I don't understand: a view of the mideast from India

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I don't understand why Israel and its neighbors are engaged in a war. I don't understand why, the rest of the world watches the destructions and sufferings live all over, and still does not act. I don't understand how two countries, with around 5% of global population block UN call of ceasefire against the will of the vast majority of the world. I don't understand why these two countries policy-makers don't want a ceasefire immediately when majority of their citizens want it.

I don't understand the democratic set-up of UN Security Council and its purpose when it preaches for democracy and human rights everywhere.

And I also I don't understand why many expect Hezbollah not to hide like cowards behind innocent Lebanese civilians and children in this war, thereby inflicting a higher civilian casualty in Lebanon.

Let's get it straight. I don't understand does not mean I support these actions. I don't understand many things of this world. I don't understand human logic behind many of our actions and inactions in present advanced human civilizations.

I will cover couple of them here.

I don't know the rules of a war, or the rules of a fair right war. We all know 'All's fair in love and war'. I don't believe in that.

But it's there.

Does any sensible person expect in present world that Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, to state to Israel (and to its proxy supporter, the only super power of the world) following:

'Hezbollah forces and arsenal would be deployed at so-and-so place in South Lebanon (or in North Israel) on this date and time; and let's fight it out with 'might is right' principle to decide who between us is right.'

Let's even go back before the war started and look at the events that triggered this war. I don't know about the appeals made from Lebanese Government, Palestinian Government, or from their proxy Governments in the form of Hezbollah or Hamas to Israeli Government (or in the form of a lawsuit similar to the one that made Guantanamo tribunals unlawful in US in Israeli Supreme Court) about the plight of more than two-thousand prisoners without charges, many for years, out of a total of nearly ten-thousand prisoners from these neighboring nations in Israeli prisons ('Who are the Mid-East prisoners' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5211930.stm).

And I don't know the responses from Israel against those appeals, if the appeals were made using right diplomatic channels. Common sense tells me minimum 1% of those prisoners without charges to be innocent. That's a minimum twenty prisoners languishing in Israeli prisons without any accountability of the authority.

We won't get into the debate of who and why should be called a terrorist organizations. I am from India and we Indians know what terrorism for common man means to some extent.

Let's change the above scenario and take a hypothetical 'Utopian' one for better clarity. Assume for the best of the causes, a non-power takes on the only super-power in a battle of truth and humanity where both sides have their principles to fight.

Would a few of us still expect mutual announcement and agreement of a battle-ground and time for this just fight of this non-power? Would you expect that this just non-power clearly demarks its military before it takes on the super-power?

I won't.

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©Ranjit Goswami. Ranjit is a Research Scholar with Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India; and is the author of the book 'Wondering Man & The Internet'.

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