Perhaps, Hamas, Israel, and the rest of the world did not in their wildest imagination perceive that the blitzkrieg launched by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, puncturing forever the myth of invincibility of Israeli military apparatus, would last so long and that the toll of human lives would exceed 60,000 people. Even the daring minds couldn’t have imagined that the killing fields of Gaza would make the holocaust look so small an act of atrocities.
As a student of history and politics, it fails me to fathom what actually the Hamas leadership expected when deciding to launch the attack — Israel would surrender and acquiesce? Retaliation was writ large on the anvil of expected response. It was/is no surprise that the response has been lethal and murderous. Was this response unexpected? No. Only the politically naive would have thought that Israel would sit back, twiddling its thumbs, debating whether to strike back or not. The response was inevitable. “War makes rattling good history; but peace is poor reading.” (Thomas Hardy).
Will history classify this as a misadventure of Hamas, or will it be kind and generous to allow recording that the required support from the expected quarters to this war let them down badly? Irrespective of how the pages of history will be filled, it is a reality that Israel was provided with an opportunity to indulge into wholesale genocide of innocent men, women, and children.
The ruthlessness exhibited in killing young infants, children, men, and women is despicable and abhorrent. The entire humanity stands in shame. The TV footages/clippings show how inhumanly the Israeli soldiers maim and murder the unarmed — pregnant women had their wombs knifed mercilessly by the laughing and celebrating, Israeli soldiers. They celebrated and danced upon the dead, semi-dead and upon the statement of helplessness of the Gazans.
Humanity’s frame of character stands denuded. Human conscience has taken refuge in the hearts of the voiceless, the dispossessed and the oppressed. The judgment of the human conscience has lost all its strength and has now become the weakest. An abject surrender of human values, which in Gaza today appears to have been encumbered to the dictates of the violent and the stone-hearted global leadership. It is a human tale of woes, where conscience largely remains in the domain of the infantile.
Trust cannot exist in a society that has consigned its conscience to the dungeons of forgotten memories. Conscience generally prevails in the absence of law.
The cowardice of global leadership is stark in its inability to prevent the massacre happening in Gaza. The dice has been cast in favour of burying human conscience. The bite of conscience is now expunged of its strength.
Nothing hurts, nothing moves us, from within. The wall of China that perimeters our thoughts today doesn’t permit the infusion of feelings of empathy, kindness, and Compassion.
Cruelty is the worst of all sins. Cruelty is the tyrant residing in the hearts of the soulless leadership that is responsible for the events in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu and his government as savages are more cruel than any savage. Men when inhuman are a stigma on humanity. The innate cruelty inspires and justifies Cruelty towards others. The evil impulses are triggered by the unkind, cruel mind. Rabindranath Tagore said it aptly, “Man is worse than an animal when he is an animal” and the silent global leadership by their inaction and impotency to stop senseless killings proves his assertion.
Peace is a process. Healing of genocidal wounds takes centuries. War is an act of the beast, peace of men? Where are those men? So what do we have on the plane of global leadership? Complicity in crime against humanity. Alas!
The world at large has done nothing to stop the war in Gaza— statements, tantamounting to mere lip service, do not bring wars to an end. Action does. And that has been conspicuously missing. Street marches from San Francisco to Auckland have achieved nothing — creating awareness of atrocities committed by Israel, alone, is insufficient. The need was/is to stop the shedding of innocent blood of young men, women, and children. No country barring Iran has helped. For extending this support they paid a price too, but stood tall, upon their spine. Peace cannot make any inroads in a genocidal atmosphere; but in the tranquility of the noble human conscience.
“Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.” (Joseph Addison).
Infants and children are dying of hunger and malnutrition. A child in a clipping released by Israel shows him taking “food” from a spirit so inhuman. And the next moment, the soldier handing out the food packets shoots him in the eye at point-blank range. The earth did not rent asunder nor did the oceans boil beyond or the skies fell. The world watches in silence. All norms and traditions of treating people as enshrined in the thick volumes of the Geneva Convention have been torn to shreds by the inhuman and ruthless Israeli army. Benjamin Netanyahu is devil reincarnate.
Israel has created a crisis of existence by refusing to allow the reaching of food and relief goods for the suffering children. The UN has yet again failed to meet demands of its own charter — and this isn’t a first.
The belligerence of Israel is hinged upon the vocal, moral and not so moral support the ruthless government of the evil minded Netanyahu receives from several important world Capitals. If the West wishes to stop the war, it can. Will they? Unsure.
For how long will this madness continue? Will there be peace? If and when peace is restored, who will count the innocent dead and missing, who laid their lives, and who had no role to invite this wrath upon themselves.
The sole Superpower continues to veto all UN resolutions calling for cessation of war and working towards peace. President Donald Trump is not a warmonger; with a Nobel Peace Prize nomination under his belt, he would hopefully go after unrelentingly upon Israel for them to stop the genocidal killings in Gaza. The down-trodden and the oppressed are looking towards him for stopping this carnage and flow of streams of human blood. Will President Donald Trump rise to the occasion? Hopefully, yes.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
The writer is a Senior Banker & Freelance Contributor