Stop Selective Protest!
I suddenly woke up and felt myself shivering with fear. I heaved a sigh of relief upon realization that it had been only a dream. I’ve never bothered much about global issues, but this recent war, on Gaza strip, is getting on my nerves. News channels are broadcasting special reports on Israeli brutality and social media is loaded with heart- wrenching pictures of children dying in this cruel game. We can see plenty of status updates, hashtags, tweets, photos, petitions and heated debates against Israel and atrocities being committed by it.
Apart from the fact that social media uproar doesn’t benefit victims in any way, a crisis in opinion is faced by thoughtful people. Since my knowledge about the whole situation was vague, I’ve faced the same crisis for a few days. Some people in my social circle were being pro-hitler and justified this genocide with that one, which I found plain illogical. All of this left me curious enough to do a bit of research, mostly on the internet. I was surprised to find out that ongoing conflict was actually a retaliation for the abduction and killing of Jewish teenagers.
Since Israel possesses enviable military resources and Palestine doesn’t hold a mere fraction of that power, Jews are given all the blame and Palestinians gain sympathies from the Muslim world. Same is happening now and I won’t say it is all wrong. Without any doubt, Israel and Palestine conflict is one of the world’s oldest issues and hasn’t been stopped since years but this recent outburst is rather severe. One of my friends described it as a slippery slope initiated by Hamas. Hamas, which many countries classify as a terrorist organization, was founded to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation and making it an Islamic state.
Israel accepted the UN resolution in 1948 but Arabs insisted on war. Resultantly, they lost land and same happened in 1967 and 1973. Now they beg to get the territory, they lost in 1973, back but don’t have enough power to neutralize Israel. Moreover, when Hamas was handed over control of Palestine in 2006, it could have alleviated the sufferings of the Palestinian people but maybe it was not among its priority list. Apart from this, since long time, this organization has launched rockets into Israeli territory and using women and children as human shields. Israel has made its defense strong with iron domes and implantation of shelters in the buildings to avoid deaths in these rocket attacks. Contrarily, Palestine lacks such resources and as a consequence, people die in any kind of retaliation or attack from the opposite side.
So basically, its not Israel vs Palestine, but Israel vs Hamas conflict and Gaza strip is the victim of a war between two bigger powers, same like a fight between TTP and the government of Pakistan, where innocent people of FATA are killed as collateral damage. Israel has all the right to retaliate and save its citizens, but being heavy handed and not caring about the sufferings of innocent people is plain inhumane. However, Hamas, which has ignited this whole situation is nowhere and all I see is a protest against Israel. Wait, this behavior is not new for us Pakistanis.
The act of crying over Western injustice and burying head in mud like an ostrich, on wounds inflicted by our own community, has become a norm for us. We remain silent at Taliban’s activities, but scream over drone attacks. Talibans have killed thousands of civilians in suicide bombings but we seem not to care enough to stand up and set a protest against them. Not only this, it took us a long time to launch an operation against them and the majority is still not sure if they should favor this decision or keep on suggesting negotiation talks. We find ourselves on a confused pedestal when Muslims are killed by their own brethrens for whatever reason and the point we fail to realize is that issues like Boko Haram, Shia and Ahmedi killings, ISIS slaughtering Muslims, and Talibans playing with human heads like a football, deserve our same level of attention and protest. May be its time we start admitting that its humanity, we should support, not only our Muslims community attacked by non-Muslims.
If we are so bothered about Western enemies exploiting us, we shouldn’t blind about snakes roaming in our own homelands. Israel is definitely unjustified in its position and should be stopped immediately, but someone should put an end to Hamas’s terrorist activities as well because without that we can never expect peace on Gaza strip. In a nutshell, I’m not at all favoring Israel and I strongly protest against innocent people dying, but yes, I also condemn Hamas for using citizens to gain political advantage and world wide sympathies.