What I saw from the frontline of Israel-Hamas war

As I return to India after nine days of reporting from the frontline of the conflict in Israel and its military retaliation to the Hamas terror attack, I am amazed and aghast at the equivocations, binaries, polarities and extreme positions being taken all around me.

In an environment of raging tribalism and irrationality, social media is fuelling ignorance, illiberalism and insanity, even in India, where the tensions in West Asia have no direct bearing on us.

There’s a pretty obvious and commonsensical truth staring us in the face. What Hamas did to Israeli civilians — razing houses to the ground, burning entire families alive, shooting infants as they slept in cots — is a horrific act of terrorism. Israel, like any other country, has the absolute right to retaliate. But it needs a better thought-through counter-terrorism response that does not brutally punish hundreds of thousands of helpless and hapless Gazan civilians.

If you feel the need to rationalise, explain, justify or qualify what Hamas did or, on the other hand, don’t feel the heartbreak of the awful collective suffering unfolding in Gaza, you need to examine both your intellectual consistency and (lack of) empathy.

Unfortunately, noise, bigotry, coarseness and intolerance have captured all reasonable space for public debate.

An Indian American friend, who leans far Left, quarrelled with me about having gone to Israel at all. Another commentator, who should have known better, foolishly asked why reporters are in Israel only and not in Gaza. Surely, it’s evident, with even international aid struggling to get in across the Egyptian border, that there is no physical access to Gaza except for local correspondents who report every day through heartbreaking hardship. On the other hand, I cannot comprehend the response of those who are unmoved by the images of mass devastation out of Palestine.

In Israel, I was able to report from three borders — the north, where Iran-backed Hezbollah has been firing anti-tank missiles into Israeli villages, the Egyptian border, which remains firmly closed for Gaza refugees looking to escape, and the very edge of the Gaza Strip, where the roar of rockets and rumble of tanks, meant ducking, taking cover and being evacuated to bomb shelters more times than I can count.

Inside Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the worst massacre sites, I walked past ammunition, cartridges and a motorcycle used by Hamas gunmen and through the charred remains of a children’s playground, now spotted with blood. The elderly who took shelter in the neighbourhood medical clinic had not been spared either.

At Tel Aviv’s forensic laboratory, doctors wept as they showed graphic images of bodies, among them, an adult and child tied together, holding each other close in their final hours, as they were burnt to death. Officials allege that some bodies were dismembered, and others, including those of some children, were found with heads severed, whether from projectiles or deliberate, they do not yet know. They also allege that several bodies show signs of torture and rape.

Shockingly, from Maine to Mumbai, there are “intellectuals” who still argue that Hamas is not a terror group because it represents an “occupied” population. To conflate this horror with the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people or the long history of Israeli suppression of their rights only weakens the argument. Tomorrow, someone might question Kashmir’s history and designate the Hizbul Mujahideen as a “resistance” group. How would we feel? Worse, Pakistan-backed terror groups like the Lashkar could also claim similar legitimacy

Hamas is not Palestine. And Israel is not Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel is united in grief and rage, but also in its utter contempt for the prime minister who they believe brought the country to this pass.

On a busy intersection of Tel Aviv, where heartbroken families of 222 hostages in Hamas captivity protest, the placards demand the resignation of Netanyahu and call for a ceasefire. As one survivor told me, “Hamas killed and abducted the most Left-wing among us, many of them worked for peace with Palestinians.”

Gaza’s mounting civilian deaths are truly catastrophic. The most haunting image is that of Wael-Dahdough, a journalist whose entire family was killed in an Israeli air strike, cradling his son’s body and through tears reminding the world that his son too, wanted to be a reporter.

The Indian position, an unequivocal calling out of terrorism but a firm underscoring of the rights of the Palestinian people, is probably the most granular and textured response in the world today. More countries, and more commentators, need to take the same position.

Civilian lives, on both sides, are at the heart of the matter. Agreeing on this fundamental fact may make global intervention more effective – and honest.

Barkha Dutt is an award-winning journalist and author. The views expressed are personal