March 8, 2024
The following is a statement written
by Arundhati Roy and delivered on her behalf at the meeting of Working People
Against Apartheid and Genocide in Gaza, at the Press Club, New Delhi, on
Thursday March 7, 2024. The remarks were first published by Scroll, an
independent media outlet in India.
The richest, most powerful countries
in the Western world, those who believe themselves to be the keepers of the
flame of the modern world’s commitment to democracy and human rights, are
openly financing and applauding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Gaza strip has
been turned into a concentration camp. Those who have not already been killed
are being starved to death. Almost the entire population of Gaza has been
displaced. Their homes, hospitals, universities, museums, and infrastructure of
every kind has been reduced to rubble. Their children have been murdered. Their
past has been vaporized. Their future is hard to see.
Even though the highest court in the
world believes that almost every indicator seems to meet the legal definition
of genocide, IDF soldiers continue to put out their mocking “victory videos”
celebrating what almost looks like fiendish rituals. They believe that there is
no power in the world that will hold them to account. But they are wrong. They
and their children’s children will be haunted by what they have done. They will
have to live with the loathing and the abhorrence the world feels for them. And
hopefully one day everybody – on all sides of this conflict – who has committed
war crimes will be tried and punished for them, keeping in mind that there is
no equivalence between crimes committed while resisting Apartheid and
Occupation, and crimes committed while enforcing them.
Racism is of course the keystone of
any act of genocide. The rhetoric of the highest officials of the Israeli state
has, ever since Israel came into existence, dehumanized Palestinians and
likened them to vermin and insects, just like the Nazis once dehumanized Jews.
It is as though that evil serum never went away and is now only being
recirculated. The “Never” has been excised from that powerful slogan “Never
Again”. And we are left only with “Again”.
President Joe Biden, head of state
of the richest, most powerful country in the world, is helpless before Israel,
even though Israel would not exist without US funding. It’s as though the
dependent has taken over the benefactor. The optics say so. Like a geriatric
child, Joe Biden appears on camera licking an ice-cream cone and vaguely
mumbling about a ceasefire, while Israeli government and military officials
openly defy him and vow to finish what they have started. To try and stop the
hemorrhaging of the votes of millions of young Americans who will not stand for
this slaughter in their name, Kamala Harris, US vice-president, has been tasked
with the job of calling for a ceasefire, while billions of US dollars continue
to flow to enable the genocide.
And what of our country?
It is well known that our prime
minister is an intimate friend of Benjamin Netanyahu and there is no doubt
where his sympathies lie. India is no longer a friend of Palestine. When the
bombing began, thousands of Modi’s supporters put up the Israeli flag as their
DP on social media. They helped spread the vilest disinformation on behalf of
Israel and the IDF. Even though the Indian government has now stepped back into
a more neutral position – our foreign policy triumph is that we manage to be on
all sides at once, we can be pro- as well as anti-genocide – the government has
clearly indicated that it will act decisively against any pro-Palestine
protestors.
And now, while the US exports what
it has in abundant surplus – weapons and money to aid Israel’s genocide – India
too is exporting what our country has in abundant surplus: the unemployed poor
to replace the Palestinian workers who will no longer be given work permits to
enter Israel. (I’m guessing there will be no Muslims among the new recruits.)
People who are desperate enough to risk their lives in a war zone. People
desperate enough to tolerate overt Israeli racism against Indians. You can see
it expressed on social media, if you care to look. US money and Indian poverty
combine to oil Israel’s genocidal war machine. What a terrible, unthinkable,
shame.
The Palestinians, facing down the
most powerful countries in the world, left virtually alone even by their
allies, have suffered immeasurably. But they have won this war. They, their
journalists, their doctors, their rescue teams their poets, academics, spokespeople,
and even their children have conducted themselves with a courage and dignity
that has inspired the rest of the world. The young generation in the Western
world, particularly the new generation of young Jewish people in the US, have
seen through the brainwashing and propaganda and have recognized apartheid and
genocide for what it is. The governments of the most powerful countries in the
Western world have lost their dignity, and any respect they might have had. Yet
again. But the millions of protestors on the streets of Europe and the US are
the hope for the future of the world.
Palestine will be free.
No comments:
Post a Comment