Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

The Victory of Humanity

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The Victory of Humanity

The first day of Eid in Gaza did not look like that of an Eid. This day is associated with festivities, new clothes, sweet dishes, visiting and meeting relatives and friends and spending every moment of the three Eid days with joys and laughter. The Eid days especially bring numerous joys for children when they can have full three days to wear new beautiful dresses, eat their favorite dishes and meet and play with their friends. However, I am really impressed by the nature of children that children in Gaza forgot all the dead bodies, the spilling blood, the rubble of houses and the horrible voices of bombs and shelling from the Israeli warplanes and tanks and a few of them offered a few smiles. Their smiles were watched with tearful eyes around the world. The elders spent their Eid day with absolute silence when they were all remembering and mourning their loved ones with whom they had dreamed of enjoying the Eid when they were starting the blessed month of Ramadan together. Women, who had lost their sweet children and buried them under the heavy earth, could not stop themselves from crying and went to the graves of their children to meet them, if they were not able to meet their physical bodies. These scenes and other descriptions shown on different television channels really warmed the hearts of viewers and many of them had to try hard to stop themselves from crying.

However, the barbarous shelling of Israeli military resumed on the second day when their shelling left more than 60 Palestinians dead, in which once again, majority included of children who had just started smiling after shouting with fear and crying with pain for many days. The ongoing situation in Gaza really put a big question mark on modern-day democracies, our commitment for humanity and human values and our love for peace and order. UN’s Secretary General kept shouting that Israel should stop its attacks but he didn’t have any power or authority to do anything more than this. Although the past record of UN has also not been much glowing and it has been the centre of continuous criticism for its inactiveness in past as well but this time, its inactiveness and lack of any commanding authority proved that it has turned into an organization that is absolutely nominal and a tool to be used by strong nations to cripple the poor and weak while it has no power to exercise against those who have enough power to ignore all its orders and resolutions.

The dead bodies of hundreds of innocent children and many more hundreds of injured ones in Gaza’s hospitals have not moved the conscience of world leaders and they are still silent and inactive due to their own benefits and objectives. Some fear that they might end up with an enmity with a violent and belligerent Jewish state that enjoys all the support of top powers of the world. Some fear that they would become the targets of the criticism of news channels that show the picture of the events as it pleases their masters. While Muslim world is divided due to the differences of Sunni and Shia and they have left the helpless masses of Palestine on the mercy of a strong and merciless army in the world.

But one thing has eventually happened that can be counted as the outcome of this conflict. Even if nations, their leaders and common people don’t dare to take sides and talk against the murderers of these children, they have definitely stopped supporting Israel. I am the continuous follower of different comment wars on international news websites being fought between the supporters of Israel and Palestine. Before this, this mental war could have been called to be between Israel and Palestine or to some extent between Israel and Hamas but now Israel has been left alone facing not the Palestinians, Muslims or Hamas but the humanity on the other side. Majority of the readers who give their comments still don’t support Palestinians, Hamas or Muslims but there has been considerable increase in the number of people who talk against Israel just because of its crimes against humanity. According to a reader, ‘without considering the end winner or loser of this war, it is for sure that Israel has lost this war on the grounds of humanity’. Similarly, a comment was given as,’ by continuing the mass massacre of neutral and innocent civilians and especially children under the age of 10, Israeli leaders have proved that they have no morals or whatsoever and if Israelis also support the acts of their military, they can also be labeled as a nation without any morality. The war has made them appear like a nation that is interested in winning the battle ignoring all the norms of humanity and morality.’

In the same way, an international columnist (whose name I would not like to mention here), who used to continually write in support of Israel, came up with a piece of writing in which he did not take any side and condemned Israel for its acts against humanity. At the same time, the statement issued by the Security Council of the United Nations which mentioned that the acts of Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza can be taken to the International Criminal Court, was a great blow to all those who continually supported Israel.

Just like many other people, I was also personally against taking any sides in the conflict between Israel and Hamas because if Israel has the record of continuing its occupation of Arab lands and badly crushing any kind of resistance in this regard, Hamas has also been termed a terrorist group by the international community and without considering our affiliations with the cause of Jihad of Hamas, we may never be able to talk in support of an organization being declared as a terrorist group by the world powers. But the present situation has put these issues on a side. Ignoring the past torture and brutality of Israel against the Arabs of the region and also the activities of Hamas against Israel, when we analyze the situation keeping in view the dead bodies of innocent Palestinian children, we lose all the logic and reasoning for supporting Israel or its military operation. Even the most barbarous nations of old ages at least showed some kind of sensitivity in handling the neutral citizens.

While looking at the dead bodies of Palestinian children, the continuous rocket-shelling of Hamas doesn't make any sense either. The struggle of Hamas may be justified on the grounds that their territory has been occupied, their land seized and their hands tied but in the circumstances when their resilience is only resulting in the death of Palestinian children, they are left with no logic or reason to continue this struggle. Their leaders need to be wiser to find an alternate way for their struggle to free their motherland of a strong occupier so that the loss of lives of citizens should be minimized.

We are not sure when Israeli leadership would decide to stop their attacks and when the killings of innocent Palestinians would end because no power in the world seems to be strong enough to make this happen but it is a fact that people of the world are slowly settling on a single opinion based on the sufferings of Palestinian children and innocent citizens.

Muhammad Rasool Shah works as Academic Coordinator at Barakat Int’l School, Kabul. He can reached at muhammadrasoolshah@gmail.com.

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