The Eminent Journalist has thrown down the gauntlet. Since my respect for him is limitless, I have to take some time off to jot down a few things.
1) A nation's engagements with other nations should be conditioned on what the relationship does to its interests. The danger of bringing in such considerations as morality into the equation is the certain impracticality of applying it uniformly, and consequently the inevitable charge of hypocrisy. The Gulag never came in the way of our being the most intimate ally of the Soviet Union. Hindi and Chini were bhai-bhai even as the corpses piled up by the millions in the Mainland. Why did our diplomats and leaders sup with Saddam Hussein (he later went on to become the icon and martyr of the Islamist-Leftist alliance) all the while he was gassing the Kurds and the Shiites by the thousands? Should the GoI ask American multinationals operating in India to scale back their operations because the US imposed an unnecessary and bloody war on Iraq? Should the Bangladeshi mission at Chanakyapuri be bumped off because of the country's genocidal oppression of the Hindu minority? Should Mahinda Rajapakse be denied entry into the Guruvayoor temple because of the Killinochi offensive? Is it OK to keep buying oil from the decadent Saudi regime which denies even the most fundamental rights to its citizens? Why is Cuba, ruled by a genocidal megalomaniac an important ally? Should we sever all diplomatic relations with the Iranian mullohcracy which hangs young women for the 'crime' of pre-marital sex? Why is Fiji in the diplomatic radar at all, when the Indian origin Mahendra Choudhary had been denied his rightful primeministership? Did we take out the moral compass when dealing with the kleptocracies of Africa? We used to roll out the red carpet for the most odious dictators of the world during the heydays of NAM. Without going into the merits of the Gaza situation, it can be said unequivocally that it should have no bearing on India-Israel relations. 2) The most bizarre thing about the morality argument is that it should come from the Left. Pakistan is a country that has imposed four wars on India, is directly involved in the murder of thousands of its citizens both civilians and security personnel and has orchestrated the ethnic cleansing of half a million Indian citizens from the Kashmir Valley. Not only is Israel a country that hasn't done any of these things, but whose assistance has helped our country <http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/feb/08kargil.htm> at a crucial juncture. Still, you can find any number of Leftists arguing for better and friendly relations with Pakistan, more hugs, candles and sweets at the Wagah, more frequent buses to Muzaffarabad etc. Why did the Leftists and the media drool over the sartorial exuberance of the Butcher of Gilgit <http://web.archive.org/web/20050522020511/http://terrorism.reallybites.com/musharraf.htm>when he came calling for the Agra summit? Forget statecraft, the leftists never apply moral principles to their own lives. We haven't seen planeloads of FOSA-FOIL guys returning after the Iraq invasion of 2003 or even after the 2004 'Jesusland' election. They continue to cling to the coattails of the Big Satan, serving its minions, the Evil Corporations. Arundhati Roy hasn't yet returned the money she got from the investment bankers Man Group PLC, the foulest of the foul capitalists. As with everything else, the Left's selective application of morality is nauseating, to say the least. India should continue doing the right thing, which means move forward with expanding her ties with Israel. 3) The Palestinian - Israeli conflict is an issue between the constituent parties and should be resolved amicably among themselves. I know that the preceding statement is a bit too naive and motherhood, as it ignores such nuances as Article 13 of the Hamas Charter which explicitly rejects all negotiations to settle the issue, and declares that the resolution can come only through jihad (read total destruction of Israel and the Jewish people). Still it is their problem and it is up to them to find a solution. Making India's foreign policy captive to the issue will help nobody and harm some. 4) Keeping with the national character, some sections of the media commentators and political pundits have overplayed the importance of the friendship with Israel. Sure, our relations with Israel will yield lots of benefits to the nation. However, it is foolhardy to think that Israel will fight the war on our behalf. True, both India and Israel face existential threats from groups that share the exclusivist, annihilationist ideology of jihadism. But the similarities end there. The environs under which the two nations operate differ vastly. We will have to formulate our own course of action and fight our wars, alone. True, the friendship with Israel will yield both tactical and strategic advantages. But it is not a panacea for the scourge of jihadi terrorism. That some people oversell it doesn't mean the idea itself is without merit. 5) None of the above, however, means that India should do absolutely nothing about the Gaza situation. It should continue making strongly worded statements condemning the disproportionate use of force by Israel, urging it to minimize civilian casualties etc. After all, this is the best weapon in our arsenal which we use when jihadi terrorists from across the border land in our cities and butcher our citizens by the hundreds. We should spare our best and most effective weapon for our friends, the Palestinians too. 6) My suggestion that the Mumbai jihadists who attacked the Chabad Centre may have been motivated by anti-Semitic feelings made one gen'lman fly off the handle and suspect whether I was a neo-Nazi. Now the Journalist doubts whether I am a Zionist. I must be the sole living member of this rarest of the rare species - a la the Dodo of the Animal Crackers cartoon strip - Zionist Neo-Nazi! Anyways, my suggestion should have surprised nobody with a modicum of knowledge about the present day Middle East/Muslim societies - not the least those who claim to have read so much of 20th century history, forget Banu Qurayza, the Khaybar Jews, al-Jahiz, Sirhindi and the entire Medieval history. Now, you don't have to take the words of a Zionist Neo-Nazi like me, your beloved freedom fighters have themselves revealed<http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1218869&pageid=0>that the Jewish center was their prime, no-failure target. 7) I do not wish to enter into a lengthy debate about the Gaza invasion or the Israel-Arab conflict, because this is one topic on which a rational discussion with the Left is simply impossible (to be fair, not just the Left). Not that there are a lot many topics out there that can be rationally discussed with the Left anyways. I will just point out that the Eminent Journalists and Activists who are so eager to chant 'we are all Hamas' never bother to read the Hamas Charter<http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp>. Nor do they notice such nuggets of annihilationist Jew hatred put up for public display on the organization's own website (while urging Muslims across the world to attack Jews): *…a Jewish adolescent boy in an Australian synagogue, a Jewish minister in the Georgian government, a Jewish businessman at the New York Stock Exchange, and an illiterate Jew from the Ethiopian desert… they all belong to the same gang and the same nation, apart from the rest of humanity.* (Oh yeah...they are only anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic, aren't they?) No surprises here, however. They don't read the LeT charter<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lashkar-e-Toiba>either. Cheers, Murali -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
