On 7th of October, 2023, hundreds ot arms-wielding men, landed in Israel, as the people were celebrating Yom Kippur, the Jewish festival of repentance, confessions and forgiveness. The men belonged to Hamas (Harkat-ul-Muqawama al-Islamiya or Islamic Resistance Group), a group designated by many countries as a terror organisation and has officially claimed involvement in several terror acts in the region.
The audacious attack left more than 1400 unsuspecting Israeli citizens dead, many wounded and over 200 were carried back to the Hamas-controlled areas of Gaza as hostages. Among the dead, were music lovers who were attending a concert for Peace, infants and kids, as per Israel Government, brutally beheaded and burned down.
The world watched in horror as reports of common civilians, those who march around crying Islamophobia across the world, like the famous Latifa AbouChakra of UK (She has been hailed in the past as the face of Muslims persecuted by Europeans in Europe where she lives as a refugee, in the name of Islamophobia), were caught cheering up these inhuman killings fancifully calling these unprecedented and brutal killing Resistance or Intifada hailing it as a moment of triumph.
Considering the population of Israel, the US called these killings on proportionate basis, a 9-11, many times over. The details are gory and too many, covered too widely across several media reports.
What my objective here is not to repeat the gruesome details and broad silence of Muslims as far as condemning the heinous terror act is concerned. As the days pass on, we find the memories of the dead fades, the sudden shock at the sheer audaciousness of the attack and the disbelief at the celebration of death in certain quarters, not among the uneducated and deprived, rather among the intellectuals and the privileged die down.
With this those who stayed mum in the face of very human and instinctive outrage at the 7th of October killings in Israel, tried to find voice with a Hospital attack but it turned out to be a failed rocket attack by Hamas terrorist which caused the misguided missile land in the parking lot of the ill-fated hospital. This clever game of creating fake narrative has been going on for decades and may be centuries but this time, with the prevalence on unorganised media in democratised digital world, the lies were getting caught as quickly as they were floated.
Noted journalist Tavleen Singh, a known Modi-critic, wrote attacking Hamas, and was hounded by islamists for that. The hospital attack, which the Hamas-sympathisers tried to use to counter the inhuman killings of 7th October, turned out to be their own doing and took the wind out of the neatly floated Palestine propaganda balloon.
However, after initial dilli-dally, Indian National Congress came out with vague statement and then again went into silence. One would have thought that they have run out of their interest in a foreign event, given that elections are around in India. But then as if on cue, Priyanka Vadra tweeted, lamenting on deaths in Gaza, totally ignoring the first event which triggered this revenge violence of a recognised state against a recognised terror organisation.
Then I read a piece in today’s (28th October, 2023, Indian Express) by Farah Naqvi, who is mentioned as independent writer and activist, much like Latifa Abouchakra of Britain. In her piece titled Amid Crisis, fear-mongering, she tries to rebut another piece by Yeshaya Rosenman, a Jewish journalist. Farah Naqvi was incidentally also a member of National Advisory Council of Sonia Gandhi during Congress-led UPA Government, which was an unconstitutional body operating over the elected parliament of India with Sonia Gandhi as quasi-head of the Government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Farah Naqvi, is the daughter of a noted journalist, Saeed Naqvi. In the account of her father’s brush with Covid where he survived, getting oxygen, hospital bed and medical attention with struggle (many did not get and lost their lives too), she finds a place to mention Democracy index and other political points, about how things are wrong with India which eventually saved her father, in spite of pandemic which left a global devastation of hitherto unseen proportions. But then that is how intellectuals in India play. Politics come easy to them and gratitude comes with difficulty.
Coming back to the current piece, she writes starting from taking the count of dead Palestinians. On the day when Palestinian death toll crossed 7000. This is based on the report given out by the Health Ministry of Hamas controlled Gaza. These casualty figures mentioned in the Indian Express article by Ms. Naqvi have been disputed by the US authorities. That notwithstanding, the dead in Ms Naqvi articles mention only Palestinians, totally ignoring 1400 dead Israelis. She mocks how in the words of the Jewish journalist, who has actually more stake in the conflict perpetrated by Hamas, War Crimes are moral actions, resistance is aggression and occupied and occupier are same-to-same. This is where it gets clever. She has in one sentence called the response of a sovereign state to the killing of her citizens by a terror-group- war crime, mass-manslaughter by the terror group as Resistance, and called the Jewish who were rehabilitated in their ancient lands by a UN mandate, after the sufferings and genocide in Hitler’s holocaust, as occupier. Now this is a brilliant propaganda piece for master-class in journalism.
In his much acclaimed book, On Writing, Sol Stein gives a very interesting example with two news pieces. I quote them here. The first one read- Terence McNiece, 14, was arraigned yesterday in Town Court for allegedly stealing a bicycle belonging to a neighbour.
The same piece of news, when written by a smart journalist like Ms Naqvi would read as, again quoting Sol Stein, According to the testimony of her mother, Terrance McNiece wanted a bicycle more than anything in the world, but she couldn’t afford to buy one. Terence, age 14, was arraigned yesterday in Town Court for allegedly stealing a bicycle belonging to a neighbour.
Sol writes- Conflict can arise from a thwarted desire, but the desire must be planted here.
Does this not explain the occupier-occupied narrative that Ms Naqvi, like all closet Islamist supremacists, are peddling? What can be a bigger, loftier and nobler desire than to be free, the desire to not be occupied. Only slight overlooking of the fact is needed, like Jews lived there centuries before the advent of Islam, that the First Temple was made around ten Centuries before Christ, and almost 15 centuries before the advent of Islam.
She has a problem with the Jewish writer trying to superimpose the developments in the Middle-East on India, in terms of Hindus and Muslims of India. But is that not the reason that she has written this rebuttal, she, who technically has no skin in the game, against the person who has something personal at stake here. She has written it as a Muslim and not as an Indian. And I will tell you why- because her history of Al-Aqsa Mosque does not start with Jewish King Soloman but with the fairy tale of Islam, just as her history of Kashi Vishwanath does not start with Kashi being the oldest Hindu city, but it starts with Aurangzeb when after destruction of a very Arabic-Sounding Gyaan Vapi, Muslims went to Courts claiming it is their unalienable right to wash their hands and feet over the structure which Hindus consider their religious idol.
The very article which she wrote to pooh-pooh the irrational fears of Yeshahaya, as far as Hindus in India are concerned, substantiates that fear, by the way she reports the terror attack, exposes that hatred that she has. It also underscores the point the Jewish journalist has made, she wants you to be unsuspecting, lulled into a false sense of security, the way Kashmiri Hindus were in the 90s, the Lahori Hindus were in 1946, the way Bengalis of Dhaka were in 1946, till such time that these fears come real.
When quoting how the article ends with – If Congress leaders can not find within them a spine, they should remember that they still have a neck.- made her cringe, one wonder if Sar Tan Se Juda slogans coming out on the streets of Bharat made her cringe as much as to write a piece on it, like ever?