Listen to excerpts from Outlook's India, that is Bharat issue by Pragya Vats
#Gaza #Palestine #Israel #Hamas #WestBank #IsraeliOccupation #Palestinians #Israelis #AlAqsaMosque #Jerusalem #GazaStrip #TelAviv
#Gaza #Palestine #Israel #Hamas #WestBank #IsraeliOccupation #Palestinians #Israelis #AlAqsaMosque #Jerusalem #GazaStrip #TelAviv
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 I am Pragya and I bring to you excerpts from the current issue of Outlook, titled India
00:05 that is Bharat.
00:06 It looks at the ongoing state elections as a critical test of unity between the Congress
00:11 and its allies in the India coalition and whether the opposition combined can take on
00:17 the might of the BJP in the elections 2024.
00:21 The overlap section of Outlook looks at the prejudice of the Western democracies on Israel
00:26 and Gaza issue.
00:28 Critical prejudice by Seema Guha from Outlook.
00:31 The response of Western democracies to civilian killings in Ukraine and that of Palestinians
00:37 in Gaza has exposed their double standards.
00:40 The moral high ground that the US and Western democracies took while chastising Russian
00:47 President Vladimir Putin for sending his army to Ukraine in February 2022 is strangely missing
00:54 when it comes to close ally Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's response to
01:01 the Hamas onslaught on Israel last month.
01:04 Granted, 1400 people, mostly civilians, were killed and over 200 people, including children
01:12 and old people, were taken hostage in the surprise attack.
01:16 But Israel's response, carpet bombing of the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 10,000 civilians,
01:23 40% of them children, is being accepted without question.
01:28 The West's high moral principles have gone out of the window.
01:33 Israel has broken all international rules of war with impunity.
01:38 Civilians in the Gaza Strip have no place to hide.
01:41 Nothing is off limits for the Israeli Air Force, be it schools, ambulance services,
01:48 hospitals, mosques, civilian housing, or even the UN-sponsored refugee camps as the only
01:54 one in Nabila.
01:55 UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that Gaza is turning into a graveyard
02:03 for children and called for a ceasefire.
02:06 The world watched with respectful silence as Yoav Galen, Israel's Defense Minister,
02:12 said at the start of the operations, "I have ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip.
02:19 There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel.
02:24 Everything is closed.
02:25 We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly."
02:29 Writing in The Guardian, Mustafa Bayoumi, writer and professor, had this to say about
02:35 Galen's words, "Let's be clear.
02:37 Galen's language is not the rhetoric of deterrence.
02:41 It's the language of genocide."
02:44 The plight of over 2 million residents trapped in Gaza is not just turning global opinions
02:50 against Israel, but the double standards of the US and its allies are getting exposed,
02:56 especially in the global south.
02:58 If the Russian invasion of Ukraine had divided the world into two camps, the current action
03:04 in Gaza has further amplified the chasm and exposed the different standards that Western
03:10 democracies apply when it comes to civilian killings in Ukraine and that of Palestinians
03:16 in Gaza.
03:17 The responses to the two wars by the West are starkly different.
03:21 Biden had termed the Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian cities as "barbaric" and
03:27 referred to Moscow's action as "crimes against humanity."
03:31 Yet no such language is used when Gaza City is destroyed and civilians killed.
03:38 This has reinforced the view of the West's hypocrisy.
03:41 The New York Times quoted Hannah North, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International
03:48 Studies as saying, "There is a perception that the West cares more about Ukrainian refugees,
03:54 about Ukrainian civilian suffering, than we do when they are suffering in Yemen, in Gaza,
04:00 in Sudan, in Syria."
04:02 That has often been the view of the developing countries and there are numerous examples
04:07 starkly brought out when Ukrainian refugees were welcomed all across Europe with open
04:13 arms because they were "like us," while those from Afghanistan, Syria and other places
04:19 had little public sympathy because they were non-white, non-Christian.
04:23 For this and more, read the current issue of Outlook.