FOUR Al Jazeera journalists, including globally admired correspondent Anas al-Sharif, were killed in Gaza in an Israeli air strike on Aug 10.
Seeking to muffle the outrage, Israel sought to justify the targeted killing by claiming ingeniously that the murdered men were 鈥楬amas terrorists鈥�. Solid evidence shows up the lie.
A tweet by Priyanka Gandhi the following day berated the Modi government鈥檚 silence on the wider genocide of Palestinians underway with impunity in Gaza. 鈥楾he Israeli state is committing genocide,鈥� Gandhi declared amidst a sea of silence.
鈥業t has murdered over 60,000 people, 18,430 of whom were children. It has starved hundreds to death including many children and is threatening to starve millions. Enabling these crimes by silence and inaction is a crime in itself. It is shameful that the Indian government stands silent as Israel unleashes this devastation on the people of Palestine.鈥� Nehru would be pleased with his great-granddaughter鈥檚 sagacity and sense of camaraderie that he had institutionalised for new India.
Israel鈥檚 ambassador responded impertinently to Gandhi鈥檚 Nehruvian anger. Emboldened by his complicit right-wing Indian hosts, Ambassador Reuven Azar sneered at Priyanka as Hindutva groups applauded him. 鈥榃hat is shameful is your deceit,鈥� the ambassador railed before proceeding with his troll. 鈥業srael killed 25,000 Hamas terrorists. The terrible cost in human lives derives from Hamas鈥檚 heinous tactics of hiding behind civilians, their shooting of people trying to evacuate or receive assistance and their rocket fire.鈥�
Cut to Rachel Corrie who was seven years younger than Priyanka Gandhi when she died a valiant death at the young age of 24. Early in her short life, the American non-violent activist had become a member of the pro-Palestinian Interna颅tional Solidarity Movement, working in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories.
On March 16, 2003, she was in Rafah, once a bustling city in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military was demolishing Palestinian houses during the Second Intifada. While protesting the demolitions as they were being carried out, Corrie was killed by an Israeli armoured bulldozer that crushed her. Israel said the driver couldn鈥檛 see her, which was not true.
Handy lessons can be gleaned from Corrie鈥檚 murder, both by Priyanka Gandhi and every foreign supporter of the Palestinian struggle.
Handy lessons can be gleaned from Corrie鈥檚 cynical murder, both by Priyanka Gandhi and every foreign supporter of the Palestinian struggle. They are putting their careers and even lives on the line in taking on Israel鈥檚 wild and unchained Zionist regime. Crucially, Corrie鈥檚 death by a bulldozer at Rafah reveals that the destruction of Palestinian homes and attempted erasure of their cultural motifs were a perennial and unending process for Zionist occupation, quite unrelated to the events of Oct 7, 2023.
Moreover, Zionism, the nefarious doctrine that created and continues to drive Israel as a usurper of a peaceful people鈥檚 rights, is as distinct from Judaism as Hindutva is from Hinduism or extreme Muslim ideologies from Islam. Right-wing Christian evangelists in America complete the current religious trio shoring up Zionism. Hindutva in India, Muslim extremists in Syria, and right-wing evangelical Christians in the US have emerged as major props for Zionism. Opposing it has never been easy.
That鈥檚 the risk John F Kennedy took when he vehemently slammed Israel鈥檚 illegitimate assembling of its nuclear arsenal. Grudgingly released documents showed how Kennedy demanded that Israel shut down its nuclear weapons programme and open up its laboratories for transparent inspection.
The demand it turns out, was resented by powerful CIA operatives with links to Israel. JFK鈥檚 brother Robert Kennedy as US attorney general had asked AIPAC, the Israeli lobbying group, to register as all other such firms did. As presidential candidate in 1968, he called for the Israeli government to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Bobby Kennedy asserted that the Israeli government was essentially engaged in lobbying and should, therefore, comply with the same foreign lobbying regulations as other foreign entities, including registering and disclosing their activities under FARA.
Both brothers were assassinated while every academic and investigative bid to link the assassinations with the growing power of the Zionist lobby in the US is predictably undermined as a conspiracy theory, a convenient term to shut down even a line of thinking that questions given narratives. That Israel spied on the US and at least on one occasion attacked a US spy ship in the Mediterranean during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, killing dozens of US troops, is mostly airbrushed from public discourse.
President Kennedy attracted Israeli suspicion for even more reasons. One such was the unprecedented aplomb and ceremony with which he had received free Algeria鈥檚 socialist president Ahmed Ben Bella to the White House.
The welcome was repeated when Kennedy went up the plane鈥檚 ladder to receive socialist Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru. He then launched his campaign for global peace that induced a memorable visit to Washington, DC by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. It was considered a provocative move by the deep state. Israel鈥檚 claim to fame (or notoriety) in India in recent days is the eavesdropping malware it has helped plant in the phones of Modi critics.
Beyond the obvious challenges faced by Priyanka Gandhi in taking on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians, and away from the fact that a leading victim of Israel-supported eavesdropping in India was Rahul Gandhi, there is the startling fact that Zionism and Hindutva share a common fascist link inspired by Mussolini. While Hindutva鈥檚 early ideologues bodily lifted the basic organisational lessons from the Duce himself, early Zionists too trained in fascist Italy to wage a violent terror campaign in Palestine.
Acc颅ording to an analysis posted on the US Office of Justice website, in 1929, the Irgun was formed under the leadership of Vladimir Jabotinsky 鈥榯o assume an offensive terrorist strategy against the Arabs鈥︹�� Who was Jabotinsky? A Zionist prot茅g茅 of Musso颅lini.
The challenge for Priyanka and others fighting for justice for Palestine is therefore complex and requires one to be watchful of the approaching bulldozer, something Rachel Corrie missed.
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Jawed Naqvi is Dawn鈥檚 correspondent in Delhi.
