Take ethical stand on Israel, PM Modi

It is shocking that despite days of ceaseless violence and carpet bombing of Gaza by Israeli drones and rockets, the Narendra Modi-led NDA government has elected to maintain a studied silence on the crucial issue. The reason that the current regime has cited is not jeopardising bilateral relations with Israel in the political front, while guaranteeing heightened influx of capital, know-how and state-of-the-art arms export from the country in the wake of 49 per cent FDI ceiling in defence sector. Brief attempts by smaller political parties, such as the Aam Aadmi Party, Mehbooba Mufti-led Peoples Democratic Party, the CPI(M) and a few others, to drill in sense and guts to take a principled stand against the massacre of civilians in Gaza have yielded nothing. A discussion in Rajya Sabha has also added only more gas to the hot air of confusion and general spinelessness that has defined Indian response to the situation, with a Twitter handle, #IndiawithIsrael ostensibly trended by jingoistic Hindu fanatics, still doing the rounds of the social media circuit. The blindsided approach to the Israel-Gaza conflict and the ruthless killing of children, women and men in the Hamas-controlled home-turf of Palestinian Arabs is a window to the general ambience of ever-growing hypernationalism that finds a worthy model in the Zionist cause. In fact, most Indians are either oblivious to the fact that Israel’s actions tantamount to unilateral breach of the Geneva convention as well as are technically a war crime, a genocide, that must be tried in the International Criminal Court. 

Economic security and defence sector consolidation in the future must not become alibis to sanction or condone brutal murder of innocents in the present. Even the United Nations Security Council has been compelled to call for a ceasefire, which, after being ‘accepted’ by Israel, was also breached by it, in a matter of hours. As the death toll in Gaza touches 200, as women and children are maimed and murdered for being born Palestinians under this apartheid, as people fight for their rights to a homeland and a state to call their own, Israel and the United States are allowed to ride the waxing wave of execeptionalism, and carry on with their state-sponsored terrorism. Even though the thumping victory of Narendra Modi somewhere signified the end of the Nehruvian consensus, what we, as citizens of India, cannot concede is the premise of following a principled and ethical sovereignty based on cherished values and universal human rights. We urge Prime Minister Modi to send out a clear message and also set an example of how economic growth and aspiration needn’t trample on the lives, limbs and hopes of peoples, whether native or foreign.