Gaza Pullout

The ongoing evacuation of Jewish settlers from Gaza has been officially said to be complete. The cartoon by Keshav in Hindu sums up situation quite well. There have been soldiers consoling soldiers, soldiers consoling the people, people consoling each other. It makes me wonder how strong must these Jewish people be, that they move out of the land which they believe is rightly theirs and which they have earned after being homeless for such a long time. I wonder what would be the case if the country were India and an Indian Govt had made such a decision.

The first thing that would have happened is that the opposition party and the local party present would have called a series of bandh and hartal thereby granting the license for the baser elements of society to indulge in their vandal tendencies; conduct competitions on who would break the most number of windows, who would be the fastest to set a vehicle on fire and go about destroying the local shops and public services and utilities. After they have been give enough time for all this, the police gets into the picture and invariably there would be a police-locals confrontation with casualties on both sides. Then there would have been the usual political oneupmanship and drama and what not and.....and finally the strip gets cleared. Welcome to the largest democracy in the world !!!

The Jewish people are an interesting race and I some how like them, although I don't know any Jew. Theirs have been an eternal struggle to establish their place in this world. They have constantly faced ridicule and hatred throughout history, but they still survive. They fought for the land which they believed was rightly theirs and even won it. And now they have relinquished a part of that land for peace. It is a gesture of some significance for I believe that they expect to be "paid" in full for this token of peace.

Whether this helps them achieve a "hard earned" respite from violence has to be seen....I hope they do.....