Holocaust to genocide to apocalypse

When I read about India’s abstention on the UN resolution regarding the International Court of Justice’s decision to start hearings on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, I was shamed as an Indian. But when I read India’s cringeworthy Explanation of Vote [EoV], I felt humiliated as a human being.

- MANI SHANKAR AIYAR

I doubt that there has been a more mealy-mouthed opening sentence in any EoV that matches that of our permanent representative (PR). After the world (and ICJ) have witnessed nearly a year of the inhuman massacre of some 40,000 non-combatant Palestinians (and the revenge killing of a handful of Hamas militants), and the brutal repeated displacement of close to a million civilians being driven under fire from one part of the tiny Gaza Strip to another, while being denied food and water and health services on so horrific a scale of inhumanity that the usually sober, restrained ICJ has found itself with no alternative but to investigate whether Israel is in violation of the Geneva convention on genocide, all our PR is permitted by the Modi government to say is—I quote, “Today’s voting takes place in the backdrop of the ongoing conflict in Gaza”!