ISRAEL FACES UNEASE AMONG ITS SUPPORTERS AT CIVILIAN CASUALTIES

Israel is lagging behind Hamas and its backers in the information aspect of the war, and the aftershocks to the goodwill that Israel enjoys worldwide on the 7 October attack are severe.

- MADHAV NALAPAT

The close of next week will determine whether the Israeli Defense Forces' strategy of steady strangulation of the military wing of Hamas in Gaza is effective rapidly enough to keep international unease over civilian casualties in Gaza contained. If all goes according to plan, within a week IDF control over key chokepoints in the strip will reach a level where substantially more access from Egypt to Gaza could be permitted, so that at least six hundred truckloads and rising of essential civilian supplies come across every day. So far, the strategy worked out by the Superpower that is more and more openly backing Hamas is to attempt to clothe the IDF-Hamas war in religious terms. Such a mischaracterisation has not worked sufficiently to lead to its objective of either making the war spread nor cause mass uprisings in Muslim-majority countries on a scale that would paralyse social order. The swift condemnation by such governments of civilian casualties in Gaza and their united call for an immediate ceasefire has been key in such an outcome. Both Hamas as well as Hezbollah claim to be acting on behalf of a great faith that has well over a billion adherents worldwide, when the reality is that the former is fuelled by Wahhabi ideology and the latter by Khomeinism, neither of which conforms to the precepts of compassion, mercy and beneficence repeatedly found in the Holy Quran. In countries across the world, including in India and the US, the Muslim community overall has distinguished itself by its contribution to national life, a process in which Muslim women are increasingly playing the lead.

AGAIN, A DEMONISING OF JEWS