Eyeless in Gaza and other horror stories. An imagined homeland in occupied territory. Is it only the ‘Jewish question’ – as Karl Marx, himself a Jew, wrote in 1844 – or is it also the question of those who have lived on this holy land for centuries, even before the myths and miracles, perhaps?

Almost 350,000 reservists called back to the army of Israel. Some of them were perhaps on holiday, as usual, escaping from the infinite war trauma back home, enjoying the ‘high’ of the mountains in Manali and Malana in Himachal Pradesh. An American warship lingering in the vicinity – the Americans, predictably, have promised a huge cache of arms and ammunitions. Total, unconditional support by Britain and the West.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war machine is now in full flow inside oil-rich Middle-East, where the Americans and NATO forces have already ravaged Iraq and Syria, and where millions have been killed, injured and turned into refugees.

Almost 400,000 people, yet again, turned into internally displaced refugees in their tiny strip of land – Gaza – in just about two days. The number is increasing each moment. It’s a 24×7 prime time show, perhaps, on Israeli propaganda TV, as bombs fly from the sky with wings of death.

More than 1,000 homes razed to the ground in Gaza, one building with 80 families – all dead and buried in the rubble. “It’s like my entire neighbourhood,” said a man. Reports say almost 500 children dead – children are always dying in this war. Pray, what ghastly war crimes have they done?

Before this unprecedented war, this year itself, 283 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli security forces, including 40 children. This is euphemistically called the world’s largest open air prison, with 2.5 million people trapped in cloistered structures in just about 325 sq km of land, now branded collectively by the Israeli, ultra-rightwing defense minister as ‘human animals’. Thereby, presuming, that he and his colleagues in their racist, supremacist, ultra-orthodox government are all ‘humans’. And, pray, what is wrong with animals? Besides, are we not all creatures of nature? Or, is Darwin wrong?

Energy Minister, Israel Katz, has declared that no “electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter” until the “abductees” were free. This is like a C-grade gangster movie in C-grade Hollywood!

In the border of Gaza, on that infamous morning, they were still dancing and singing without a care in the world – mostly young Israeli men and women. They were happy. It was life’s heady romance which they were celebrating, and death was as distant as the nightmares of the Holocaust. That is when the massacre happened on the blood-splattered streets!

At least 260 of these happy people were shot dead by the Hamas guerrillas for no rhyme or reason. Others were killed on the streets, inside the communes called ‘Kibbutz’, inside bedrooms kitchens and car parks, deep inside the posh ‘first world’ settlements of the ‘occupation’ where the Israel settlers lived, having forcibly pushed out the original inhabitants from their original habitats – the hapless Palestinians.

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There is a certain lack of clarity stalking this sad scenario. At least a thousand killed inside Israel by the al-Qasam armed brigades of the Hamas, including, reportedly, 15 Nepali workers. At least 2, 500 injured. How many abducted – 100, or, is it 150, as they are now claiming? Is the number more? Old women, young women snatched away from her mother, brother, lover; little ones? How many Americans, and people of other nationalities?

Unprecedented in the history of this brutal and illegal occupation, how did the Hamas outmaneuver the supremely sophisticated and war-ready Israelis with their hugely superior defense and intelligence systems? This point to the collapse of a regime which has been haunted by a relentless ocean of civil society protests all over the country since last year with tens of thousands of people asking this fanatic and corrupt regime to go.

According to the ‘New York Times’, “…Hamas, the group that controls Gaza, sent drones to disable some of the Israeli military’s cellular communications stations and surveillance towers along the border, preventing the duty officers from monitoring the area remotely with video cameras. The drones also destroyed remote-controlled machine guns that Israel had installed on its border fortifications, removing a key means of combating a ground attack.”

“We spend billions and billions on gathering intelligence on Hamas,” said Yoel Guzansky, a former senior official at Israel’s National Security Council. “Then, in a second,” he added, “everything collapsed like dominoes.”

The Times of Israel reported that an “Egyptian intelligence official said that Jerusalem had ignored repeated warnings that the Gaza-based terror group was planning ‘something big’ — which included an apparent direct notice from Cairo’s intelligence minister to the prime minister”.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz gave a headline to an opinion piece which said: “Netanyahu, resign now”. The article points out that Israeli army battalions were transferred from the Gaza border to guard the settlers! The writer said: “For such a massive failure, there is no forgiveness. There is one person to blame for this terrible disaster: Benjamin Netanyahu.”

There were also bulldozers, armed vehicles, gunmen on bikes, and, surprisingly, para-gliders flying into the early-morning sky, breaking the ground rules of the 60-km long apparently impenetrable wall which bars entry into Israel. Of course, this took months of planning. And how come the Israeli surveillance machine missed all the noise in the underground?

Hezbollah and armed groups in Syria are waiting and watching. They have a massive arsenal of arms. They have fired a few missiles to prove their existential presence. One outpost of the Hezbollah, and the Alleppo and Damascus airports in Syria has been hit by Israeli missiles in retaliation.

The US intelligence has confirmed that the top brass in Iran had no clue about this ‘Operation al Aqsa Flood’ – named after the unprovoked attack on worshippers in the Al Aqsa mosque by Israeli forces earlier. So, who are the formidable forces behind this war waged with full knowledge of the consequences? Is it an attempt to scuttle and stall the accords between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Morocco, UAE, Sudan, brokered by the US? Is it meant to bring back the Palestinian question and the two-nation theory back into the international arena?

And how many dead, in the countdown to the threat that Gaza will be eliminated forever from the face of the earth?  Mostly, ordinary folks, and kids. This is because they just can’t get to the guerillas in the labyrinthine maze of mappings in the dingy, dark spaces of Gaza – where the unseen Hamas chief is perhaps planning his next move. They know the entire maze like the back of their hand.

The Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles can’t enter these cobweb of dead-end bylanes, which might suddenly open into the dark tunnels of underground death. Perhaps certain areas are land-mined. What will the Israeli soldiers, in their tens of thousands, practically achieve, in these dark alleys – if not becoming sacrificial goats of a discredited and failed leadership in Tel Aviv?

Are the kidnapped hostages together, or trapped in little groups as human shields – in the same manner as the Israeli forces would use Palestinians as human shields in the past? In the last instance, they released 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in lieu of one Israeli soldier! So, how many this time?

The siege of Gaza! As the Pink Floyd song goes: ‘Mother do you think they will drop the bomb?’ Will they, or will they not?

And, will this be yet another war crime in what is an inherited legacy of a billion war crimes ‘indulged’ in by the Israelis, often watching perched on their chairs on  elevated spaces, with a chilled beer in hand, like ‘live shows’ of ‘massacres as entertainment’.

Well, this is a grotesque show which is live now and the world is watching. Amidst death and dying, it seems, this is going to be a long war. And certainly, tragically, there are many, many more horror stories waiting to be told and retold. Only that many of the kids in Gaza might not be alive to share it with their buddies!

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