Kerala’s disturbing Hamas glorification
An event organized by a CPI(M)-controlled entity in Kerala stood out for the uniqueness of the names of venues where various cultural and social gatherings were held. The venues have been named Palestine, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Intifada, and Gaza as a show of “solidarity” with the “freedom fighters” of Palestine, who are more infamous by the name Hamas. The Hamas terrorists shot into prominence on 7th October 2023 when they massacred more than 1,000 Jews in the border region between the Gaza Strip and Israel. It is said that more than 250 Israeli citizens, including women, children, and fighters of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), were abducted by Hamas terrorists to the Gaza Strip.
Television images telecast by some of the global news channels showed visuals of Israeli women being stripped, raped, and shot by the aggressors in the most gruesome manner. The Hamas terrorists demanded that Israel release the more than 5,000 Palestinian terrorists under their custody in exchange for the abducted hostages. The abduction of hostages by Hamas was in violation of international laws, which all countries should observe with diligence.
What surprised and shocked the civilized world was the failure of Israeli intelligence agencies to foresee the evil designs of Hamas. It was only after the slaughtering and mass genocide of most of the hostages that the IDF woke up to reality, but by that time, the damage had been done. I have noticed a disturbing trend in India in general and Kerala in particular. Our media do not publicize the acts of terrorism in which Israel is the victim. To a certain extent, Israel suffers all terrorism and missile attacks silently and does not react. But there is a limit to remaining silent and inactive in the face of such activities. The media in India blacks out news about the attacks against the Jewish nation. School buses jam-packed with children, public places, shopping malls, synagogues, hospitals, and commercial establishments are the targets of Islamic terrorists. There were outfits like the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Fatah, Black September, et cetera, which were waging relentless terrorist activities against Israel. These entities have claimed the lives of thousands of Israelis. But the media blacked out these gruesome acts. Whenever the Israeli Defense Forces strike back to save the country’s citizens, all hell will break loose and will form banner headlines and editorials in our newspapers. The gullible readers will swallow what they read without knowing that they are consuming sugar-coated poison.
The novel MILA 18, authored by Leon Uris, was my first encounter with this issue. It was a heart-rending work set in the midst of the ghetto uprising that defied Nazi tyranny. The German Army mopped up the entire Jewish community and slaughtered them with whatever weapons they could lay their hands on. The dead bodies of the slain Jews were thoroughly examined to find out whether they were wearing gold ornaments. The mouths were examined to find out whether they were having teeth made of gold, and the aggressors plucked out the same with pliers or forceps to send the same to Germany’s war fund! The dead bodies were consigned to flames, and the skeletons were powdered to be used as fertilizer in Germany’s farms.
William Shakespeare, in his celebrated play The Merchant of Venice (1598), featured a Jewish character by the name Shylock who says at a juncture that suffering is the badge of his community. It is strange that even after 430 years, there is no end to the woes of the Jews.
On 7th October 2023, terrorists of Hamas unleashed an attack on Jews who had assembled as part of Simhat Torah, a Jewish religious event. More than 1200 Israeli citizens, including women and children, were massacred by the Hamas terrorists, whom the Marxists and Mullahs of India describe as freedom fighters. The terrorists abducted more than 250 persons, raped and murdered women, and set ablaze many persons who were praying in their homes.
Israel retaliated with whatever armaments it had at its disposal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the war would be called off only after the last of the victims who had been abducted by Hamas is set free and the terrorist outfit leaves the Gaza Strip. The media in India beamed pictures of Muslim women grieving over the death of their near and dear ones in the IDF offensive!! Readers of newspapers in Kerala and viewers of Malayalam TV channels will feel that the Israelis were the perpetrators of this genocide. Even the anchor persons join the chorus of ‘death to IDF’ slogans.
A young Israeli journalist, Alon Penzel (24), undertook a bold mission and visited the sites that were attacked by the Hamas terrorists. He authored a book, “Testimonies Without Boundaries,” based on the places he visited and the persons with whom he had open discussions. The interviews he had with volunteers of ZAKA form the backbone of the book. The name ZAKA had made it to Indian news headlines following the terrorist attack on 26th November 2008, masterminded by Lashkar-e-Taiba. More than a dozen Jews were massacred by the L-e-T terrorists, and a ZAKA team landed in Mumbai to take care of the mortal remains of those who fell victim to the AK-47 of the terrorists. Set up in 1989, ZAKA volunteers are specialists in disaster victim identification and extraction of the bodies for the last rites.
Penzel interviewed the ZAKA team, including Simcha Greinman, the leader, and Zihui Ason, whose first-hand experience tells us the gruesome manner in which the Hamas terrorists finished off innocent lives, raped and murdered women and children. “A three-year-old child in a kindergarten, a knife was lodged in his head, inside the skull. There was a hammer on the floor next to him. On the hammert itself were pieces of his skull,” Simcha has been quoted as saying, and with these words Penzel takes us to a phase which makes us pray to the Almighty that even our hardcore enemies should not suffer such “punishment”, punishment for being born as a Jew.
Simcha discloses one of the most horrendous sights he came across during the search and relief operation. In one of the buildings, they came across naked bodies of 30 women, all raped and mutilated by the abductors. The team, in its mission, also happened to see a woman who was subjected to the most horrid rape. “They put a live grenade in her hand so she wouldn’t move, and then they raped her. We found her bent forward, naked, and shot. In another building, there were 30 bodies, most of them naked women. There is no doubt that there was a massive rape there,” says Simcha.
The truth of what happened on 7th October 2023 has been revealed by Penzel through the words of Simcha and his team members. These are true pictures of what happened in Israel and Gaza as Hamas and Hezbollah unleashed a reign of terror on innocent Jews. The fight for the lives of nearly 60 people in captivity with Hamas goes on. The Israeli Prime Minister has made it clear without any ambiguity that the military action would continue till the last of the abducted persons is liberated from the captivity of Hamas. Though most of the countries have condemned Israel (with the sole aim of appeasing the Muslims) in the UN General Assembly as well as the Security Council, the fact is that the Jewish nation remains the victim. The United Nations has become United Nonsense over the last few decades.
What Penzel has written in this book is the firsthand experience of the ZAKA team and persons who were maimed in human settlements in Israel. These settlements are known by the name Kibbutz, the evergreen gardens built by Jews from the vast deserts which were allocated to them as a nation. The version of Penzel could have been labelled as exaggerated statements in normal cases. But his words have been corroborated by Kerala-born medical staff and home nurses, working in the Jewish nation, and who were in their native villages for a brief holiday.
There is a similarity between what happened in Kashmir in the early 1980s when the JKLF terrorists massacred and slaughtered Hindu Pandits of the area who showed reluctance in leaving the places of their birth. The story has been portrayed as The Kashmir Files, a feature film shot by Vivek Agnihotri, depicting the real-life story of the exodus of Pandits from their State of Kashmir to other places in India. Kashmiri Pandits have become refugees in their own country as the Muslims drove them away to the deep South. The mass exodus occurred during the 1985-1999 period, and those who opposed moving out were slaughtered in a gruesome manner. How the Islamic terrorists shot dead the poor Pandits with the connivance of the top leadership of the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party, working round-the-clock for the Islamization of Kashmir as a prelude to integrating the State into Pakistan.
Penzel has chronicled not just the ZAKA volunteers’ experience. He spoke to those who survived the Hamas attack but lost their near and dear ones in front of their eyes. Guy Ben Shimon, a musician, and Itamar Josef (26), an art student who had come to Nova to participate in the music program being held as part of Black Sabbath, are yet to recover from the shock and trauma of what they saw. One of the Hamas terrorists shot an RPG missile at us. People flew through the air, one guy was completely blown up, and his organs were thrown everywhere. I, too, got hit very hard in the head,” Itamar has been quoted by Penzel. This is one of the many incidents Itamar experienced. Shimon had come to the program with his girlfriends, and all except him fell to the missiles and bullets fired by the terrorists.
I would not say Alon Penzel is a world-class author. But what he has penned down is the spontaneous emotions and words that came to him from the reminiscences of persons whom he spoke to. Their shock and sorrow have added to Penzel’s distress, which he could no longer control. This resulted in “TESTIMONIES WITHOUT BOUNDARIES” making the work a must-read for all who respect humanity.
Even as I was reading the book, a news report that appeared in newspapers and TV channels caught my attention. An outfit by the name Girls Islamic Organization (GIO), funded and sponsored by Jamaat-e-Islami, took nearly 100 girls clad in burqa to Madayippara, a stretch of land owned by Malabar Devaswom Board, and has been rated as a Biodiversity Hotspot as well as a religiously sacred place for the followers of Sanatana Dharma. GIO’s mission? To warn Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from attacking “poor and innocent” Hamas freedom fighters! The GIO activists also shouted slogans that could lead to hatred among communities in the area. Fortunately for the residents staying in the periphery of Madayippara, the slogans were in English.
Why should one give importance to a disaster that took place 3,000 km from the shores of India? There is only one reason, and it is the age-old proverb “Today is my turn; it is your turn tomorrow”.
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
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