Kancha Ilaiah’s apologia of Zionist genocide furthers Hindutva fascist agenda
The article published in the Telugu newspaper Sakshi is the latest instance of Kancha Ilaiah’s writing ending up furthering the agenda of Hindutva fascists in this country
[Right wing Hindutva groups rallying in support of the Israeli war against the Palestinians which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the United Nations have termed genocide.]
Kancha Ilaiah has recently written an article on the Israel-Palestine conflict in the Telugu newspaper Sakshi that was published on October 23. In this article, Ilaiah comes out openly with his immense admiration for the settler colonial and genocidal state of Israel and his utter disdain towards the national liberation struggle of the Palestinian people.
In the process, he has also exhibited his extremely Islamophobic mindset, apart from revealing his ludicrous understanding of history. In fact, this is only the latest instance of Kancha Ilaiah’s writing ending up furthering the agenda of Hindutva fascists in this country.
If one is not aware about the history of the Israel-Palestine dispute, reading Ilaiah’s article might lead to consider Israel as the victim and Palestinians as the oppressor. He presents an unabashed apologia for Israel’s genocidal war by terming the Hamas action on October 7, 2023 as “a brutal massacre” and Israel’s genocidal war against the people of Gaza that has so far killed about 45,000 people, including 20,000 children, as merely “a retaliation”.
He terms the Hamas action as “a terrorist act by any definition”, but does not bother to spare even a single word of condemnation for Israel’s continuing genocidal war for more than a year. On the contrary he showers a bounty of praises for the Zionist state.
Anyone having the slightest idea about the Palestine question would know that the history of the dispute did not start on October 7, 2023 but dates back to several decades.
The state of Israel was created in 1948 by murdering thousands of Palestinians and forcibly evicting about 7.5 lakh Palestinians from their land. What Palestinians term as ‘Al Naqba’ (The Catastrophe) never stopped ever since.
In the following decades, Israel has been expanding its occupation by pursuing the policy of ethnic cleansing over decades, during which more than one lakh Palestinians have been massacred. It has confined the Palestinians to two small non-contiguous territories of West Bank and Gaza. It continues to pursue the apartheid policy and building illegal Jewish settlements in occupied West Bank.
Even before the current genocidal war, it had kept the people of Gaza under siege, stopping even humanitarian aid including food and medicines to reach Gaza. What happened on October 7, 2023 was a kind of jail-break against the suffocating conditions of the biggest open-air prison in the world, called Gaza.
Kancha Ilaiah conveniently ignores these facts of history in his eagerness to glorify the “hard working culture of Jews” and their “spiritual philosophy”. The fact is that Zionist Israel has perpetrated numerous acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing even when the Palestinians did not take resort to violence to achieve their national liberation.
Ilaiah not just shamelessly heaps praises for the Zionists, but also depicts Palestinians and Muslims around the world in bad light by distorting facts. He writes:
“… the Palestinian rulers have never accepted democracy as a viable system in which individual freedom and voting rights can be implemented.”
Only a person who doesn’t know ABC of the Palestine question can make such an asinine comment. The truth is that the Palestinians are fighting for their democratic right of self-determination which has been systematically denied to them.
There is no Palestinian state in the true sense of the term. But to whatever extent representative institutions exist in the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians do take part in the elections and elect their representatives. FATAH in West Bank and HAMAS in Gaza have been elected by the Palestinians.
Showing his complete ignorance of the geopolitics of the Middle East, Ilaiah goes on to equate the acts of HAMAS and Hezbollah with what Taliban is doing in Afghanistan. Only a person who is steeped in Islamophobia can dare to make such a comparison.
Ilaiah makes another ridiculous comparison by saying that:
“... after the end of the war, the citizens of Israel could depose the current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. If Yahya Sinwar was alive, would the Palestinians have done that?”
Here he is comparing a brutal genocide perpetrator and ruler of a settler colonial state with a national liberation fighter who was martyred in the battlefield fighting for the cause of liberation of his nation. But for Ilaiah these fundamental differences do not matter. He has to praise Israel at any cost and blame Palestinians for everything as it suits his Islamophobic narrative.
Ilaiah also declares Israel’s victory in the war and claps for it. He also announces the death of Palestinian resistance as he says:
“Sinwar's killing is a death blow to Hamas. Iran and Lebanon may not dare to risk their civilians and military personnel in this war.”
He also states:
“… can they [Hamas, Iran and Lebanon] match Israel's might? With its highly advanced technology and war tactics, Israel has destroyed Hamas's weaponry and core leadership.”
This again shows Ilaiah’s ignorance about the resilience of Palestinian Resistance. Contrary to Israel’s hope, the video of Yahya Sinwar’s last moments has been perceived by the Palestinians, and their supporters across the world, as an act of defiance in the battlefield and his martyrdom has become a source of inspiration for Palestinians to continue their fight for national liberation.
Ilaiah sings glories of Israel by mentioning that they have turned deserts into productive lands and contrast them with Palestinians who are immersed into religion and do not do enough hard work, and hence, despite receiving financial assistance from United Nations they remained poor.
He states that Israeli women, like Indian Shudra and Dalit women, work all the time while the Palestinian women do not work in the farmlands. Here he wants to make us believe in the Zionist narrative that before Israel the entire Palestine was a desert. But history tells us a different narrative. There was a thriving civilisation in Palestine before Zionists forcibly grabbed the Palestinians’ land. This civilisation, with its world-famous olives, would not be possible without the hard work of the labouring masses of Palestine. If Israel, with the full support of Western imperialism has developed some technologies for dryland agriculture, it doesn’t exonerate its crimes against humanity as an occupier.
Moreover, it is not as if all Israeli women work hard, rather it is only the working class women from Israel, like in any part of the world including in India, that really work hard. Obviously, women like Golda Meir did not work hard in the farms of Israel. If at all they work hard, it was towards expanding and intensifying the Israeli occupation.
Had Kancha Ilaiah made a sincere attempt to understand Palestine instead of reaching to a conclusion through a Zionist guided tour, he would have known that Palestinian women are also working hard to resist this occupation.
Also, the reason for the poverty of Palestinian people is the brutal occupation and not religion. Only an Islamophobic mindset would make religion to be the source of poverty of Palestinian people.
Ilaiah does not confine his Islamophobic narrative to the question of Palestine. He generalises it to include the entire so-called Muslim countries. He states:
“Muslim countries should move towards proper electoral based democracies. They should not remain as religious authoritarian states”.
Further, he takes the responsibility of reforming them onto his own shoulders by saying:
“That is why we all should think about the transition of Muslim countries completely towards democracy”.
If you’re wondering that it is written by some RSS ideologue, then do a reality check. It is written by a so-called Dalit-Bahujan intellectual!
Ilaiah also exposes his ignorance about the Palestine question when he talks about the solution to the Israel Palestine dispute. He presumes that the two-state solution (which he terms as two-nations solution for reasons known only to him) is the solution of the dispute which “we all know”. So, he doesn't leave any scope for any other solution.
By completely distorting history, he blames Palestinians and Iran (?!) for the failure of the Oslo accords. The truth is that it was Israel which violated the accord by continuing to construct illegal settlements in the occupied territories. In any case, the two-state solution was a non-starter as it remained silent on the fate of lakhs of Palestinian refugees who have settled in countries like Lebanon, Syria, Jordan etc.
Ilaiah goes gaga over the democratic and secular credentials of Israel. Calling a colonial settler, genocidal apartheid state whose foundation is based on one of the most reactionary and racial ideologies of the world (read: Zionism) as democratic and secular tells a lot about Kancha Ilaiah’s understanding of democracy and secularism.
One wonders about the implications of such a poor understanding of democracy in secularism in Indian context. Reading Ilaiah’s article, one doesn’t remain in any doubt that Kancha Ilaiah’s admiration for the Zionist Israel is matched only by the Sangh Parivar. His unabashed pro-Zionist, anti-Palestine and Islamophobic narrative furthers the Hindutva agenda like never before.
In the past also Ilaiah’s writings have reinforced the Hindutva narrative. Only a few months ago, he praised Modi for his speech during the inauguration ceremony of Ram temple at Ayodhya. According to him, Modi’s Ram is secular. He also pleaded Modi to appoint OBC and Dalit priests in the Ram temple.
So, his bonhomie with Hindutva agenda is nothing new. It’s just that this time he has shamelessly dropped his guards. It’s high time to call a spade a spade and Kancha Ilaiah reactionary scum!
The point to ponder is that with such a reactionary mindset how can he contribute towards the annihilation of caste?
[The above article is originally published by "In Defense of Reason" on its Facebook page a copy of which was posted by Dalit Media Watch.]
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