• Ponmala

After eight decades of relative peace, the world is staring at the possibility of a World War that could lead to the prophesied Armageddon. It all started with an opportunistic adventure by Russia’s Putin to resurrect the Czarist empire that once covered present day Russia and most of Eastern Europe, taking advantage of America’s war weariness after three decades of embroilment in the Middle East. Putin’s capture of Crimea from Ukraine had elicited hardly a whimper from the Western nations, who were much dependent on Russia for cheap oil and gas. That emboldened Putin to contemplate the capture of entire Ukraine, and he went for it at a time when he thought was most opportune. But he had misjudged the resolve of the Ukrainians, who surprised him and the whole world by putting up a stiff fight under the dogged leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky. The rest is history.
As of now, Putin has under his control some 20% of Ukraine, much of which he captured by razing cities and towns to the ground. It is like a hunter killing its prey and making a meal of it. In the meanwhile, Ukraine gnawed away at Russia’s military might and manufacturing capabilities – the Russian navy is clearly on the back foot in the Black Sea and Ukrainian attacks have seriously crippled Russia’s oil industry. The Ukrainians have shown the Russians their place as far as conventional warfare is concerned. Now that the long pending American aid to Ukraine has been made available, this war is at best moving into a stalemate.
The Israel-Palestine conflict that had been simmering for eight decades has suddenly erupted into a full scale war that has the potential to go nuclear. That foolhardy display of valour by Hamas on 7 October 2023, which killed 1,139 Israelis and foreigners and made 253 captives, has once again turned the Middle East into a killing field. Both Hamas and the Israelites are inheritors of the ‘eye for an eye’ or ‘tooth for a tooth’ ethical code. But the Israelites have refused to abide by that even. For about a thousand and a half people they lost, they have already killed 34,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children. They are willing to kill any number more to cleanse Palestine of Hamas, which all thinking people agree is a pipe dream. Once they will have overrun the remaining city Rafah also, Palestine would have been reduced to a wasteland. But that will not have brought the conflict to an end. How can it when it has already expanded into a larger war between two nuclear powers, Israel and Iran?
Out of a barrage of 320 drones and missiles fired by Iran into Israel, seven of them were able to dodge the extremely robust Israeli air defences and hit their targets. Suppose a thousand drones and missiles were fired from all directions by Iran and her proxies and Israel’s allies didn’t chip in by shooting them down, many more would have found their target. Hell would have broken lose then: Dispatching its war planes, drones and missiles, Israel would have pulverised Iran, which has a rather porous air defence. The tit-for-tat that was displayed within the span of a week has given both Israel and Iran a feel of their shortcomings. Even so, hawks easily forget the lessons they have learned and itch for a fight. Another misadventure by any of them could plunge the Middle East in a war that could go nuclear. Only a two-state solution, which both the warring parties have until now refused to accept, can thwart that horrific possibility.
Parallelly, there is a shadow war going on in Kerala between fundamentalist Muslims and hawkish Syrian Catholics. Three factors have played a role in the whipping up of Islamophobia among Christians in Kerala: one, the infiltration of radical Islam into Kerala from the Persian Gulf; two, the decrease in Christian population from 21% to 17% during the last five decades and the simultaneous increase of Muslim population from 19.5% to 28%; and three, the desperate effort by BJP to find a foothold in Kerala by wooing the Christian minority. The Syrian Catholics who have succumbed to Islamophobia should know that they are out of step with the move Pope Francis is making to establish a brotherly relationship with Muslims. They are also questioning the wisdom of St Francis of Assisi, whose initiative to go and meet the Sultan of Egypt had paved the way for bringing an end to the Crusades.
The saddest part of it all is that these wars are being fought in the name of nationalism and faith. Christian nationalism is inspiring the Russians to wage a war on their weaker neighbour, Muslim nationalism is urging the Palestines to risk all to erase Israel from the face of the earth, and Jewish nationalism is enthusing Jews to kill as many innocents as it takes to bring Palestine under Israel’s total control. Where in all this is the God whom Jesus revealed?