from the folders of history we learn about the atrocities committed by the likes of Attila the Hun, Ghengis Khan, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, etc. The new additions to this infamously famous list are Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu; between the two is a keen contest of who takes the first position.

Both are cruel, heartless, merciless and pitiless. They are instigators of blood-thirsty political philosophy. Their attitude is barbaric and callous. They are both guilty of maiming infants, slaughtering of wombs, mutilating bodies, and most inconceivable grotesque and gross indecent human behaviour. “Man’s inhumanity to man/makes countless mourn” (Robert Burns).

Israel with impunity kills hundreds of Gazans every single day. The practice is so common, that even run of the mill condemnation messages have gone dry. There is total apathy and resignation to the situation, willy-nilly, the Israeli intransigence is acceptable. The belligerence is stark.

The footages of mutilated bodies of infants being operated for implanting artificial limbs, of wombs being knifed, of children screaming in fear, of men and women lining up for seeking provisions and of Israeli soldiers indulging in rebuke, insult and thence point blank killing of the unarmed innocent Gazans doesn’t move to tears any of the global leadership. This lends credence to the fact that humanity is dead and gone. The human conscience is scarred beyond correction.

Regret, if it resides in the human heart gives a tumultuous reaction to every wrong done. The element of remorse and repentance acts as a catalyst to either undo the wrong or at least show by thought and action that sadness grips upon realisation of erroneous behaviour. Penitence must be seen and be in equal measure to the wrong done. This intrinsic and inherent mechanism works only where a sensitive heart resides in the human breast. Today’s Ummah is heartless.

If individuals who are devoid of humane feelings manipulate to get into leadership positions, they acquire the ways and means to perpetuate ruthless behaviour against fellow humans. Present day examples are Modi and Netanyahu.

Gandhi invoked human conscience when he said, “what difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? (Of late, in comparison to Modi, I am beginning to see Gandhi as a saint).

While, I am writing this piece, Netanyahu’s Israel has attacked the brotherly country, Iran. Not surprised. It was coming. War is a hieroglyphics of nothing but all misery. The gates of hell get opened with arrival of war. The likes of Netanyahu and Modi invoke war for the youth to die. “To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love” (George Santayana). Cruelty is a consequence of a vile mind and often it proceeds from a cowardly heart. The cruel impulses of the leadership in the Middle East, Europe and across the Atlantic seek justification through more cruelty.

“Man when he is an animal is worse than animal” (Rabindranath Tagore). Pain of others gives pleasure of a primitive and savage nature. Sympathy, empathy and pity are natural to man; yet in violation of these intrinsic characteristics, man indulges in cruelty to the extent of being rightly called a savage, and Netanyahu is that savage.

Natural and historical corrections of injustices perpetrated upon one another also are chronicled in history, except that it seems to come, a trifle late. Those who once were mightily acclaimed lie delivered into the abyss of oblivion. They are dust and bones.

In the manner of how events have panned out post-Oct 7th 2023, one is compelled to wonder what exactly was the plan that Hamas wanted to execute and achieve. The quizzical paradox is: did Hamas not anticipate a virulent reaction from Israel when they launched the attack? Was Hamas leadership so naive? There are many intriguing questions that arise and remain unanswered.

There could be no disambiguation of Israelis’ intent and motives. It has heavily committed itself to evil design and objectives. In this pursuit they are aided by all—the United Nations and the all so- called pivots activated.

The UN alongside the West is equally complicit in the crimes committed by Israel upon the unarmed and hapless, Gazans. Resolutions and statements against Israel are immediately backed up by commitments of sending fresh supplies of armaments to the notorious Netanyahu.

Diplomacy, once a hallmark of decent nations, stands replaced with “Expedient Duplicity “. The governments of those involved countries do not have the backing of their own people; otherwise how does one explain the voluntary marches taking place across the world against Israeli genocide? The Jewish Rabbis are part of protests and processions.

All the hard work and efforts of South Africa to bind Netanyahu to global standards of peaceful coexistence have been totally wasted. There seems to be no interest to pursue peace in the Middle East. They have decided to use the Middle East as a theatre of war but also to keep it on the back burner, so that, whenever required, they can call upon the Zionists to unleash upon the unarmed people of Gaza.

If the United Nations, West and the big powers of Europe, along with OIC, were to be serious in halting the human misery and inhuman conditions, they will have to be resolute in rewriting the history.

The United Nations and the West must impose sanctions on Israel in the event of non-cessation of hostilities. Let there be clarity in the minds of the people that it is not Israel alone that needs to be tamed; it is also all the governments of the European Union and across the Atlantic. They are today as guilty as Israel. They continue to support and re-arm Israel. If UN has since its formation consistently failed in maintaining peace, let there be a global debate on its charter and its relevance today. May be it is time to house it in a funeral parlour or designate its headquarters as such.

The verbosity of support must end with timely action. The inherent deception in these statements at best is servilely flattering the ruthlessness of Israel in its intolerable genocidal actions.

There is reluctance and tacit refusal by the Ummah to be aroused from its slumber. By being an ostrich the Ummah is also complicit in its own ethnic cleansing. The essential principles of provoking good and forbidding evil are at stake. The values that demarcate human behaviour in respect of life and death, glory and infamy, stand totally smudged. This has led to utter helplessness and serious submission to brute power of in-humaneness.

The silence of Muslim governments is piercingly loud. The decibel of infants’ cries has reached dizzying heights, yet it seems to fall on deaf ears. The Ummah has lost its faculty of hearing. Insensitivity is at its zenith.

Maira Salman, who is possibly not even hit her teenage years yet, wrote a moving poem, which her father, Muhammed Salman Butt, posted on a professional social media site. It is titled, “Genocide, not War”. She writes, “Lone arms and heads lay on the ground/ The rest of the bodies nowhere to be found/ The children cry ,as this is all they see/ Oh! My, Oh! My! Will this happen to me? /......In a corner a mother whispers low/ The fear of her child starting to grow/ My child is hurt with a permanent scar/ This is genocide, not War”.

A genocide. Not a war.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025