India’s discernible shift away from Palestine

The police in Goa on Wednesday detained several persons who were participating in a peaceful march in Panaji to show solidarity with Palestinians amid Israel’s war on Gaza.

The police cited the absence of permissions as the reason for detaining the protesters, according to local media.

This came two weeks after the police in Mumbai stopped a 77-year-old man for distributing leaflets that urged people to “rise above hate and war”.

VK Tripathi, a retired physics professor from Delhi and a peace activist, was told by the police that he could not distribute pamphlets on “sensitive issues” without permission, Mumbai Mirror reported.

“I hold both [Palestinian militant group] Hamas and Israel equally responsible for the violence,” Tripathi told the newspaper. “My concern is how humanity is suffering on both sides.”

He added that neither his words nor the pamphlets “singled out any religion or group” and he was shocked to have been stopped from distributing them.

These incidents came around the second anniversary on Wednesday of the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Israel’s military offensive in Gaza began in October 2023 after Hamas killed 1,200 persons during an incursion into southern Israel and took hostages. Israel has been carrying out unprecedented air and ground strikes on besieged Palestinian territory since then, leaving more than 67,000 persons dead.

In August, the United Nations formally declared a famine in...

Read more