Migration, both licit and illicit, has ensured that local battles or regional wars spread across the globe, in the form of mass agitations, demonstrations, processions and rallies. The Israeli-Hamas terrorists’ war of October 7th has spewed a spate of well-organized and funded, contrived demonstrations, in most Western capitals, with women and children strategically placed in the vanguard. Police forces, watch with helpless resignation as thousands of demonstrators, carrying placards, banners and raising slogans in a foreign language, women draped in black from head to toe, with only slits for eyes, or just an exposed face, shout, yell and scream invectives, demanding actions as they desire and punishments as they please. White men and women, watch shell shocked with fear and trepidation, as the sheer migrant population on the roads and streets, is a prescient forewarning that irreversible demographic changes have taken place very subtly, and future laws whether internal or external, defence and foreign affairs, food, dress, and etiquette, will be what the migrant wants! Places of worship will reverberate with inflammatory and rabble-rousing rhetoric, universities will no longer be portals of higher learning, but places where goons meet to strategize holding venomous meetings and debates. The hitherto aggressive media is benumbed, staring at their sudden irrelevance, and the fact that migrant mafias would soon be dictating, what to report, what to suppress, what to twist, and how to comment. Unknown to everyone, the theatre of war has expanded from its epicenter to travel thousands of kilometers into distant lands and geographical jurisdictions, causing deep rumblings and vibrations. Even tiny Kerala, tucked away, deep in the South of India, is witnessing collected hordes of a particular religious denomination, being amassed on the beaches, and addressed by foreign terror leaders, safely ensconced in luxurious hideouts, from thousands of miles away, addressing online, and exhorting killing and extermination of every other religious entity on the planet. What kind of a war is this?
Western universities are becoming extended war zones as migrant students, professors, scholars, and academics, engage themselves in internecine debates about the conflict between Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists, India’s internal politics, restoration of normalcy in Kashmir, Russia-Ukraine conflict, leading to the abnormal polarization of students based on race, religion, denominations, and nationality. Tacit connivance of the university managements, along with various Pressure groups, NGOs, and media, complicate the picture further. Many major American, Canadian, and European universities, regularly host events, that promote ill feelings among student groups, and among different nationalities.
Hamas-Israel conflict has also exposed the hollowness of the print media and their rapidly eroding credibility. Ideological bias, negativity bias, and contrived sensationalism is constantly churning out distorted news, biased articles, and interviews. Most editors, blinded by their ideological fanaticism, express bias by choosing whether to use a specific news input, suppress details, twist, and slant inputs, to give readers or viewers a different opinion about the events reported. The excessive focus on the difficulties caused to the citizens of Gaza, has been constantly touched upon, to elicit sympathies of the gullible public. Fortunately, global rise of the social media, has turned out to be a steady source of wide information about the ongoing conflict. While disinformation is also being widely circulated, suppression of information is no longer possible. Questions are being constantly asked as to how and why the Gazans maintained a strict silence, about the 500 kms of underground tunnels that were constructed right before their eyes, guns and drugs supplied by terror groups were being transported and stockpiled in massive quantities, yet even no intelligence agency had any inkling of what was going to happen.
On October 07th, when terror group Hamas unleashed a surprise strike on Israel, the world was shell shocked to see gruesome violence perpetrated on innocent women and even on small children. No organizations were there to amass crowds on beaches, solidarity marches on the streets of Western cities, protest meetings in universities, or any politicians demanding trial of the Hamas terror leaders holed up in luxurious hideouts.
An organization that has once again proved its ineffectiveness is the United Nations. Arab nations were quick to condemn Israel and demand for a humanitarian truce, while refusing to indict the Hamas for any atrocities. Reports of November 19th indicate that Israel has conceded for a five day humanitarian truce.
The theatre of war has expanded beyond the battle zone. Migrant refugees are creating tensions fuelling both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Israel’s defensive strikes against Hamas is creating societal, religious, and political polarization in many European countries. European Union’s ill-conceived migrant policy has exposed the geopolitical fragility of the region, and the societal degradation into which it is inevitably sinking.
Migrants belonging to the same religion are coercing and compelling many governments to either maintain a rigid silence or give untenable explanations for the sudden terror attack by Hamas terrorists. Israel faces a grim future and will definitely have to endeavour building up an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), to ensure its very existence. Wars and conflicts always expose changing friends and their different colours.
The Israeli experience holds many valuable lessons for India, our preparedness to handle unexpected terror strikes, needs to be constantly assessed and upgraded. Internal security preparedness and terror first responders capabilities cannot be left to the States to determine. There is lot of disparity between the Police forces in the levels of training, readiness, and types of weaponry available for interdicting terror strikes. The kind of abject intelligence failure that Israel experienced, should be a grim warning, that nothing should be taken for granted.
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