Lord ZeN
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By:Jai Anant Dehadrai
As a long time supporter of Israel and its struggle to assert its own rightful place in the Middle East, the senseless bloodshed over the past few weeks in the Gaza strip has left me deeply disillusioned. Haunting images of dismembered babies and mutilated toddlers ought to have been enough to evoke compassion in the coldest of hearts. Unfortunately, for the civilians being butchered on both sides, Hamas and Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu have staunchly refused to abide by the terms of a cease-fire. This is also an opportune moment for Prime Minister Modi to flex his diplomatic muscle where it really counts, and help bring an end to the horrors of this war.
Regardless of our geographical location on the globe, I earnestly believe that the youth around the world has a stake in the unrest that has left two important countries bruised and further divided. The tragedy is that young Indians erroneously believe that their country is immune from the fallout of a war in their own backyard.
My alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, gave me some of my best friends who, like me, had traveled from different corners of the world to receive an ivy-league education. Week after week, we shed our inhibitions and curiously sought out each other, in an effort to know more about the cultures and ideas that had once seemed alien and out of reach. We tried each other’s food, shared our music and even discussed our fears and aspirations. Turned out, to no one’s surprise but mine, that we weren’t so different after all.
Penn also opened my eyes to a world beyond the wearisome rhetoric of Indo-Pak warmongering that we’re all brought up on, and the endless cycle of death and violence that we’re programmed into accepting as the norm. One of my closest friend’s at Penn was a brilliant Pakistani physicist, who shared my skepticism of insecure politicians from both our countries. We recognized these so-called ‘leaders’ of our communities, who were really just petty-minds accruing political equity by stoking the embers of hate. We saw the deviousness and we rejected it.
I mention this because it’s important that we, the youth, realize the futility of war and violence, especially in an age where high-pitched news anchors have replaced ‘news’ with hysteria. This newspaper, the Times of India, is one of the few media houses in the world that has attempted to promote peace and not war, between India and Pakistan.
At UPenn, I had an opportunity to meet some of the most talented minds from Israel. We bonded over our respective cultural idiosyncrasies, and I reveled in the discovery that Jewish parents were often just as conservative as their Indian counterparts. We discussed our political histories, exchanging notes on the two iron ladies who ruled our countries and in times of crisis fought back aggressors. I asked them if their generation endorsed the cycle of war and retaliation with Palestine, and if the violence would ever end. I expected a resounding retort justifying the military operations over the years; after all this was the country that single-handedly repelled several enemies in the six-day war, and even today possessed one of the world’s most lethal counterterrorism agency, Mossad. Oh, but I was wrong. One after the other, my Jewish classmates rejected violence as a solution and shared their dream for an equitable resolution that would end the tensions once and for all.
No one denies Netanyahu’s conviction when it comes to dealing with Hamas and its militant arm. The question is, how far is this ruthless retaliation moral when it comes at the cost of hundreds of children and innocent civilians?
@Hazzy997 @Rex7@500 @Contrarian@idune@Ravi Nair@Echo_419
As a long time supporter of Israel and its struggle to assert its own rightful place in the Middle East, the senseless bloodshed over the past few weeks in the Gaza strip has left me deeply disillusioned. Haunting images of dismembered babies and mutilated toddlers ought to have been enough to evoke compassion in the coldest of hearts. Unfortunately, for the civilians being butchered on both sides, Hamas and Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu have staunchly refused to abide by the terms of a cease-fire. This is also an opportune moment for Prime Minister Modi to flex his diplomatic muscle where it really counts, and help bring an end to the horrors of this war.
Regardless of our geographical location on the globe, I earnestly believe that the youth around the world has a stake in the unrest that has left two important countries bruised and further divided. The tragedy is that young Indians erroneously believe that their country is immune from the fallout of a war in their own backyard.
My alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, gave me some of my best friends who, like me, had traveled from different corners of the world to receive an ivy-league education. Week after week, we shed our inhibitions and curiously sought out each other, in an effort to know more about the cultures and ideas that had once seemed alien and out of reach. We tried each other’s food, shared our music and even discussed our fears and aspirations. Turned out, to no one’s surprise but mine, that we weren’t so different after all.
Penn also opened my eyes to a world beyond the wearisome rhetoric of Indo-Pak warmongering that we’re all brought up on, and the endless cycle of death and violence that we’re programmed into accepting as the norm. One of my closest friend’s at Penn was a brilliant Pakistani physicist, who shared my skepticism of insecure politicians from both our countries. We recognized these so-called ‘leaders’ of our communities, who were really just petty-minds accruing political equity by stoking the embers of hate. We saw the deviousness and we rejected it.
I mention this because it’s important that we, the youth, realize the futility of war and violence, especially in an age where high-pitched news anchors have replaced ‘news’ with hysteria. This newspaper, the Times of India, is one of the few media houses in the world that has attempted to promote peace and not war, between India and Pakistan.
At UPenn, I had an opportunity to meet some of the most talented minds from Israel. We bonded over our respective cultural idiosyncrasies, and I reveled in the discovery that Jewish parents were often just as conservative as their Indian counterparts. We discussed our political histories, exchanging notes on the two iron ladies who ruled our countries and in times of crisis fought back aggressors. I asked them if their generation endorsed the cycle of war and retaliation with Palestine, and if the violence would ever end. I expected a resounding retort justifying the military operations over the years; after all this was the country that single-handedly repelled several enemies in the six-day war, and even today possessed one of the world’s most lethal counterterrorism agency, Mossad. Oh, but I was wrong. One after the other, my Jewish classmates rejected violence as a solution and shared their dream for an equitable resolution that would end the tensions once and for all.
No one denies Netanyahu’s conviction when it comes to dealing with Hamas and its militant arm. The question is, how far is this ruthless retaliation moral when it comes at the cost of hundreds of children and innocent civilians?
@Hazzy997 @Rex7@500 @Contrarian@idune@Ravi Nair@Echo_419
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