"We Are Complicit In It": Arundhati Roy On The Silence On Genocide In Gaza
Arundhati Roy, while at Govinda Pillai award function at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, said India has lost its moral compass as the “most heinous crimes, the most horrible declarations calling for genocide and ethnic cleansing are greeted with applause and political awards”. While millions across the world regardless of Jews, Muslims, Christian, Hindu, Communist, Atheist and Agnostic are marching calling for ceasefire in Gaza, Indian streets remain deserted, though India “once was a true friend of colonised people, a true friend of Palestine”.
The writer called the silence of writers and public intellectuals a “terrible shame”. She said if Indians refuse to speak about “Israel’s brazen slaughter of Palestinians, even as it is livestreamed into the most private recesses of our personal lives, we are complicit in it”. By saying that, the well-known author shed some light to the history of Palestine by reading out her own words from her speech “Come September”. She said the Israeli occupation on the West Bank and the siege on Gaza are crimes against humanity and the United States and other countries who “bankroll” the occupation are “parties to the crime”. She further added that the “unconscionable slaughter of civilians by Hamas as well as by Israel, are a consequence of the siege and occupation”.
She pointed out that the none of the ongoing brutal war will happen if US was not backing Israel. According to Arundathi Roy, the solution for the genocidal war cannot be materialistic but political in “which both Israelis and Palestinians live together or side by side in dignity, with equal rights”. She said the world must intervene in this visible violation of all the humanitarian law and consideration. She warned that otherwise the “moral architecture of Western liberalism will cease to exist”.
She called on to stop the slaughter of Palestinians “for the sake of Palestine and Israel, for the sake of the living and in the name of the dead, for the sake of the hostages being held by Hamas and the Palestinians in Israel’s prisons”.
