Tag: Osama Bin Laden

Palestine


As the current Israel Hamas war spirals up into the stratosphere, amidst the 24X7 clash of words and images on social media and TV channels, I turn to that iconic graphic novel ‘Palestine’ by Joe Sacco to re-read some parts. The American Book Award winner of 1996, the nine series compilation was based on the author spending months in the Gaza strip in 1991-92. For no amount of ‘from the stands’ perspective of a situation as articulated by news readers sitting in London, New York or even Tel Aviv can match a ‘on the court’ as lived feelings and impressions.

In 1849, French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”, which in English translates to “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Three decades on after Joe Sacco’s as-lived experiences, perceptions and writings, these words seem so prophetically apt when it comes to Palestine.

I remember the six-day Arab Israel war in 1967 in which the latter came out on top, annexing the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan heights, even though it fought the war on three fronts with Egypt, Jordan and Syria. As a school kid in Delhi at that time, I recall being influenced by how the conflict was being projected in the newspapers, majorly a stance of the Indian Government being an Arab supporter. To my mind it was the Arabs who were fighting a just war! My childlike awareness failed to realize that here was a tiny country fighting for its very existence.

The 6 Day Arab Israel war 1967

And a consequence which would hold huge implications for the future (and what we are evidencing today as Israel asks Palestinians to vacate North Gaza before the tanks roll in) was the displacement of three hundred thousand Palestinians and an additional hundred thousand Arabs. With victory came arrogance and this was aptly on display when the Israeli Premier Golda Meir remarked, ‘Palestinians did not exist!’

Palestenian Movement of 1967

Much water has flowed down the Suez since then. And with the water has flowed a succession of images (were they reflections of something deeper?), geo-political initiatives and newsbytes.  The shifting of the Palestinian militancy into Lebanon and the Lebanese Civil war of the Nineteen Seventies. The Oslo Peace accord of the Nineties which led to the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority on the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian Parliamentary elections in Gaza in 2006, which Hamas won and took over control.

What is ironical is that in its early years, Hamas and its founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin received patronage of Israel who saw the organisation as a counterweight to the other Palestinian movements. A déjà vu’ situation akin to the US support to the Afghan Mujahideen during the Soviet occupation years, leading to the rise of Osama Bin Laden who then became the former’s nemesis. In the nineteen seventies, Indian PM Indira Gandhi of the Congress party allowed, nay supported, Bhindranwale and his cult to become a Frankenstein’s monster, in a bid to weaken the Akali Party’s hold in Punjab. A horrible decision which spun out of control and sowed the seeds of the Khalistan movement. History is replete with such situations, spawned by political expediency, gone horribly wrong.

As I sit re-reading parts of Sacco’s Palestine, the graphics and the words seem to detach and swirl around, before coalescing with the world news’s images I have been seeing on the screen over the last week.

The more things change, the more they stay the same…….

A Narrative which seemed to be both connected and disconnected from the societal prejudices of race, class and religion. Be it the image of the Palestinians as rock and missile throwing fundamentalists. Or that of the Israelis as a harsh and superior force with an apartheid mindset.

The perception of the Gaza strip of being an intolerable world of quasi freedom, military occupation, demolished houses, torture and brute force to ensure compliance of arbitrary Do’s and Don’ts by the Palestinians. What do you say to the people when this happens to them at the place which they consider their home?

To be a Palestinian in Palestine…..

The Palestinians’ scanty existence, anxious with uncertainty and deprivation. A life without a seeming purpose within Gaza’s inhospitable confines, waiting for a better tomorrow which never comes.

In the book’s preface, Edward Said writes tellingly about the existential lived reality of the average Palestinian in Gaza:

“ ….The vacancy of time , the drabness not to say sordidness of everyday life in the refugee camps, the network of relief workers, bereaved mothers, unemployed young men. Teachers, police, hangers- on, the sense of confinement, permanent muddiness and ugliness conveyed by the refugee camps which is so iconic to the whole Palestinian experience….

….. the scrupulous rendering of the generations, how children and adults make their choices and live their meager lives, how some speak and some remain silent, how they are dressed in drab sweaters, miscellaneous jackets, and warm hattas of an impoverished life, on the fringes of their own homeland, in which they have become the saddest and most powerless and contradictory of creatures….”

The imagery created by the words in my mind are at once frenzied and halting.

“….. how some speak and some remain silent….”  The telling graphic of the ubiquitous Israeli soldier refusing to let Palestinians through a roadblock at his whims and fancy because of a set of enormous, threatening teeth and a M-16 gun that he brandishes, flashes in my mind.

How some speak and some remain silent……

Images swirl on that daily screen in my bedroom. A detached view, I realize, is a blessed state. A state far beyond the reach of the Palestinians and the Israelis.  A young Israeli girl being abducted from a Rave festival and taken away on a motor cycle by masked Hamas gunmen. The naked body of a female tourist being displayed on the back of a truck. The swerving billowy streaks of rockets and missiles. Neighbourhood after neighbourhood in Gaza being bombed out of existence by Israeli firepower. The danger of the entire Middle East region getting engulfed in the conflagration.

The abductions and the terror …….

Rockets & Missiles….

The bombings…….

What is it that has led to the situation spiraling out of control like this, I wonder.

Is it that slow but relentless turning of the screw by Israel on the hapless Palestinians by inflicting insults and hardships on an already miserable existence? Is it the Palestinian mindset that perceives only a hopeless and ‘no light at the end of the tunnel’ existence because of a world order which has turned its back on their right to a respectable and decent life? Has the Palestinian society being pushed to a point when life or death no longer matter, as long as they can hit back at their tormentors?

Or is it a surge of anger in Israel of having been outmaneuvered and upstaged by someone who has been perceives as weak and unequal all these decades? Is it frustration of being ‘caught with one’s pants down’ with one’s vulnerabilities on display?

Be as it may, methinks a way forward can never be achieved through horrendous acts of terror as a last-ditch attempt to gain the world’s attention. Nor through a revenge war to carpet bomb, smoke out and eliminate embedded ‘terrorists’. Both ways unfortunately lead to innocent citizens suffering collateral damage with unimaginable hardships and sorrow all around.

A way forward would require both Israel and Palestinians to eschew Amygdala hijacks, accept the ground reality of each other’s existence through negotiated give and takes. A complex and politically difficult task but not impossible if there is a will and vision. But will the world display such a will and Leadership at this juncture?

God of Comfort
Send your Spirit to encompass all those whose lives
are torn apart by violence and death in Israel and Palestine.
You are the Advocate of the oppressed
and the One whose eye is on the sparrow.
Let arms reach out in healing, rather than aggression.
Let hearts mourn rather than militarize.

Rose Marie Berger, Oct 9th 2023

In musing….. Shakti Ghosal

Acknowledgement : Palestine by Joe Sacco. Random House, London

Absence made Visible


The water cascaded down the black granite sides, flowing as rivulets before disappearing into the small squarish void in the center. As I looked at the flowing water, juxtaposed feelings pulled in different directions. A feeling of melancholy and sadness about the flow of our lives which was perhaps never to return. But also a feeling of peace and acceptance, an emotional cleansing about all that was not right, maybe would never be right.

From the corner of my eyes, I could see the Oculus, that majestic steel ribbed white wings about to soar up into the skies. The reflections on the nearby glass towers seemed to be heralding a brighter, more vibrant tomorrow. A tomorrow in which peace and acceptance might run the winning lap.

I was at the site of the two World Trade Center towers in Manhattan which had gone down in the September eleventh attack more than two decades back. The black granite square pools with flowing, falling water had been built as memorials to that event. The Oculus served as the integrated transportation hub built for the Path and Subway trains.

Oculus Transportation hub at the World Trade Center complex

As I stood there in contemplation, the place was a tranquil and serene island in the midst of high energy Manhattan life. Did the flowing water suggest a life force embryo just below the surface? That somehow brought into our thoughts those who had perished in the attack, their names etched on the sides serving as the only reminder? Or was it that the simplicity of the slow cascades into the void which could never be filled (as per the memorial architect Michael Arad) allowed their ‘absence (from our living world) to be made visible’?

**

My memory went back to that day decades ago.

 It was evening. I was in the office and had called a colleague to discuss an operational issue when he excitedly mentioned about a disaster in which an aircraft had crashed into one of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers in New York. We spoke about the incident for a couple of minutes and wondered about the low probability of an aircraft crashing into a building.

Returning home after office, I switched on the TV only to see the news headlines flashing all over, ‘AMERICA UNDER ATTACK!’ In the interim, a second aircraft also carrying passengers had slammed into a second WTC tower. Burning from the aviation fuel of the colliding aircrafts, both the towers collapsed. A third aircraft had crashed into Pentagon, the US Defence headquarters in Washington DC. Due to the time zone difference, what was evening for me was really morning hours on the US Eastern seaboard where the attacks were taking place. Close to three thousand people died in the attacks.

What seemed at that point in time a senseless act of violence led to a fundamental shift in the way US saw the world and how its foreign policy would come to be defined. Over the next two decades, US would engage in conflicts aimed at crushing terrorism in various parts of the globe. From demolishing Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan to the Iraq invasion and removal of Saddam Hussein to confronting the self-styled Islamic State in Syria.

I think of our world today. The actors have changed, the issues have shifted but the conflicts remain.

**

A couple of days back, I heard the tragic news of the Texas shooting in which a teenager Salvador Ramos armed with a gun entered an elementary school and senselessly shot and killed nineteen children and two adults. The carnage was a deadly reminder that even the world’s most powerful nation is unable to protect its children in their innocence.

My granddaughter has been going to a play school. She loves going there. For us, the school is a safe haven that nurtures. I agonise when I think of what might be passing through the minds of the parents and grandparents of those children whose lives were so brutally snuffed out even before they got the chance to blossom. Like me they too would have had complete faith in the safety and security of their child in school.

I muse. What is that which leads to some folks inflicting injury and death on others? I sense that this arises from an extreme psychologically aberrant mindset. A mindset which shifts into viciousness from its inability to accept ‘we versus they’ differences. So it was with Osama Bin Laden, so it is with Salvador Ramos.

An all-powerful state like the US does possess the weapons and technology to wage war against the enemy without.

But does it possess the conviction and resolve to change the mindset of the enemy within?

In learning………                                                    Shakti Ghosal