HN_ZOOM_INTERVIEW_WITH_PANKAJ_MISHRA_GALLERY_VIEW_10-08-24

ETVBHARAT

1/10/2025

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00:00are plunging headlong into a chaotic period. So I think I also wrote this book partly

00:10to warn against this outcome and to, in a way, prepare people psychologically,

00:17intellectually for these sort of incredibly rocky times we're going to see very soon.

00:24Right. You speak about India. I was reading your book. It also points it out that India

00:32was among the countries that in 1975 passed a UNGA resolution declaring Zionism to be a

00:38form of racism and racial discrimination. Yet a Pew survey, I think 2023 Pew survey says Israel

00:46views India more favorably than any country in the world. For us, you know, who are trying to make

00:53sense of this and to understand this, how do we see this dichotomy?

00:59I think, you know, at the level of political parties or governments, there is,

01:10of course, a new relationship between Israel and India. But I think it would be a mistake to

01:18underestimate the depth of the pro-Palestinian sentiment within the Indian population.

01:27I don't think that can be measured by opinion polls, opinion polls that really take into

01:34account mostly, you know, an urban, if not largely metropolitan population in India.

01:41I certainly don't think it can be assessed by taking into account the views and opinions of

01:46major politicians, whether in this country or in Israel. Because I think, you know,

01:54India has traditionally been a supporter of the Palestinian cause, not just at the government

01:59level, but also at the popular level. And I think, I don't think that reality has changed a great

02:05deal. Not even after 10 years of BJP rule in this country.

02:13Okay. You also talk about the instrumentalization of the Holocaust and, you know, a particular

02:22version of the Shoah that is being used or could be used to legitimize expansionist Zionism. Could

02:29you talk about this particular version? And is it being used by Israel in the ongoing, you know,

02:34war against Palestinians? I think that's the major, in a way, propaganda campaign.

02:41That's the biggest propaganda platform that they have, is to constantly invoke the memory

02:48of the Holocaust and say, look, this is what happened to the Jewish population of Europe.

02:55And if you don't take preventive steps, and those preventive steps obviously include, you know,

03:03the eradication of Gaza at this point, we will face, again, another Holocaust.

03:12This has become, obviously, this memory of the Holocaust has become a way of justifying

03:18endless expansion on the part of the state of Israel. So it's become a very cheap

03:26and cynical ploy for expansionism. In the process, it has degraded,

03:34desacralized the memory of the Holocaust. It has cheapened the enormous suffering and trauma

03:42millions and millions of people underwent, you know, in Europe and afterwards.

03:49So in every sense, it's a sort of, it's a violation, it's a real horrible violation

03:55of this enormous tragedy, this enormous event. For it to be degraded into, you know, a propaganda

04:08campaign for an aggressively expansionist nation-state, it really is an extraordinary tragedy.

04:18Yeah, I was also going through, you know, your views on when you first visited Israel in 2008,

04:29and you said that you had two perplexing questions that you, you know, you sought an answer to.

04:34The first one was, how did Israel come to exercise such a terrible power of life and

04:39death over a population of refugees? And two, how can the Western political and journalistic

04:44mainstream ignore and even justify its clearly systematic cruelties and injustices? Do you think

04:51this book, The World After Gaza, you know, you found some answers to these questions,

04:56and that's what this book is about? Yeah, I think that's one way of putting it.

HN_ZOOM_INTERVIEW_WITH_PANKAJ_MISHRA_GALLERY_VIEW_10-08-24

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