The death toll has mounted to more than 550 Gazans, with thousands injured and a lot more displaced and rendered homeless. Images are being circulated all over the social network, of dead children. They are repeated all through the day, endlessly circulating. These images have morphed into one another, and one glances at them like a commodity while scrolling down the webpage. What is one trying to do while posting these images or tweeting about them? Is this meant to be a virtual ritual of grief, a show of solidarity, a virtual call for ceasefire? In the social network universe this often seems to be a way self-identification and mutual recognition — ‘as being a person who cares’. It is not about grief but ‘showing’ your grief, it is not about care but ‘showing’ that you care. There may in fact be no embodiment of grief or care prior to the representation of it. But how else can we respond, we don’t seem to know any other way of responding?
Israeli leaders are justifying their ground invasion of the Gaza strip internationally by making two arguments: that they embraced the ceasefire proposals; and that the Israeli troops are targeting only the Palestinian militants holed up in tunnels. But when the media reports of entire families found buried under the rubble, the Israeli leaders then insist that the civilians were given prior warnings before bombing, that they were informed and notified in advance so as to allow for evacuation.
But when we confront the images of war, such reasons seem absurd. Maybe this is where the aesthetic effect of the image lies: that when we see these human beings, the differences and exotic backgrounds momentarily disappear. All that remains is a reminder of human vulnerability. The hope is that the momentary realisation of this human vulnerability will impose an ethical obligation upon us, towards others. But the irony is that when faced with the vulnerability of another, it may not always evoke care but may also evoke a sense of power and sadism, a rush of dominance over the vulnerable.
Getting back to the Israeli justification, their argument of the ground attack is that firstly, it is the ‘militants’ who are being eliminated and secondly, when civilian locations are being bombed, prior notice is given.
Now, what are the normative pre-conditions that make such justifications even possible? Basically, the Israeli leaders seem to be distinguishing between what lives can be grieved for and what cannot. In effect, if you are a ‘militant’, your life is not one that deserves to be grieved for. This is similar to when the philosopher Judith Butler asks, ‘when does a life deserve grief’? Clearly, in our modern world-politics, only certain lives are worthy of grief while others are not. Normative lines are drawn, and if you fall on one side of the line, the body deserves grief, if on the other side, it doesn’t. Apparently groups like so-called Palestinian militants, terrorists, women and children caught in conflict zones and others are not worthy of it.
Indian National Congress, and later, the official national position until the 1970’s, was their unequivocal anti-colonial stand against the Zionist state and their solidarity to the Palestinian cause. Since the 1980’s however, this position has drifted rightward, pro-Imperialist, pro-Zionist. An insightful third position is offered by none other than Mahatma Gandhi. The following is an excerpt from one of Gandhi’s writings directly on this issue, an excerpt representing the enigmatic complexity of his ideas. He writes “…It is not without hesitation that I venture to offer my views on this very difficult question...My sympathies are all with the Jews...They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close...But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me…Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs.
What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct…I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.”(Harijan, 1938)
Gandhi’s assertion of the rights of Palestinian Arabs is emphatic, and he does not alter his position even later in life. I just want to raise two quick points arising from this quote to conclude. First, what is striking in the article is that, as Gandhi argues, one can profoundly sympathise with Jews as victims of historical persecution and yet condemn the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Second, is the apparent paradox in Gandhi’s opinion: that Gandhi firmly believed and reiterated most of his life, the inseparability of politics and religion, and yet, rejected the religious nationalism of the Zionists. This paradox was also reflected in the Indian context, wherein he insisted that there can be no politics without religion and yet believed that post-independent India had to be secular. Several scholars have read into Gandhi’s oeuvre to resolve this apparent paradox and so I will not deal with it for now. But it is worth thinking about these ideas in the current Indian political scenario as well, where importing western liberal secular politics has failed, and yet this does not mean that one gives into threatening Hindutva politics.
The writer is currently a visiting faculty at TISS, Hyderabad