Long live resistance 

All Western slogans have gone out of the window

Hundreds of Palestinians have been butchered, and thousands have been driven out of their homes. Yet there isn’t a collective condemnation of the Palestinians’ racial genocide, while partial condemnation though has got a corner in the news from a few states in the global south.

However, nothing has stopped Israel from their Hamas-based revenge costing the lives of innocent Palestinian civilians. Political scientists will call it a state behaviour based on national interests.  Religious men see it through the lenses of history and are likely to be more extreme in their actions, had they been freed to do so. Just like a prominent historian Yuval Noah Harari, the liberal section of our country does see only one side of the picture and is flooded with accusations and condemnations over Hamas. The Western hemisphere’s acolytes of liberty and freedom have tacitly denied any support to Palestinians’ right to freedom and are at the forefront of the occupier Israel’s defence. People across the world however do not see things from the state perspective and do not necessarily accede to the statements issued from the power corridors.

Despite the UK ban on the Palestinian flags and chants, people unwavering rallied to support Palestinians and their right to self-determination. The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arabs has been condemned by Jews in the USA as well. Ironically the land of revolutions, France, too has banned pro-Palestinian rallies. The world’s biggest secular democracy, India, is by no means lagging in anti-Palestinian propaganda. According to BOOM, India’s most effective fact-checking service, many Indian verified X users are involved in anti-Palestinian propaganda and most of their tweets are supportive of Israel. The majority of the anti-Muslim and Islamophobic material on social media, according to the Islamic Council of Victoria report, is shared from India. Plenty of evidence is supportive of the right-wing Indian section negatively impacting the Palestinian plight.

The Islamophobic problem in India has increased manifold since the BJP under Narendra Modi has come into government. The IT cell, as Swati Chaturvedi puts in his book, I Am A Troll, has an army of volunteers who spread islamophobia and hatred. However, in the current escalation of the Palestine-Israel conflict social media has been drowned with disinformation spreading hatred and negativity about Palestinians. Several fake videos having got more than a million views each, are fabricated by users from India. Pratik Sinha, a co-founder and editor of the Indian non-profit fact-checking website AltNews, tweeted: “With India now exporting its disinformation actors in the Indian mainstream media and on social media in support of Israel, hopefully, the world will now realise how the Indian right-wing has made India the disinformation capital of the world”.

Today the developed states are backing the atrocities of Israelis in Gaza. There are dozens of UN resolutions on the illegal settlements and occupation of the Palestinian territory but all to no avail. Currently, all the de-escalation efforts of Russia have been stopped in the UN General Assembly. Despite the negativity and propaganda spread against Gaza, people around the world are out in the streets in support of the Palestinians. The resistance has never been halted by fake propaganda, atrocities, and repressions.

Gaza, an open-air prison, as it has been called, is now turned into an abyss with a complete siege of Israeli forces. A complete cutting off of food, electricity, fuel, and water could only be imagined in the dark-ages warfare. The UN calls it a collective punishment. The food trucks sent from Egypt are bombarded on the way by Israeli forces. The UN once again has failed to maintain peace during an escalation and fix a problem that’s long been on its agenda. This makes a bleak horizon for any conflict in the future. With interests involved in the conflicting parties, the major powers will always put a veto over any peace-building process or de-escalation.

The postmodernist world doesn’t know the truth, it only knows what has been repeatedly pronounced to it. Nonetheless, nothing ever has exposed Western hypocrisy more than the ongoing Gaza war where thousands of casualties and deaths of civilians are ignored, and Israel has vowed to exterminate Hamas from the world, a naïve pretence aimed at cleansing the Palestinians. The Western world’s long-held slogans such as égalité, liberté, fraternité, and life, liberty, and property have perhaps meanings only for the West as they are never meant for the global south.

The right to self-determination of the Kashmiris and Palestinians is brushed under the carpet when it comes to international law. The UN General Assembly resolution grants an occupied people the right to resist by all available means, of course, armed struggle as well. But that’s what is reserved only for the people who have been backed by the Western powers.

Today the developed states are backing the atrocities of Israelis in Gaza. There are dozens of UN resolutions on the illegal settlements and occupation of the Palestinian territory but all to no avail. Currently, all the de-escalation efforts of Russia have been stopped in the UN General Assembly. Despite the negativity and propaganda spread against Gaza, people around the world are out in the streets in support of the Palestinians. The resistance has never been halted by fake propaganda, atrocities, and repressions.

Usman Torwali
Usman Torwali
The writer is a freelance columnist

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