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Between the first two weeks of May, the world did not witness counterterrorism\u2014it witnessed bloodlust masquerading as statecraft. On April 22, a deadly attack in Pahalgam claimed the lives of 26 Hindu tourists in Indian-occupied Kashmir. No group claimed responsibility, no investigation followed, no evidence was released. But New Delhi, undeterred by the absence of facts, scripted its own narrative.<\/p>\n
In this state-sponsored spectacle, truth is neither sought nor necessary. The only thing that matters is momentum\u2014toward escalation, toward conflict, toward the mythic idea of national purification through violence.<\/p>\n
By May 7, Indian fighter jets had crossed the Line of Control under the banner of \u201cOperation Sindoor,\u201d bombing alleged militant sites deep inside Pakistan. The name itself\u2014sindoor, a sacred vermilion powder used to mark a Hindu matrimonial commitment\u2014was no accident.<\/p>\n
This was not just military action; it was political pageantry steeped in religious symbolism. A performative fusion of saffron nationalism and aerial dominance. Not retaliation, but ritual. Not strategy, but spectacle. This wasn\u2019t national defense\u2014it was saffron-stained theater.<\/p>\n
The logic of the operation was not security\u2014it was seduction. The electorate was the audience. Fighter jets were campaign tools. The dead were conscripted into a choreography of majoritarian vengeance. A mosque in Bahawalpur was among the targets. A child was among the victims.<\/p>\n
But the global reaction was not outrage\u2014it was apathy, a shrug that grows more grotesque with every new violation. Because in today\u2019s geopolitical theater, whose blood matters\u2014and whose doesn\u2019t\u2014is determined less by atrocity than by allegiance.<\/p>\n
War as Political Pornography
\nWe live in an age where war is not waged\u2014it is curated. Every bomb is edited for maximum social media virality. Every strike comes with a hashtag. Every corpse must pass through a filter\u2014are they mournable? Are they \u201cstrategic\u201d? When the tourists were murdered in Pahalgam, New Delhi did not pursue justice; it pursued optics. There was no judicial inquiry, no forensic follow-up. There was only improvisation\u2014war as spectacle, atrocity as algorithm.<\/p>\n
The mosque strike in Bahawalpur was no aberration. It was a message. It was Modi reading from Netanyahu\u2019s bloodstained script. In Israel, the systematic extermination of Palestinians is marketed as self-defense.<\/p>\n
In India, the destruction of Kashmiri lives is peddled as counterterrorism. In both, civilian suffering is either denied or deemed necessary. Resistance is criminalized, and mourning is rendered subversive. This is not merely military doctrine\u2014it is ideological theater.<\/p>\n
From Tel Aviv with Malice
\nWhat unfolded in Kashmir is not an isolated Indian enterprise. It is a colonial rerun. It is the adaptation of Zionism\u2019s most brutal chapter for Hindutva\u2019s present ambition. Netanyahu\u2019s ongoing genocide in Gaza\u2014flattening hospitals, schools, refugee camps\u2014is a grotesque performance of impunity. Modi has watched and learned.<\/p>\n
The parallels are not accidental; they are methodical. Netanyahu\u2019s doctrine of permanent war, his use of artificial intelligence for targeted assassinations, his manipulation of Western guilt and evangelical fervor\u2014these have not only been admired in New Delhi but are being actively replicated. India now imports Israeli surveillance software, drones, and even battlefield ethics. It exports, in turn, a homegrown brand of majoritarian supremacy and digital authoritarianism.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu cloaks his violence in the language of Jewish survival, while Modi sanctifies his in Hindu victimhood. Both rely on imagined past traumas to justify present atrocities. Both rule through fear, both manufacture enemies, and both weaponize religion not as a private faith but as a public threat. Zionism and Hindutva do not merely share tactics\u2014they share a cosmology: a belief that supremacy is sacred, and conquest is redemption.<\/p>\n
From Occupation to Incineration
\nWhat Gaza is enduring, Kashmir has long known. But now, occupation has morphed into something even more menacing\u2014incineration. When Article 370 was abrogated in 2019, it wasn\u2019t an act of governance\u2014it was a coup wrapped in constitutional sophistry.<\/p>\n
Since then, Indian-occupied Kashmir has become a laboratory of collective punishment: mass detentions, communication blackouts, and extrajudicial killings. Every protest is sedition, every Kashmiri is a suspect.<\/p>\n
This is not mere repression\u2014it is infrastructural annihilation. Israeli drones hover over both Khan Younis and Kupwara. Facial recognition software developed in Tel Aviv is deployed in Srinagar.<\/p>\n
AI-driven profiling, biometric tracking, and predictive policing\u2014once tested on Palestinians\u2014are now part of the Indian security arsenal in Kashmir. This is not just military coordination; it is the globalization of impunity. Genocide is being franchised.<\/p>\n
And make no mistake: this is genocide. It is not always announced with gas chambers or mass graves. Sometimes it arrives via bureaucracy and silence, through economic strangulation and algorithmic invisibility. A people erased not only from geography, but from memory.<\/p>\n
Normalization of Atrocity
\nBoth Netanyahu and Modi understand that in the 21st century, atrocity does not need to be hidden\u2014it only needs to be reframed. The victims must be discredited, their suffering recoded. Muslims in Gaza are \u201cHamas sympathizers.\u201d Kashmiris are \u201cterror-adjacent.\u201d Once the label sticks, so does the justification. One drone strike becomes a strategy. Ten become a doctrine.<\/p>\n
The West, long complicit in Israel\u2019s impunity, now finds in India a profitable partner. Israel massacres civilians with American weapons. India does the same with Israeli tech. Meanwhile, the language of human rights is defanged, reduced to vague appeals to \u201crestraint\u201d and \u201cdialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Washington, London, and Paris, trade deals matter more than war crimes. The result? War criminals pose as visionaries. Ethnic cleansers lecture the world on democracy. And media conglomerates turn bloodshed into breaking news, stripped of history, ethics, or consequence.<\/p>\n
This is not just moral collapse\u2014it is market logic. Murder, when properly branded, is good for business.<\/p>\n
Escalation, then Retaliation<\/p>\n
But this time, Pakistan did not simply absorb the blow. On May 8, Islamabad launched precise counter-strikes against Indian military installations in Rajouri and Samba.<\/p>\n
This was not rhetorical posturing\u2014it was calculated signaling. A warning that any further adventurism would have consequences. It was battlefield diplomacy conducted at supersonic speed.<\/p>\n
And now, South Asia teeters on the precipice. Two nuclear states locked in a game of brinkmanship, each led by ideologues intoxicated with messianic visions. One misfire, one miscalculation, and the subcontinent could be reduced to ash. This is not alarmism\u2014it is arithmetic. The region is combustible. The leadership is combustible. And the world, as ever, is distracted.<\/p>\n
What Modi and Netanyahu are playing with is not just the fate of their enemies\u2014it is the fate of everyone.<\/p>\n
Hasbara Meets Hindutva<\/p>\n
Israel calls it hasbara\u2014the state\u2019s machinery of spin, euphemism, and denial. India has gone further. Under Modi, truth itself has been criminalized. Journalism is treason. Fact-checking is incitement. Dissent is anti-national. What began as a media campaign has metastasized into a surveillance state.<\/p>\n
In Modi\u2019s India, myth is law, and law is mythology. Anchors don\u2019t report\u2014they chant. Historians don\u2019t interpret\u2014they are hunted. Universities are not spaces for learning\u2014they are mines for loyalty. Hindutva is not a conservative ideology\u2014it is a supremacist theology. It imagines a Hindu state purified of difference: Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and dissenters are rendered pollutants.<\/p>\n
The Hindutva project, like Zionism, demands not merely submission but erasure. It seeks not just dominance but homogeneity. And in both India and Israel, the state is no longer an institution\u2014it is an altar.<\/p>\n
When Mourning is Resistance<\/p>\n
In Gaza, children are buried under collapsed concrete while Netanyahu tours military bases, grinning for cameras. In Bahawalpur, a child dies in a mosque, and India\u2019s television anchors hail a \u201csurgical success.\u201d In Kashmir, families mourn sons labeled as terrorists before their bodies are even recovered. This is not accidental. This is policy. Civilians are not collateral\u2014they are targets. Mourning itself becomes resistance, a subversive act against a state that demands silence.<\/p>\n
This is not war. It is ethnic cleansing with hashtags. It is the ritualized killing of an unwanted population, legitimized by religion, sanitized by media, and subsidized by global powers. To call it anything less is to collude in the crime.<\/p>\n
This is Not a Drill<\/p>\n
What is unfolding in Gaza and Kashmir is not a deviation from the international order\u2014it is its logical extension. Modi is not merely watching Netanyahu\u2014he is studying him, emulating him, and refining his playbook. Netanyahu is not merely killing Palestinians\u2014he is mentoring a global generation of despots. This is not an alliance. It is an ideology: high-tech fascism with sacred symbols and smart bombs.<\/p>\n
And just when the world appeared poised to plunge into the abyss, a ceasefire was declared on May 10. Both India and Pakistan agreed to halt further escalation. Enter Donald Trump, the self-anointed peacemaker, who promptly claimed credit for \u201cbringing calm to the subcontinent.\u201d That the fate of two nuclear nations could become fodder for a washed-up demagogue\u2019s victory lap is not just absurd\u2014it is obscene.<\/p>\n
But let us not be fooled. The ceasefire is not peace. It is a pause. The fires still smolder in Gaza. The surveillance towers still hum in Kashmir. And the ideology that fuels this machinery of death continues to metastasize.<\/p>\n
The Stage is Burning<\/p>\n
History will not be kind to those who watched and did nothing. To the diplomats who issued empty statements, to the media houses that parroted lies, to the citizens who turned away because the bodies were not white enough, not close enough, not human enough.<\/p>\n
This is a call to all who claim to care about justice: The hour is late. The victims are not symbols\u2014they are sons, daughters, families, futures. Gaza and Kashmir are not battlefields\u2014they are crime scenes. And unless we resist\u2014vocally, unapologetically, collectively\u2014we are not bystanders. We are accomplices.<\/p>\n
The next act may unfold in Karachi, Srinagar, or Rafah. But the stakes are already planetary. The question is no longer whether we will act\u2014but whether we will have the moral courage to interrupt the machinery of annihilation before it consumes us all.<\/p>\n
Because this is not the end of the play.<\/p>\n
This is the moment the audience decides whether to stand up\u2014<\/p>\n
Or to burn with the stage.<\/p>\n
The writer teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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