I feel a strange numbness over past few days as political leadership and society has normalised war crimes and the genocide in Gaza. While a foolish clown in the form of America’s democratically elected President wakes up every morning vowing to put fragile humanity in further chaos. This piece is an attempt to push back on normalisation, accept grief and resist towards a new world by learning from the old.
The ceasefire was announced in January, has collapsed and fatalities in Gaza are on the rise as military strikes by Israel continue to rain down on innocent civilians, journalists and children. Israel has laid a death trap for Palestinians as aid of all form has been blocked from entering Gaza since the 2nd of March in the midst of mindless military strikes. With the failure of the ceasefire more that 2.1 million trapped, bombed, starved and over 1000 children have been killed or injured.
While we bear witness to this horror through different media, the American President who positioned himself as the harbinger of peace has only further fanned the war. Trump’s vision of cruelly displacing people of Gaza from their land in the name of voluntary migration finds support with Israel’s Netanyahu. Trump has claimed that the United States should take control over Gaza, relocate Palestinians and redevelop it.
“We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal. And I don’t want to be cute. I don’t want to be a wise guy. But the Riviera of the Middle East.” Donald Trump
Trump’s claims on expanding the U.S. territory into Gaza shows a mentality of white supremacist colonisers that will get what they please at any cost, violating human rights and a complete disregard for international law. The madness of this preposterous idea has shook me to the bone, where on one had you witness visuals of burnt bodies and beheaded babies and on the other immoral colonisers openly announcing ethnic cleansing for some luxury resorts.
This claim is not just made for media postering, but Trump has put his plan into action quite immediately with approval of $4billiion in new weapons to Israel which include more than 35,000US-made 2,000lb bunker buster bombs. These weapons are used to kill and wound civilians in Gaza every day. The U.S. Government’s extraordinary support to Israel dates back to the war of 1967 and Israel’s immediate victory, was a gift to America. This was important for the imperial goals of the United States as a militarised Israel was a crucial foundation for American power in the Middle East region.
“Without US aid, Israel wouldn’t be killing Palestinians en masse.” Noam Chomsky
The historical records and available evidence make it painfully clear that Zionist settlers in Palestine never intended to live in peace or equality with the Palestinian people. From the beginning, the Zionist movement was driven by a vision of ethnic cleansing and the creation of a larger Jewish state, backed by powerful Western allies. In 1948, the State of Israel was established not through coexistence, but through the violent destruction of Palestine an act that continues to cast a shadow over its very legitimacy. Around 80% of Palestinians were forcibly uprooted from their homes, their villages destroyed, their histories erased. In the years that followed, Zionist control only tightened, entrenching a brutal reality for those who remained under occupation.
History offers reflections to shape actions in the present, in this context an understanding of India’s position and the shifts over the years on Palestine is significant. Newly independent India deeply sympathised with the Palestine cause given its own anti-colonial struggles against Western imperialism. Jawaharlal Nehru opposed the partition of Palestine in 1947 (UN Resolution 181) observing it as an extension of Britain’s imperialism and having witnessed the bloodshed of the partition of India and Pakistan. In 1974, India was the first non-Arab country to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as an authorised representative of the people of Palestine and in 1988, India was also among the first to recognise the State of Palestine.
But the economic reforms in 1990s, reshaped India’s economic policies but also shifted the foreign policy from non-alignment towards balancing relationships with global powers like the United States. And in 1992 India established diplomatic ties with Israel cementing this shift in policy. As India’s economy opened up to western capitalism, the Indian Government shifted its foreign policy further away from solidarity with the Palestine cause towards a dual approach in the region of managing relationships with Israel and Palestine. But since 2014, India has signed a number of arms deals with Israel and currently India is the largest arms purchaser from Israel accounting for 46% of Israel’s global sales.
We have clearly moved a distance from India’s history in anti-colonial solidarity and position against western imperialism particularly the United States. While there were huge gaps in India’s anti-colonial movement post-independence as it was elitist, masculine and didn’t sufficiently address the atrocities of caste. The life and works of Nehru and Ambedkar have a lot of inspiration for a country that is living in contradictions to our founding frameworks.
I have no doubt in my mind that a liberated Palestine is a collective dream as it will forcefully push back imperial powers that legitimise clowns like Trump and allow atrocities on the oppressed. But in order for us to realise this collective dream, we have to allow our bodies to feel the grief due to the genocide unleashed in Palestine. By allowing ourselves to feel and share in the grief of the Palestinian people, we open the way to think and act with resolute clarity to turn back the pages of history and recognize that, in many ways, we have all been there before, collectively bound by struggle and memory. We can find deep inspiration in these moments especially in the anti-colonial and anti-caste movements in India, which both intersected and diverged in powerful ways. For now, let us pause stepping away from the routines and distractions of daily life to grieve. In doing so, we resist the normalization of war, genocide, and ethnic cleansing, and choose instead to witness with intention and care.
Neha Saigal Working on feminist climate justice in India and researching anti-colonial movements in the Global South.
