The Jewish State has to live forever

Tanuj Goswami

(He can be contacted at tanujuri03@gmail.com)

The one and only Jewish State with an ancestry of well over 3000 years passed through turbulent history and finally got established on May 15, 1948. The young nation with its historic capital, ‘Jerusalem’, still stands tall amidst the hostile surroundings of evil forces in the Middle East. The nation, with nearly nine million strong people, comprises different nationalities, many of whom immigrated from across different parts of the world with a firm commitment to building a strong homeland. Israel proves its worthiness by contributing immensely to every field of human development: science, technology, computing, cyber security, agriculture, aerospace, medical research, etc.

Unfortunately, some rouge nations affiliated with Iran that contribute to the axis of evil with a theocratic mindset and fanatic attitude have been seriously roiling peaceful human co-existence, cultivating seeds of hatred, murder, kidnapping, and all sorts of dehumanising activities, befouling the sacredness of the historic ‘Temple Mount’, the site of the world’s three major monotheistic religions. 

Meanwhile, the ongoing raging conflict between the Hamas and Israel, set off following the gory killings of thousands of innocent Jewish men, women, and children by the Hamas, turned the situation into a grave crisis, resulting in the loss of lives of more than 30,000 Palestinians with apocalyptic death and destruction all around Gaza.

The far-reaching effect of the war spiked up serious tension in the Middle East, and the Iran-backed proxies—the Hezbollah and the Houthis of southern Lebanon and Yemen, respectively—are muddying up waters on the northern border of Israel, and the International Trade Route of the Red Sea region is firing up a barrage of ballistic missiles almost daily.

The belligerent Houthi rebels have been repeatedly attacking large commercial ships with ballistic missiles and drones, creating an adverse impact on the economy and security of many countries. The joint USA-UK aerial attack even on remote Houthi arsenals has only partially succeeded in curbing the Houthi strikes, resulting in a diminishing of trade and merchandise on this busy, vital international route. The Houthis even keep attacking Eilat, the port city of South Israel, with ballistic missiles.

The IDF (Israeli Defence Force) having completed its assigned task in southern Gaza, is now concentrating on Rafa City, bordering Egypt, which is overflowing with thousands of refugees’. The IDF is set to flush out the remaining Hamas terror cells hiding there, taking maximum care and precaution to avoid unnecessary loss of life for common citizens, and making use of high-precision technological and surveillance military equipment.

Israel is firmly committed to identifying, detecting, and crushing the surviving terror groups despite continuing international pressure to desist from any such military operation in Rafa. But the Rafa operation is very crucial for Israel for the total elimination of Hamas and for the sake of bringing civilian administration there in Gaza City.

Of late, the second military operation at Gaza’s biggest Shifa Hospital by the IDF, acting upon a tip-off about hundreds of Hamas fighters regrouping and using the hospital premises to prepare to launch attacks on the IDF, has caused furor, and during the IDF’s counterattack, dozens of Hamas lost their lives and hundreds surrendered. No civilians’ causalities nor patients or medical staff got hurt in this operation.

As of now, the only silver lining is the hectic dialogue taking place at the instance of some Arabian States and the US for a ceasefire agreement with Israel, and the release of abductees by the Hamas seems quite on the anvil.

The core of Middle East unrest has been Iran’s high ambition to be the most powerful and dominant nuclear powered nation and to prop up radicalised and highly fanatical proxy terror groups across the region. The Islamic Republic of Iran inked the ‘Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA)’ agreement with some world leaders, including the US, for peaceful nuclear uses.

Later on, with the withdrawal of US support from the JCPA in 2018 and the imposition of multiple sanctions by the West on Iran, it clandestinely continued its nuclear activities with Russian support, which caused reverberation and serious security threats in the Middle East countries. The International Atomic Energy Agency failed to live up to expectations by obligating Iran to honour the clauses of the agreement.

This agreement was not only in stark contrast to the broader interests and security of countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern states but also to world peace and security. A radicalised rouge nation like Iran fomenting terror cells elsewhere is never ever considered fit, sound, and responsible to acquire fission power. The UN is primarily meant for ensuring peace and security for all its members’ nations, and so under the given circumstances, the UN has an unshakable and unshirkable responsibility to deter such nations from acquiring nuclear capability. The JCPA, in fact, ironically, flies in the face of the very objectives that the UN stands for.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the key branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, have fanned out terror groups like Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Army, and many other Islamic outfits elsewhere to thwart world peace. The venom spewed and repeatedly quoted by Ali Komeini, the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to annihilate Israel totally in 25 years is deeply worrisome, perilous, reprehensible, and irresponsible behaviour at worst. PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s UN speech equating nuclear power at Iran’s hands with nuclear power at the hands of Al-Qaeda is very apt and absolutely true.

Israel had to confront multiple fronts at a time against proxy terror groups armed to the teeth and patronised by Iran, and very lately in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), Iran-backed Palestinian terror groups and Hamas are preparing to launch another attack on Israel. If the emerging situation is not grappled with with iron hand, a Gaza-like situation there too cannot be ruled out.

It’s the moral duty of the UN and all other civilised nations to stand by Israel in this grave hour of crisis. The existential threat posed by Israel has to be neutralised and let this small but highly innovative, free, and the only democratic nation in the Middle East prosper and grow with peaceful coexistence.