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| Image: X (formerly Twitter) |
The 75-year-old Israel-Palestine dispute is once again on the boil, but this time the war hysteria is being felt almost across the globe, thanks to social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
In India, in the 1970’s this conflict used to be confined to the ‘World’ pages of the English newspapers and was non-existent in most vernacular dailies. Later with the advent of satellite television in 1990s, we got to see footage of buildings getting reduced to rubbles on BBC World News, accompanied by a fast-paced narration by Lyse Doucet - each word going off like a bullet from a machine gun.
Those days the Indian government used to throw its weight behind the Palestinians in tune with its policy of non-alignment, while Israel was considered a pariah state. Gradually around 1980s, a section of intelligentsia and political class began to feel that it was high time we explored ties with the Jewish nation, as they argued we shared many common interests. India then formally established diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992, but after ensuring that ties with the Palestine Liberation Organisation were not upset.
For the general public, discussing politics in drawing rooms, tea shops, and paan shops – the brick-and-mortar predecessors of social media platforms, the Israel-Palestine conflict only evoked yawns and the initiator of the topic used to be dubbed as a ‘big showoff’. Many had no idea where this region was on the world map and used to dismiss this ignorance with a ‘kya-farak-padta-hai’ shrug.
Even when social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook became household names in the first decade of this millennium, the Israel-Palestine wars didn’t evoke much traction among Indian users.
However, Israel was fondly remembered by a section of the Indian commentariat whenever Delhi, Mumbai, or Kashmir used to get rocked by terror attacks. Israel's success in freeing passengers and crew from a hijacked Air France aircraft at Entebbe airport in Uganda in 1976 had won them legendary status. These analysts looked upon the Jewish nation as a role model and wanted India to show the same ruthlessness while dealing with Pakistan-trained terrorists. The worldwide rise in Islamophobia after the 9/11 terror attacks in the US also added heft to this school of thought.
On the other hand, in New India secularism has become a dirty word and the Indian Muslim is increasingly being seen as the other. Frequent lynching, hate speeches, and other hate crimes against Muslims for nearly a decade have helped bolster this narrative. Using this corollary, anyone attacking Muslims across the globe gets instant support from Hindutva zealots. Hence, the current Israel-Palestinian war is evoking a very strident reaction, and the world is getting a taste of the toxic polarization India is currently afflicted with.
On October 7, the moment the Palestinian extremist group Hamas breached the heavily guarded Israeli border to carry out attacks on residences and military installations, and rained missiles on some Israeli towns, #IStandWithIsrael began trending on Indian Twitter. Soon there was a rash of similar-sounding hashtags and in some cases, even Israel was misspelled as ‘Isreal’.
A number of resident welfare uncles, who bombard us with ‘good morning’ messages, turned into ‘military experts’ overnight. They expressed their choicest outrage against Hamas but were salivating over the prospects of massive air raids Israelis were planning to carry out on Gaza in retaliation. Borrowing a cricket analogy, a Twitter user said Hamas had done with its batting and now see what Israel does. Memes showing Hamas in poor light were widely circulated.
As the frenzy spread, we had random guys from Rajkot to Rae Bareli offering themselves to fight for Israel. This reached such a feverish pitch that the Israeli ambassador in India, Naor Gilon, had to issue a statement, “Israel never asked anyone to come and fight for us. We fight our own fights.”
All the prominent influencers of the right-wing social media ecosystem in India began rooting for Israel and wanted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to wipe out Hamas by flattening Gaza. All this vociferous posturing was emanating from the bedrock of rabid hatred towards fellow Muslims.
There is an old adage (though who actually said it is disputed), “The first casualty of war is the truth.” This war too helped rumour mills work overtime with social media proving to be a force multiplier.
One of them was that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies in a hospital after entering Israel. The report was based on hearsay and travelled across the globe. It gained so much credence that US President Joe Biden issued a statement condemning the act. Later it turned out that the report had no basis, and the White House had to ‘walk back’ on its earlier statement.
The trouble is that by the time these lies and half-baked reports get exposed, they have already travelled too far. It gets shared by thousands of social media users, and many don’t even get to know about the clarification that comes much later.
Hamas has been attacking Israeli positions in the past but never attained a success of this scale. For the dominant Western media, Hamas action became the casus belli, as if this was the first stone cast in this dispute, while they conveniently overlooked Israel’s atrocities on Palestinians that date back many decades. Every anchor in prominent TV channels across the Western world wanted the panelists to first condemn the October 7 Hamas attack and then get on with Israeli atrocities.
No Western leader issues a statement on this issue without including the line, “Israel has the right to defend itself.” Hence, the oppressor gets a blank cheque, while the oppressed need to be the epitome of poise and grace or be dubbed as a terrorist.
Coming to Indian mainstream media, a major chunk of which has been reduced to government mouthpieces over the last decade, the Hamas attack provided a golden opportunity to divert attention from a civil war-like situation prevailing in Manipur state.
For Indian TV news channels, many of whom fit Arundhati Roy’s description of ‘Fox News on steroids’, this war provided fresh ammunition for its daily edition of notoriously toxic debates. Talking heads with very extreme views were invited and they all still continue to call for the annihilation of Gaza to teach Hamas a lesson.
Interestingly, some of these channels have flown in their top correspondents to Tel Aviv, and they are reporting from the relatively safe confines of Israeli towns with none venturing into Gaza. They are also unable to see the widespread protests on Israeli streets calling for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ouster. Amid all this turmoil, ANI even managed to find an Indian woman residing in Israel, who was willing to sing paeans of Narendra Modi!
It may be recalled that none of these channels ever bothered to send even a single reporter to Manipur where the ethnic conflict rages on even to this day.
While most of the Israeli media is pulling no punches and asking the Netanyahu government tough questions regarding Israeli security failure on October 7, for Indian reporters and Twitter users he continues to be a hero. The same template is expected to continue as Israeli forces get ready for ground assaults on Gaza.
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