EXCLUSIVE: ‘All Eyes On Rafah’ Airstrike – ‘Who Started The War And Why…’ Is This A Necessary Question To END It?

‘All Eyes On Rafah’ as the world stands shellshocked with the Israeli airstrikes on the Palestinian city that has killed 45 innocent people.. the gory visuals and narrations of what the people of that particular camp in Rafah had to witness is enough to make us pass through sleepless nights. Former US President Dwight D Eisenhower had said, ‘There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs…’ A quote which may have been said decades ago but still holds a lot of relevance, especially in today’s times, when we are surrounded by real-time wars.

For most of us, these wars may just be a far-fetched only-virtual experience, but for a lot of people, this is reality.. hearing gunshots that may deafen them forever, experiences so horrific that may scar them for life, sleeping with no hope of a new morning, seeing their loved ones dropping dead around them. The debate of whether war is a necessity or not is also not new but as we stand at a time where multiple wars have been raging around us, it is important to raise this question again – Is war important.. more so, after a point of time, does the question, ‘Who started the war’ hold any relevance.. and eventually, does it all really matter?

If Wars Can Be Started By Lies, They Can Be Stopped By Truth? – Julian Assange

Each time there is a debate on who is right and who is wrong in a war, an important statement to support one side of the argument is, ‘Who started the war and was that right’.. But to think of it, as the death toll keeps rising to a number that cannot be counted, civilisations reach their end and life comes to an absolute standstill, does this question still hold any kind of relevance. The ultimate question always remains – Is a war more important than the lives of thousands of innocent people that includes women and children?

Israel and Palestine have been at conflict for decades because absolute peaceful co-existence in the world, is still a myth and seeing the current scenario, will remain a myth. There is a very thin line between a conflict and a war and maybe we can call that line ‘revenge’.. Once this line is crossed, everything becomes a competition and in the competition called ‘war’, there’s neither a benchmark nor a finish line. The Israel Hamas War may have been started by Hamas but today, the death toll in Palestine has crossed the number of Israelis who have lost their lives and unfortunately this ‘competition of death toll’ is a total failure of humanity. Politically, in terms of strength and in terms of morality, there may be different rights and wrongs but in the end, the biggest sufferers are the people, the humanity.

Britannica defines terrorism as ‘the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective’. Today, seeing thousands of deaths in Palestine, is there a difference between the ‘terrorist organisation’ and the ‘ordinary country’. If the ratio of deaths of terrorists to the deaths of innocent people is 2:45 ( in the Rafah Strike), who is to differentiate between and define terrorism in this case and what possible justification does a nation have.

A mistake is something which is committed once and then worked upon so that it is not repeated; in the last almost eight months, according to the Health Ministry of Palestine, more than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 80,000 have been wounded and there is no count of the number of attacks and strikes. Calling the Rafah Strike a ‘tragic mistake’ isn’t enough.. it isn’t the explanation for this massacre and it is definitely not the solution to any political issue.

There Is No Flag Large Enough To Cover The Shame Of Killing Innocent People. – Howard Zinn

In the world of social media, where technology may have a lot of drawbacks and flipsides to it, it is also empowering and unifying in a lot of situations and the raging war is one such situation. While some world leaders may still be fixated at letting innocent lives be lost just like that, the general public is standing up against it and is collectively speaking up against this heinous act of violence against humanity. In our obsession to ‘defeat’ someone or make them ‘see hell’, we tend to forget the crippling effect it has on those people are not related to it, but are by default, a part of it.

The recent strike on Rafah, killed 45 ‘people’ and it included children who were in the age of learning their ABCs and shaping their future; the ‘people’ who have been killed, are humans, and their nationality really doesn’t matter because irrespective of whichever side of the border they are on, they all look at the same sky, eat the same food, have the same feelings and breathe the same air. Horrific instances and ordeals that have been narrated include parents carrying their headless children as missiles and gunshots are dropped casually and how people have been BURNT ALIVE. This ‘tragic mistake’ was an end of the world for so many families, either by them losing their lives or by seeing their loved ones in conditions they wouldn’t wish for their enemies.

As we know that the wars have never ended on a ‘good’ or ‘successful note’ and history is proof of the same. The civilian and military casualties in the First World War were around 40 million and the Second World War was deadlier with 70-85 million casualties. Now, we are probably sitting on a volcano called ‘World War III’, which is waiting to erupt at anytime. The scarring effects of wars haunt the many generations to come but global powers are still prioritising political victories over human lives.

The question whether Israel is taking their rightful revenge or if their actions are justified or not, has certainly taken a back seat because the war is wiping off the entire civilisation, multiple generations and in no book of politics, is this justified. Who exactly are we fighting these wars for? If the people that live in those countries are being wiped off from the face of the earth, will the victory be of any satisfaction or happiness? Isn’t living with the constant thought of killing people too heavy a burden on the humanity? Eventually, to end a war, do we really need a verdict on who started it and why?

Maybe its time to think with a perspective which is beyond politics.. maybe it is time to clear our vision and take a look at it, from the spectacles of humanity.. because at the end of the day, as Dalai Lama said, “The world belongs to humanity, not this leader, that leader or that king or prince or religious leader. World belongs to humanity.”