Wherever there is oppression, there will be resistance, Justice Katju writes on Israel and Hamas

By Justice Markandey Katju 

Wherever there is oppression, there will be resistance, Justice Katju writes on Israel and Hamas

Hostilities are going on between Israel and Hamas. To understand this properly we must first know the background.

These articles explain what is Israel and why it was created.

Many people, particularly in Western countries, are calling for total elimination of Palestinian Arabs, which implies women and chioldren too. But they do not go deeper and try to understand what motivated Hammas in launching the attack. The truth is that it was a result of decades of horrible oppression and atrocities on Palestinians by Israeli forces. Newton's Third Law of Motion says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This applies to human affairs too. Wherever there is oppression there will be resistance

The sudden attack by Hamas on Israel reminds one of the well known Tet offensive in South Vietnam in January 1968, which caught the American occupying forces completely off guard, and was a complete failure of US intelligence, just as the Hamas attack caught the Israelis off guard and was a complete failure of Israeli intelligence.

Many people call Hamas savages, and regard people living in Gaza as animals. It is probably true that Hamas soldiers may have committed some atrocities in Israel. But this was only a reaction to over 75 years oppression and atrocities on Palestinians committed by Israelis, backed by some Western powers. The Hammas soldiers who entered Israel probably knew they were going on a suicide mission, like the Japanese Kamikaze pilots towards the end of the Second World War. Yet they did not flinch from this mission, with their anger pent up over decades seeing the atrocities on their people

And what about the retaliatory killing by Israelis of thousands of people, including women and children living in Gaza, by the Israeli forces, which was, and still is continuing, several times worse than the Hamas attack, whole apartment buildings with their occupants being obliterated, food, water and electricity being cut off, and the 2 million people of Gaza being effectively blockaded and deprived of subsistence?

Before Israel was created 90% people living there were Arabs. Later most of them fled in fear and panic leaving their homes behind, after many were killed by israelis, and most of them are still living in horrible conditions in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and in Lebanon. There will never be peace in the region until justice is done to them, and they are properly rehabilitated.

A selective campaign has been launched by Western political leaders, including US President Biden, as well as the Western media, blaming Hammas for all that has happened, calling them vicious animals. It is time now to know the whole story and the truth. 

(Justice Katju is a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India. These are his personal views.)