Upon reading the statements issued by the Congress leadership about the October 7 massacre perpetrated by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Israel, I sat in amazement. I couldn’t help reflecting on how a party once flying the flags of satyagraha and ahimsa had explained away a massacre which currently counts 1,400 casualties – mostly civilians – and 4,000 injured.
Of all the Mahatma’s hallowed legacies, the one Congress successfully emulated was his grave insult to the victims of the Holocaust, for which his closest admirers in Israel never forgave him. But while Gandhiji spoke from a misfiring of sincere idealism, shockingly, the Congress party issued their callous statements out of cynical political calculations, or possibly worse, deplorable sympathy towards the butchers.
The atrocities committed against infants, teenagers, men, women, elderly Holocaust survivors, Nepali students, Muslim Bedouins, lifetime peace activists, and many more, were unspeakably brutal, but filmed on the attackers’ Go-Pro body cameras.
The Israeli response is a full-scale war, yet to fully begin. As aerial strikes pound Gaza, 360,000 troops are amassed along the Gaza and Lebanese borders. A ground invasion of Gaza is certain, and only the Iranians know what Hezbollah is planning on the Northern border. They have greater military capabilities than Hamas.
Any support by Congress to those who perpetrated the October 7 massacre is not only morally bankrupt but politically irresponsible.
First, the narrow political calculations seem weird, to put it mildly. Have Congress pollsters concluded that their Muslim voters are thrilled by jihadi violence? For all the troubled history and communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India, both sides can count themselves blessed that most Indian Muslims are not extremists, and don’t condone genocidal fanaticism in the name of Islam.
I suggest Congress politicians read the Hamas Charter online. Its bloodlust speaks for itself. Do they recognise their Muslim constituents in this manifesto? Are they thinking about the same Indian Muslims who refused to bury the dead terrorists of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in a Muslim cemetery?
Congress is playing with fire twice: First a geopolitical fire, and second, a communal one.
Geopolitically, they are aligning themselves with the darkest gallery of rogues. India’s relations with Hamas’ primary backers, Iran, and Russia, (and Qatar) can be debated topically if no blind eye is turned to their murderous aggression. As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz’s technology correspondent Oded Yaron showed, it was Iranian drone warfare tactics perfected in Ukraine that allowed Hamas to breach Israeli defences. In supporting jihadists like Hamas, Congress is supporting precisely the most pathological Iranian activity.
And Indians should not delude themselves: Even if jihadists are uniquely obsessed with Jews, they view Hindus as idol worshippers, doctrinally more impure than Ahl al-kitāb. The October 7 massacre will, unfortunately, be an inspiration to jihadists for years to come.
But the communal fire being stoked now by Congress is even more stunning. Dedicated jihadists are patient, cunning and calculated, operating in the same methodology as Hamas and their Muslim Brotherhood parent organisation: They quietly amass power within sovereign states, building up organisationally under the guise of waqfs and Islamic charities, explaining away any tell-tale signs of violence, in doctrine or in practice. Their full-fledged violence will first appear abroad, with fighters and funds funnelled to the no-man’s-lands of Afghanistan, Pakistan or Syria.
If, theoretically speaking, Muslims of jihadist persuasion view it as their everlasting, divine imperative to fight the Kafir till submission, when does their violence appear domestically? The Islamic formulation is simple: When they sense a chance of victory.
When the father of global jihad, Palestinian Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, was asked why he chose to fight the Soviets and build al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, he answered, “In Palestine, there was nothing I could do.”
Therefore, the Congress’ statement is dangerous domestically. Any fringes of the Indian Muslim communities, in West Bengal, Kashmir, or elsewhere, that harbour a Hamas-style vision will never attack until they smell opportunity. If India fortifies itself militarily and spiritually, it will have peace, and jihadists will mutter, “there was nothing I could do”.
But at any sign of weakness, they will roar into action. A weak India could find itself in the position of France, battling street mobs periodically burning down Paris, and watching ISIS cells gun down Frenchmen at theatres and schools. The difference would be that India’s history of communal riots would ensure that the repercussions of such violence would be broader.
The greatest possible sign of weakness is a green light from Kafir authorities. If Congress leaders can not find within them a spine, they should remember that they still have a neck.
The writer is a Jerusalem-based journalist
