I’m writing this because I’m afraid.

It’s okay to be afraid in the face of violence; I know that. It’s understandable.

No one understood and explained this fear better than Nikita Khrushchev, who succeeded Joseph Stalin as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1953.

Joseph Stalin is counted among the greatest of mass murderers in human history. Stalin had initiated and actively guided innumerable, unspeakable crimes against humanity during his 30-year-rule from 1924 to 1953: large-scale arrests and torture of innocents, deportation of hundreds of thousands to slave labour camps, assassinations, mass executions, genocidal pogroms against Jews, ‘ethnic cleansing’ of groups like Poles, Greeks, Latvians…an endless list of horrors. Countless millions were murdered by the paranoid dictator, including members of the Communist Party themselves; in the year 1937–38 alone, over 680,000 Party workers were executed for ‘anti-Soviet activities’…

Khrushchev was a survivor of the dreaded Stalinist purges. Under Khrushchev’s leadership, the Communist Party held its 20^th Session from 14^th to 25^th February, 1956 (it was called the ‘Secret Session’ because details of its proceedings became known to the world only 33 years later—in 1989).  In his long, impassioned address, Khrushchev stunned the gathered members by denouncing Stalin for the atrocities committed during his rule. At one point, when Khrushchev paused in his speech, someone in the gathering shouted out a challenge to him: “Why did you not speak up at that time, Comrade Khrushchev? Where were you? Why were you silent?“

There was pin-drop silence.

And then Khruschev called out: “Who said that?”

There was silence in the great hall.

“Who said that?” Khruschev called out again, his voice louder now.

Silence.

“WHO SAID THAT?” Khruschev thundered, pounding the table.

After a long, ominous silence, Khruschev murmured: “THAT is why I was silent, Comrade…THAT is why I did not speak up…”

Applause began, slowly at first, gathering to a crescendo.

As I write this, the Israel Defence Force (IDF) is wreaking destruction throughout southern Gaza after a brief ‘temporary suspension’ of its military operations during which Hamas was supposed to return, in phased manner, an estimated 250 hostages taken from Israel on October 7^th in return for Palestinians jailed in Israel.  After returning barely two score hostages Hamas reneged on the plan and instead fired a few hundred rockets into Israel; and so once again Israel is spreading death across Gaza.

Israel strikes deeply, relentlessly, wiping out Hamas terrorists by the score and by the hundreds — and with them, thousands of innocents caught in the crossfire, almost all of them Arab Muslims whom we in the rest of the world call ‘Palestinian’, the majority of them below the age of 20; young men and women and children whom the Hamas have ruled for over ten years with all the ruthlessness and cruelty of a Joseph Stalin or an Adolf Hitler or a Pol Pot. Hamas’ leaders and religious teachers have terrorized and brutalized these young Palestinians from childhood; they have deliberately twisted and warped the young ones’ minds using the time-tested media of fear and pain and hunger and deprivation and  ceaseless, relentless, calibrated propaganda…thereby seeding in their fresh young minds a deep, unwavering, murderous, lifelong hatred of all non-Muslims and particularly those of the Jewish faith. Thus has Hamas created a human bank of brutalized, mind-numbed youngsters, which Hamas draws upon to make up its own murderous cadres.

A truly sustainable business model, no?

But then Hamas has only adapted, honed and practised the same sustainable business model  used by leaders and their frightful legions across the world, throughout humankind’s bloody history, to subjugate and exploit and rule the silent, trembling masses.

First, create an Other among the masses you exploit.

Then, even as you exploit the masses, heap all the blame for their deprivations and sufferings on the Other and direct their hatred towards the Other.

And then, guide the masses in massacring the hated Other…even as you prepare the foundations for creating the next Other.

We in India know this business model only too well. We have applied this business model so often and so effectively post-Independence! We could give the world post-graduate courses in how to create an Other in the name of religion, ethnicity, language, caste, class, ideology…and the results of our efforts are clear and tangible, from the slaughters of Partition to this day,

It is a business model adopted and fine-tuned and applied by humans across the planet: by Daesh and Al Qaeda and Taliban and Khmer Rouge and the Nazi ShutzStaffel; by Catholics against Protestants and Protestants against Catholics and Christians against Muslims and Muslims against Hindus and Hindus against Muslims and everybody against the Jews, by the armies of the Crusades and the Inquisition, of Alexander and Attila and Allaudin and Aurangzeb… 

Now, in Gaza, the remnants of  Hamas cower in the vast warren of tunnels and safe houses they have excavated  deep under hospitals, schools, mosques to escape the Israeli onslaught…for, such is their bravery and depravity, these once-men who have besmirched the name of Islam and insulted its Prophet by their monstrous deeds of October 7^th 2023, when their cadres swept across the Gaza border into Israel without warning to indulge in an orgy of mass murder, of sadistic pleasure in raping and maiming and burning alive, of slaughtering  over 1500 men, women, children, babies simply because they were Jews.

Now, the Israeli onslaught on Gaza grows more intense and horrific with every discovery by the Israel Defence Forces of the bodies of Jewish hostages amidst the ruins, many bearing signs of inhuman torture.

Now, nations across the planet, the United Nations, the world media, all of us wring our hands in helpless horror at the ongoing carnage in Gaza and the death of innocents. We condemn the Israeli onslaught in Gaza, we call for ceasefire, as indeed we all should, as is natural.

And yet…and yet…the strange and terrible thing is, almost all nations, almost all mainstream and social media, so many of us, carefully, deliberately, avoid any mention of the slaughter of Jews by Hamas on October 7^th. That horror is now buried beneath mountains of gobbledygook and whataboutery (“What about Palestinian human rights? What about the illegal Israeli occupation of West Bank?” “What about the Israelis torturing Palestinians? ) if not utterly erased from memory—or completely denied as ‘fake news’ or Israeli propaganda, even though much of the hideous video footage from October 7^th is still freely available on social media and the Net, footage that was taken by the proud, gloating Hamas cadres on their own phones, complete with selfies…

 Very few anywhere in the world, leave alone the Islamic nations, dare call the Hamas out for what they are.  So many great leaders, intellectuals, journalists, writers across the world are silent about Hamas’ atrocities on October 7th, silent even in calling out others who echo Hamas’ hatred for Jews. A few days ago, during a US Congressional Hearing on anti-Semitism, even the heads of great universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania, MIT quailed and muttered gobbledygook when asked if they condemn strident calls for the genocide of Jews made by fanatical groups on their own ‘liberal’ campuses [click here and here to view]

Their fear is understandable. I feel the same fear.

After all, today, it is safer for me to be pro-Palestine (if not pro-Hamas), than it is to be pro-Israel.  

If I’m pro-Palestine, there’s less chance that I’ll have my head lopped off or my throat slit (or worse) by an Israeli soldier or Israeli civilian. If I’m pro-Palestine there’s less chance that someone who doesn’t know me, or even a friend, might condemn me as being ‘anti-Islam’…for such has become our world.

I, too, feel fear at calling out Hamas for what they are: inhuman, depraved, hate-filled, genocidal anti-Semitic kooks. But there: I’ve called them out.

I’ll say it again: Hamas is a bunch of inhuman, depraved, hate-filled, anti-Semitic kooks.

Calling Hamas out for its inhumanity does not mean I support the slaughter of innocent Palestinians in Gaza by Israel. It only means I refuse to deny the reality of the horrors Hamas committed on Israelis on October 7^th or remain silent about it; I refuse to remain silent at Hamas’ undiminished and unrepentant calls to all Muslims in the world to unite and wipe out Israel and all Jews from the face of the earth.

I speak up only for myself…and only to assert, for my own sanity’s sake, that I reject and condemn violence. I shall not be drawn to compare acts of Hamas violence with acts of Israeli violence or condone one or the other. I shall not compose and balance kookery equations.

 And I draw inspiration from some who know what’s happened and is happening in Israel and Gaza far better than I do, and who HAVE shown the courage to speak up, to call out Hamas for the monstrous creatures they are.

Like reporter Douglas Murray, interviewed on the Gaza border a fortnight ago:  

Of course I’m still a little afraid, writing this. I always am when I speak up against kooks of any kind – including kooks like Hamas.

Yet speak up I must, even if I manage only a whisper, a feeble word spoken here or written there.

At worst I’ll die some day at the hands of some kook or the other; but then I will die only once.

The coward who does not speak up will die a thousand deaths…before dying.