Why such a complicated title? Is that your question? Well, the reality this phrase, valid in all its denotations and combinations, describes is far more complicated. Yes, it is a phrase floated by the Israeli Prime Minister, and on the first anniversary (unhappy one feels even to associate such a happy word with such a tragic reality) of October 7, it captures a tragic situation that now has almost the whole world in its thrall.
Yes, exactly a year ago, there was an absolutely unprovoked and extremely brutal attack on an Israeli music fest. Many were shot dead, countless were taken hostages (some still continue to be!) and were killed there. It was a déjà-vu for the unfortunate Jews, the Holocaust victims, and worse still, this time round, they were made to suffer in their own motherland yet again.
Undoubtedly, moreover, this attack, which destroyed the precarious peace the Gaza Strip had somehow managed for about two decades, was intentional, and was very much a terrorist attack. It was but inevitable that Israel would retaliate. Which it did. There continues an attempt, moreover, to root out Hamas and Hezbollah, and the types. In the process, the whole of West Asia is burning.
True, on both sides, innocent citizens happen to be the soft targets. Yet I would like to state that, despite its aggressive attack, my sympathies, if it is possible at all to empathise with the victim (cum victimiser), are with the IDF. Post the fall of the Twin Towers, terrorism has unfortunately gotten a name and a face.
However much wish fulfilment one may dream idealistically, it is not easy, nay impossible it is, to forget/forgive the axis of evil. Just as after the Mandal Commission, identity politics became bitter in India, post September 11, the world over, terror got a religion, even when it is true that other religions, too, share the sad streak.
Israel, the motherland of the much maligned (historically harassed and mythologically marauded) Jews, has managed to survive the bitter brunt of the very many masks of proxy wars by "the" Brotherhood, be it Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi, and so on, and not to forget the Taliban.
Well, the entire fracas has brought the world close yet again to the imminent threat of the third world war, as if the Ukraine crisis was not enough! In West Asia, however, it is both, the petrol and the atomic energy, which form Damocles' sword. With the world economy already diving towards a certain depression, such realities make us yet again question the wars, and 'the pity war distills', to quote Wilfred Owen!
Pratima@The ballistic missiles etc may look like the war of arrows in the TV Ramayana and Mahabharata serials. They, however, are real, and far more dangerous and harmful, Iron, or whatever, Curtain notwithstanding.
In fact, at times, one wonders if the weapons trade and its bloodthirsty capital create these war zones! How else would they find a market, right?
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