More than 11,000 people in Gaza have already been killed by the careless Israeli bombing. More than half of these murdered people are children. This number killed is in only five weeks since the horrible Hamas attack on Israel. In many cases, all members of some families have been killed except one surviving person to tell or not to tell the story to the world. In many cases the whole family is finished.

Against this most horrible background, "Ceasefire Now" is now the most widely and loudly ringing call across the globe, yet the situation is getting worse. A whole population is targeted for elimination by the Israeli army with the unbounded support of the United States of America where, ironically, the Statue of Liberty stands.

On 7 November, Rashida Talib, the congresswoman of the Palestinian origin, was censured for her call for ceasefire and criticizing the Biden government for its complicity in the Israeli action. Before the censure, she gave a very emotional speech and broke into tears when Ilhan Omar, another bold Muslim congresswoman, walked to her side and tried to calm her down. Talib said, "Trying to censure or bully me won't work because this movement for ceasefire is much bigger than one person. ... Palestinian people are not disposable. (At this stage, Omar put her hand on Talib's shaking shoulder to make her quiet.) We are human beings just like anyone else. ... The cries of the Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me."

She again became overwhelmed with emotion while she mentioned those Jewish and Israeli people who stood for the right of the Palestinian people to live, called for immediate ceasefire and end of genocide and refused to let these crimes against humanity continue in their name. The opposition to the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people has now turned truly global in scope and depth.

There is on one side a great hatred against Hamas and people living in the open air prison of Gaza and West Bank. On the other side there is also more hatred against the Israeli genocidal aggression against the unarmed people of Palestine. They seem never to reconcile. But the hope is that the current Israeli genocidal attempt in Gaza has made a global mass movement possible against Zionism, the ideology which has proved as cruel and vicious as Nazism. The call for freedom of Palestine has now been ringing across the globe louder than any other time.

Here, one of the most notable facts is that in this movement against the Zionist state of Israel and call for Palestinian freedom, there are thousands of Jews, whose voices are as clear, passionate and sincere as any other ones fighting for the Palestinian cause. And they are being arrested in droves for their active pro-Palestine role in the current Israel-Palestine crisis. Thus this mass movement has crossed any religious, ethnic, cultural and other narrowing boundaries. It can be put into the category of recent global movements like 'Occupy' and 'Black Lives Matter'.

It is the western political, military and business interests, which has been playing this game of Muslims vs. Jews against the artificially manufactured and religious flavored background of the Huntingtonian clashes of civilizations. This strategy worked well in the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan leading to millions of death. In all these cases, the rhetoric of western leaders is also similar invoking fundamentalist and the Biblical reference of war and hatred like crusade, Amalek, etc. The indignant reference of Muslims as 'others', part of the axis of evil, barbarians or 'human animals' is also a common refrain of Bush, Blair, Netanyahu and Biden. Through the lens of the Palestine crisis, the face of the western imperialism is becoming clearer day by day. At the same time the opposition to it is also on the rise at a global scale.

Notably, hundreds of Jewish protesters against Israeli attack on Gaza have been arrested in the USA. A large number of Jews around the world are standing against the Zionist state of Israel and its genocidal campaign using their name and abusing their fear of anti-Semitism. Jewish protesters are making it clear in their speeches that Jewishness and Zionism are not the same, in fact these two are poles apart. Zionsim is a western invention in order to wash its hands off Jewish blood in the holocaust and as a proxy of its war-mongering imperialism.

Democratic socialist Cori Bush, who led the resolution for immediate ceasefire in Gaza, said many people in her constituency called her office and left voice mails demanding action for ceasefire and peace. She said, "One of the constituent voicemails that plays over and over in my head is from a woman who said, "I'm calling as a Jewish person. Even though I know it's probably futile, I urge you to continue to advocate for a cease-fire and to advocate for the lives of Gazans." She then began to weep and hung up in tears. Our empathy and solidarity cannot be conditional. It must be universal." (Why I'm Calling for a Cease-Fire in Gaza, Jacobin, 27 October 2023)

In Gaza strip with 1 child killed in every 10 minutes, according to WHO Director, in the part of the world where "Nowhere and no one is safe," this is the most horrible time we have been living through and it puts humanity upside down. Mankind must solve the crisis now before it puts an indelible mark of shame on humanity's face. Now rightly the slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" has been echoing throughout the world as a call for a state where people of different religion, ethnicity, color and any other identity can live in peace and prosperity without any discrimination by any side against any other.

The writer is Editor, Biggan O Sangskriti