A Forgotten People

By Lubna Hussain

They flash across our screens every now and then. An old man, his weather-beaten face streaked with tears, hopelessly clutching a set of ancient iron keys in his calloused hands. A widow in a head scarf perched on top of a pile of rubble, beating her chest, mourning the loss of what was once her home. A stone-throwing youth kneeling, blindfolded, with his hands tied behind his back bashed ruthlessly and repeatedly in the head with the butt of a machine gun. A baby with blue lips swaddled in its blanket that doubles up as a shroud.

These are images of a forgotten people. Seconds of camera footage that prick our conscience momentarily. We immediately flick the channel to escape the misery from which they have no respite. Their crime? They were born Palestinian. Their punishment? Well, it really depends on who’s watching and what sort of a mood their Israeli tormentors are in.

“Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass explosions among the Arabs of the territories,” postulated Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Israeli prime minister, in 1989. But the irony of such a monstrous statement is that Israel didn’t need to rely on the diversion other global atrocities provided in order for it to conduct its own. After all, Israel is the proverbial spoilt child that the world consistently and unashamedly indulges.

Its penchant for ethnic cleansing, sponsoring state terror, practicing apartheid, bulldozing houses, and stealing Palestinian land barely merits the gentlest of admonitions. “Our darling golden child,” say its protractors, “we already kicked out those nasty Arabs from their ancestral homes, let you abuse and torture them without getting cross and even gave you billions of dollars in pocket money. Do you think you could give back a teeny-weeny bit of their most useless land?” But when that Israeli lip begins to quiver, its superpower parent benignly watches as yet another part of East Jerusalem is snatched away from its legitimate owners.

A modern-day equivalent would be to take the survivors of the Darfur genocide, relocate them to Texas, force the existing residents out of their homes, set up a few refugee camps to house them, designate the areas with oil fields to the immigrants and expect the Texans to be delighted about their newfound predicament. Those who complain are labeled agitators. Those who have the gall to fight back? Terrorists. That is how grossly absurd the whole conundrum is.

The Independent newspaper of Britain carried a disturbing report recently about the violent abuse of Arab civilians at the hands of Israeli soldiers in Hebron. A group of former conscripts calling themselves Shovrim Shtika, or “Breaking the Silence”, talked candidly about how they routinely “beat up Palestinian residents without provocation, looted homes and shops and opened fire on unarmed demonstrators.” In one account they “really beat the shit out of” a ten-year-old Palestinian boy who was then asked, “Is it here you want to die? Or there?”

They narrated incidents of “losing the human condition” in the occupied territories. When asked what that meant, a soldier clarified “to lose the human condition is to become an animal”. This is the level of dehumanization that the Palestinians have faced for 60 years. Need I say more? Or rather, can I say more?

For documenting facts can have you very conveniently labeled as being anti-Semitic, racist and insensitive. Speak up about the power of the Zionist lobby, talk about America’s role in unashamedly endorsing and funding Israel’s policy of genocide, draw attention to arbitrary executions, question why it is that a separation wall is built cordoning off 3.5 million people into a ghetto plagued by starvation, disease and death and guess what? Your career, your credibility, your friends, can all disappear overnight. That is the price you pay for exercising “freedom of speech” in the lands that proselytize to us in the Third World their lofty democratic ideals. But that doesn’t stop several Jewish writers, intellectuals, rabbis and groups like “Breaking the Silence” to “force Israeli society to address the reality which it created” where the “proper normative becomes despicable, the inconceivable becomes routine.” Even if it does put them on the SHIT (Self-Hating Israel Threatening) list.

“We don’t deal with terrorists,” Western leaders say with great aplomb. They forget to include the caveat “unless they are Israeli.” Menachem Begin, the former Israeli prime minister, headed the Irgun organization that was responsible for perpetrating the massacre of over 100 unarmed villagers, mostly elderly men, women and children in the village of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948. Ariel Sharon, more instantly recognizable in his role as The Butcher than Israeli prime minister was responsible for the deaths of 1800 men, women and children in Lebanon in 1983. “Israel may have the right to put others on trial,” he said famously in 2001, “but no one has the right to put the Jewish people and Israel on trial.”

Perhaps this is why Israel behaves with such flagrant impunity when it comes to disrespecting every single UN resolution that has ever been passed with regards to the Palestinian right to return.

Next Sunday US President George Bush, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are all billed to attend Israel’s ostentatious 60th birthday celebrations. Whilst world leaders sit back and watch folk dancing, the dispossessed will be commemorating their genocide, humiliation and pure unadulterated misery. Words that once upon a time used to be synonymous with being Jewish now constitute the very essence of being Palestinian. There will be no celebration. Only reminiscences of a time when in order to repatriate victims of the Holocaust and assuage the conscience of a guilt-ridden Europe, an entire people became subject to a Holocaust itself.

Pakistan: Whose child is it anyway?

The Pakistanis have got their Father of the Nation all mixed up! Long before M.A Jinnah came up with his moronic two-nation theory in 1939, the following “gentlemen” had beaten him to it.

“The Hindus are a nation in themselves…..I would want the Muslims to have the NWFP, West Punjab, Sindh and East Bengal in a clear partition of India into Hindu and Non-Hindu India”

Lala Lajpat Rai, Former Congress Leader, “Freedom Fighter” and a founding member of the Hindu Mahasabha (The Tribune: Dec 14, 1924) : Available in the National Archives, New Delhi.

” There are two nations in the main, the Hindus and the Muslims in India”

“……We Hindus are marked out as an abiding nation in ourselves…….All people born in India are not Indians, the test is whether they are willing to accept the superiority of the Hindu nation…….The Muslim Nation cant be co equal in authority to the Hindu Nation..The Hindu Nation is to be dominant and the Muslim Nation servient…..The Muslims should adopt a position of subordinate co-operation with the Hindus.”

Vinayak Damodar “Veer” Savarkar, “freedom fighter”, Hindu Mahasabha President and RSS idealogue. Speaking at the Ahmedabad Session of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1937 and in his essay, “Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?” (Pg 130-133). Also see B R Ambedkar’s excellent analysis of Savarkarism.

“Hindu Nationalism forms the bedrock of our national edifice…This is a Hindu Nation..”

M.S Golwalkar, RSS founder; in “Bunch of Thoughts” (Pg 126, 135)

“The Hindu Mahasabha was responsible to a very large extent for India’s partition”

R.C Majumdar, RSS member, Trustee of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and eminent historian in “Struggle for Freedom” (Pg 611)

The Pakistanis are better off adopting one of these guys as their Quaid-e-Azam. Jinnah pales in front of these chaps.

The seedier side of life.

Cybercafes come in many avatars. There are the flashy ones with plush interiors, air-conditioning and obnoxious rates. There are the middle class ones with decent computers, tacky interiors and weird lighting and then finally there are the seedy ones, dirt cheap, rickety computers and uncomfortable seating.

Two stints of an hour each in the flashy versions had left my weekly finances in a precarious condition. Therefore I started a search for a more downmarket cafe that would leave something in my pockets for the weekend. Inevitably the search turned out to be a failure. Hyderabad may not lack in much but when it comes to decent cybercafes where folks can look forward to fast and problem free net surfing, it could do with some more choice.

At last, I turned to the option that couldn’t fail. The Secunderabad Regimental Bazaar. For people unfamiliar with Hyd, Reg. Bazaar is the closest you can get to Delhi’s (in)famous Palika. It stretches for a kilometre on all sides of Secunderabad Railway station and for people who know their way about, you can get anything from drugs to whores here. My needs being of a more mundane nature, I started near RK Hotel, the electronics hub of Secunderabad. Instantly I hit paydirt! There it was! In glorious plastic paint, emblazoned on a bunting “SHIVAS NETCAFE”…and what was more only 10 bucks for an hour! This better be good.

To reach the place though, you have to descend, literally. A flight of about 10 steps got me into the cellar of the RK Hotel. The place reeked of urine and there were pan stains everywhere. A few cheapjacks sat selling chinese plastic toys and a guy with bleary and wide open eyes (most probably on smack!) sat staring vacantly at something. The “netcafe” was right there. The owner sat outside and was busy watching Delhi Daredevils getting their ass kicked by Mumbai Indians. I overcame my misgivings and proceeded.

“Internet?”

“Haau. Ghante ku das rupye”

“Great!”..

I was expecting down and out computers and P II processors running Windows 98. To my surprise, not only was everything spic and span but all the systems ran on Windows XP. This place looked just fine.

The first shock was the homepage. It was set to a porno site that promised “Hot Indian girls” who could do wonderful things to you. Porn not being on my agenda, I quickly proceeded to G-Mail, Orkut, Wiki, Yahoo and so on. 40 minutes passed and I had seen everything I had set out to see. What to do of the remaining 20 mins? In a state of mild beguilement I clicked on one of the lewd windows that the homepage kept popping out. A 5 sec clip followed where two blondes who knew exactly what they were doing proceeded to suck each others livers out. Taken aback a bit at the sudden start of the video, I started to close the window and it was then that I saw him.

The owner had left his TV and IPL and was standing behind me. He was a middle aged guy with a warm smile and a genial face. I started to feel embarrassed and before I could mumble out an apology, he spoke.

“You want more variety? I have full length films. Yahaan par dekhna hai to bolo. Only 25 rupees extra. White, black, Indian, school girls, housewives, double, triple, single…Poora variety hai. Kharidna hai to 100 rupye..quality bahut achcha hai magar. Seedy (CD) laaun?”

Me: “Err…Nahi theek hai uncle! Mujhe apna mail check karna hai”

“Karo karo…no problem…aapki marzi”

And off he went with a dont-try-kidding-me-son expression on his face! I looked around. There were about 4-5 other people in the “netcafe”. Atleast two of them were definitely watching porno. Must be the white-black-Indian CD! What made this guy think I was one of these chaps? Do I look like one? Maybe with that week old stubble and NLS-induced eye bags, I do! I reflected on what drove people into these dark dens that smell of evaporating urine and cigarette smoke, in the cellars of hotels, to ogle at other people fornicating in glorious technicolour. I logged off. Paid the lecherous old man (he was listening to Kaho na Kaho from Murder now!!) his 10 bucks and walked into the daylight.

I walked to the barber shop opposite and got a shave.

And yeah I didnt have anything left over that weekend. The plushy cybercafes charge obnoxious rates as I said!