Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan sought to cast doubt on Congress’s stance on the politically sensitive Palestine issue viscerally close to the heart of its key ally the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML).
Addressing a public meeting to voice solidarity with the oppressed people of Gaza and the West Bank, Mr. Vijayan criticised the Congress for its “ambivalent” standpoint on the Palestine question.
Mr. Vijayan seemed to lean obliquely on Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Shashi Tharoor’s controversial and politically stormy comment at a recent pro-Palestine rally organised by the IUML in Kozhikode to make his case.
(Mr. Tharoor had termed the October 7 attack on Israel as a “terrorist attack”, drawing onstage criticism from IUML leaders.)
Mr. Vijayan said somewhat cryptically that “some voices” at a recent pro-Palestine rally appeared to justify Israel’s genocidal bombing of the besieged people.
“Can such voices support Israel and espouse the Palestine cause at the same time? Is that what you call impartiality? Can such persons remain on the good books of aggressors and victims simultaneously? It seems the so-called followers of Nehru have no clear stance on the profoundly humanitarian issue,” Mr. Vijayan said.
(Mr. Tharoor has since denied the politically discomfiting imputation that put the Congress in a spot. He claimed that some quarters had cherry-picked his speech to inject parochial politics into a global humanitarian cause. Mr. Tharoor said the address was solidly and unequivocally pro-Palestine when viewed in its entirety. The IUML leadership accepted his explanation to end the controversy.)
Mr. Vijayan said the Congress did not even organise a token protest for the Palestine people in New Delhi. In stark contrast, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) joined the world in condemning “sadist” Israel’s catastrophic and one-sided war on the people of Gaza.
Mr. Vijayan said the Congress had forsaken freedom fighters’ embrace of the Palestine cause. The Narasimha Rao government opened diplomatic ties with Israel to “appease” the “imperialistic” U.S. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) merely pursued the Congress’s policy of U.S. appeasement with more zeal.
Mr. Vijayan’s broadside against the Congress on the Palestine issue comes ahead of the latter’s pro-Palestine rally on November 23 in Kozhikode. He also sought to scotch Congress’s campaign that the CPI(M) was casting about for allies using the Palestine issue as a political lure.
