By Syed Sadatullah Husaini
As the world watches, the crisis in Palestine, particularly in Gaza, has escalated into one of the most horrifying and unparalleled humanitarian catastrophes of our time. With over 100,000 innocent civilians killed and thousands of children dying not just from bullets and bombs but from hunger and thirst, the scale of this tragedy demands more than sympathy; it demands reflection, responsibility, and action.
History remembers the horrors of Genghis Khan and the Mongols, but today’s reality in Gaza has surpassed even those infamous precedents. According to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, over 70% of the victims are women and children. This is not a statistic; it’s a moral indictment of our times.
What makes this war uniquely horrifying is that it is the first in recorded history where hunger and thirst have been deliberately weaponised. It is a war in which children lining up for food and water are bombed. It is a war where journalists, teachers, scholars, and relief workers are systematically targeted and executed. It is a war in which hospitals, schools, and refugee shelters are intentionally destroyed.
And all of this is unfolding live. In the age of social media, there is no confusion at all about the war. We can’t say “we didn’t know” about the war. Everything is visible – on our screens, before our eyes. And yet, the apathy deepens and the world is emotionally unresponsive as if nothing is happening. The world is not willing to take action. That apathy is not just moral laziness; it is complicity.
This is not merely an attack on two million Palestinians. It is an assault on the conscience of eight billion people of the world. Gaza is not dying alone. The soul of modern civilization is burning with every missile strike, every child’s scream, every mother’s wail.
This is not a “Palestinian problem.” It is not even solely a Muslim concern. This is a civilizational crisis. A test of whether moral values, human dignity, and ethical courage can survive the 21st century. And to be honest: So far, humanity is failing.
The people of Palestine, especially in Gaza, are not just victims. They are also the defenders of universal human values. In fact, they have rendered the world three profound services: First, they have halted global imperialism at its edge. Palestinians stand as a human shield against the ambitions of modern-day Pharaohs – imperial powers like the US, Britain and France seeking to redraw maps, plunder resources, and reimpose control over the Global South. Gaza is the last standing fortress of resistance against occupation and exploitation. Its collapse would unleash waves of oppression far beyond its borders.
Second, they have exposed the true face of modern tyranny. Countries like the US, which claimed to be champions of human rights and democracy, have been unmasked. They enter international arenas under the banner of reform and liberalism, but in practice, they spread division, destruction, and dehumanisation. What the US and its allies are doing in Gaza loudly speak about their hypocrisy, false claims to reform, restoring justice, and their mischief by justifying the unjust actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli armed forces against the hapless Palestinian civilians – men, women and children – under the guise of establishing peace, on the pretext of fighting Hamas. These so-called civilised countries of the West are not only extending diplomatic support to Israel but are regularly supplying lethal arms and ammunition and funding the Israeli government to continue with its heinous agenda of genocide in Gaza and the rest of Palestine. They are complicit in advancing Israel’s agenda of Palestinian genocide. Even the Government of India has turned its back on its historical legacy, remaining a mute spectator to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. In 1974, India became the first non-Arab country to officially recognise the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. By 1980, India allowed the PLO to open an office in New Delhi, which was later upgraded to a full-fledged Palestinian embassy in 1988, following India’s recognition of the State of Palestine. Yasser Arafat famously called Indira Gandhi his sister. Today, that legacy lies abandoned. According to media reports, India has supplied arms and explosives to Israel during its ongoing assault on Gaza – munitions reportedly used in bombing Palestinian targets. When a group of retired diplomats and civil servants appealed for a ban on arms exports to Israel, the Supreme Court declined to intervene, stating it could not interfere in matters of foreign policy. But Palestinian resistance has shattered the false claims and deceptive outward appearance of the world powers claiming to be the champions of human rights. The myth of moral Western supremacy, as well as that of India, lies in rubble beside the ruins of Gaza’s schools and hospitals.
Third, the Palestinian resistance has awakened the global conscience. Without media empires, without institutional power, Palestinians have managed to stir the moral imagination of millions of people all over the world. Protests have erupted across continents. People of every faith – Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus – are standing up for justice. This awakening, if sustained, could be the spark that reshapes the global moral order.
The real question is: what must we do now? What is the permanent solution to the crisis in Gaza? The only solution to the crisis is the creation of a truly Independent Palestinian state. An independent Palestine is not just a political necessity; it is the only sustainable solution to the daily suffering that Palestinians have endured since 1948, the year Israel was established through acts of mass violence, including massacres and the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their ancestral land. This was not a spontaneous birth of a state, but a project imposed through terror and displacement – engineered and supported by Western imperial powers who conspired to plant Israel in the heart of Arab Muslim land using military force and colonial logic.
Let’s come back to the discussion on genocide. Can genocide be stopped through dialogue with a state like Israel, which has repeatedly violated United Nations Security Council resolutions with impunity? Particularly when Israeli officials refer to Palestinians as “human animals” or Amalek – tribal people in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) – who deserve to be wiped out.
History bears witness that genocide rarely ends through negotiations between an unarmed population and a militarised state armed with the most advanced weaponry. Aggressors generally halt only when confronted with superior or at least equal military force. For instance, Israel ceased its aggression against Iran in May this year only after Iran responded with matching force, inflicting large-scale destruction in Tel Aviv and Haifa – cities that came to resemble the devastated landscape of Gaza. This episode underscores a bitter reality: Sustained violence is not deterred by moral appeals or peace talks alone, but by a credible military response.
The world has also seen that genocide in Srebrenica in Bosnia in the late 1990s and Rwanda in Africa, where it was the military might that forced the aggressors to stop the mass killing.
Gaza is the last moral examination of our civilization. Will the civilised world and superpowers of the day, who claim to work for protecting human rights, defend freedom, establish peace and justice, wake up now and play their role in defending the life and liberty of Palestinians by using their military might against Israeli aggression against unarmed civilians in Gaza? It is never too late to do the right thing. History remembers both silence and courage. The US and European powers, as well as India, must show courage to stop the genocide in Gaza. If we do not act now, history will ask us not what we saw but what we did to prevent this genocide.
[The author is National President, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind.]
