When two tribes go to war...

Tehran University students, 1971.
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/xmjn15/
tehran_university_students_iran_1971/

Persia's love affair with the Jews dates back to 593 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar plundered Jerusalem and took the Jews as slaves to Baghdad. He attacked Jerusalem again ten years later, destroying the First Temple and completing their captivity. After spending seventy years in exile in Baghdad, Cyrus liberated them, allowing their return to their homeland. In gratitude for helping the Babylonians, Cyrus enabled the construction of their Second Temple.

Throughout the generations, as Persia was overrun by various empires, including the Abbasid Islamic Dynasty, the Jews remained part of the Persian diaspora during the glorious days of Islam. The Islamic invasion did cause some Jews and Parsees to flee their homeland to various places, including India. Nevertheless, the Persian-Jewish relationship persisted into modern times. The Islamic Empire would claim that the Jews were very content living under the Empire. However, in reality, it is anybody's guess if the present-day opinion of Muslims about Jews is anything to go by.

Iran opposed the Palestine Mandate that aimed to establish the Jewish state of Israel in 1948. Many Persian Jews migrated to the newly formed country of Israel. Interactions between Iran and Israel remained cordial, though they were mainly transactional. Iran was among the first countries in the world to recognise Israel as a sovereign nation. Israel secured oil and finances from Iran, as maintaining a friendly relationship with Iran made considerable sense. It is important to note that the Israelis' neighbours, all of whom were Arabs, were quite hostile. The Persians have always held a sense of superiority, believing themselves to be one step above the Arabs. Therefore, maintaining a good relationship with a major non-Arab, non-Sunni country was crucial.

In the early 1950s, Iranian Islamists criticised Iran's diplomatic relations with Israel and actively collected donations for the Palestinians. They were unhappy with the Shah's close connections to Israel. The Iranian defence system used Israeli arms and was involved in their wars with Iraq. Both countries were also deeply engaged in developing each other's nuclear facilities. All of this changed after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. 

Suddenly, Israel became a 'cancerous tumour' as mentioned by Ayatollah Ali Khameini in 2000 and should be wiped off the surface of the Earth, according to President Ahmadinejad in 2005. Iranian hostility towards Israel grew over the years, mainly via proxies, in Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthis. The climax of all these must surely be Hamas's kidnapping of Israelis at a music festival on October 7, 2023. Finally, a full-scale war between Iran and Israel broke out on June 13, 2025, when Israel conducted strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets. The world is once again at risk of a nuclear meltdown.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Love thy neighbour, they say!

Fauda (Chaos, Hebrew/Arab; 2015-2019)
(Miniseries S1-3)

Is it not ironic that the Western nations want to police the whole world but failed miserably at finding peace at the heart of the Judeo-Christian stronghold. It seems that the brothers of the Book perform poorly when it comes to showing brotherly love. Also funny that a place that four great religions of the world look up to as their holy land cannot be protected by their Protector. A land hardly larger than 30,000 square kilometres, but this piece of land had not seen peace since time immemorial. 

The feud has lasted so long that nobody can remember who drew first blood. Both parties, the Palestinians and the Israelis, claim legitimate historical rights on that piece of land. Looks like all that talk of the religion of peace, the religion of love and the religion of compassion is mere rhetoric. The reference to 'brotherhood' is only offered to the brethren of the same faith, not of the whole of mankind.

I am sure God must be in a quandary. It is like the old Indian saying or maybe an old movie dialogue. It is akin to asking a mother which child she wants to support; she would say, "you are asking me whether I love my right eye more than the left eye. I love them both." Probably that is why there are no permanent solutions here. Let both brothers fight it out till both exhausts each other. The trouble is that their course has sympathisers from people elsewhere. Everybody else is drawn into the bottomless wormhole. 

This miniseries shows, from an Israeli viewpoint, is about a group from an Israeli counter-terrorism unit in the Israeli Defence Force. They are often referred to as Mista'arvim, meaning living amongst Arabs. They speak Arabic and assimilate into the local population to collect intelligence on the latest Palestinian terrorist activities. In the series, we find a power struggle between the Palestinian Authority (PA), Hamas and the newbie around town, ISIS. It looks like PA wants to maintain law and order, but everyone else has their idea of which brand of Islam should prevail on their land. They want more possession of land, which they assert was theirs anyway, to start with. To die for such a course is divine; they have been indoctrinated and have the rest of Palestine (and the world) follow suit.

This is, of course, the Israeli perspective of things. The Palestinians should rebut with their own version of the ground situation, but then, there will be confusion on which version is acceptable. Each faction of society would insist theirs is correct and proclaim their claim is a pursuit worth dying for.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Like a surgeon! Rapid and precise.

Uri: The Surgical Strike (Hindi; 2019)


It happened a couple of times before. Rogue parties have often made mischiefs previously. Like the Malay proverb goes, 'Baling batu, sembunyi tangan' - the perpetrator would start trouble by throwing stones, but with a sleight of hand, he would fold his hands behind and join the crowd acting innocent. 

It is an exercise of futility cracking our heads, doing the conventional way, trying to be fair, exhausting all avenues in attempting to mete justice. Many a time, we have to depend on gut feeling and God-given intellect to deduce and do the right thing. Like the hand of a traditional surgeon, he uses his senses, makes a diagnosis, makes a precise surgical incision and removes the offending ailment and returns the patient back to health. Time is of the essence. Dilly dallying with formalities and pusillanimous inertia will just tip the feeble to the point of no return.

In recent history, at least twice the Israeli integrity was put to a challenge. In 1972 Munich Olympics, when a Palestinian terrorist group held Israeli athletes hostage, the German police killed five of the eight kidnappers. Hostages perished in the massacre. The prisoners were later exchanged when a Lufthansa flight was hijacked by the same group a month later. The Israelis did not wait for natural justice to take place. Neither did it remain idle for the international community to deliberate and drag its feet to condemn and advise. The following year, the Israeli Army retaliated by bombing Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. The Mossad hunted down to last remaining kidnapper and killed them in broad daylight in the 'Operation Wrath of God'. The last of the kidnappers died in a planted car bomb in 1988.

Another enviable rescue mission carried by the Israeli intelligence was 'Operation Entebbe'. An Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was rerouted to Entebbe, Uganda. The 100-over Israeli passengers were held, hostage. Israel managed to sneak in their commandos under the cloak of the night. How they outmanoeuvred the Ugandan radars (Idi Amin supported the terrorists) still remains an enigma till date. There are many unverified reports of how they deployed the expertise of Uri Geller and his psychic powers. In 90 minutes, the Israeli commandos killed all hijackers and rescued all but 3 of the 106 hostages.

Uri Geller - the spoon-bending psychic spy.

This 2019 film follows the same direction as many of the new movies that are coming out of Bollywood. It combines excellent cinematography with new young actors and a new narrative as told by the young minds of New India. 

The India-Pakistan enmity has been going on like forever. Pakistani dirty interference has been implicated in many upheavals and terrorist activities in India. This film is about one of them. When a military barrack in Uri, Jammu-Kashmir was attacked, and nineteen of Indians soldiers were killed, India had to rise to the occasion. This story is about how the Indian Army, with the help of the latest surveillance equipment, modern warfare machines, espionage and a little help from Pakistani turncoats, managed to hunt down the perpetrators of the Uri Massacre and flatten their launchpads in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK).

A high octane movie of high standards. The fighting scenes are believable. The actors are young and built well for their roles. The deployment of fighter planes and military strategies appear convincing enough. 4.5/5.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

It is all staged?

The Little Drummer Girl (Miniseries; 2018)

Shakespeare said that the world is a stage and that we all mere actors playing our roles. It is true. The things that are allegedly happening at this very moment are actually staged and real actors play the part.

This is the premise of this confusing spy saga which is based on John le Carre's novel of the same name. 

It tells the tale of a clandestine Israeli spy agency that, through its covert activities, nips troublesome anti-Israeli resistance at its bud. To infiltrate through the enemy lines, university students, activists and actors are recruited to act out their roles wholeheartedly. This indoctrination process is so intense that participants lose their grip on what is reality and what is not. They are sometimes needed to play the part of double-crossing agents. Their interaction with the 'enemies' open their realisation that the people on the other side of the divide have their point of view which also makes sense. 

The realisation may sometimes be too overwhelming that the actors may be knocked off their rocker.

For us, the spectators, the citizens of the world (i.e. the stage)are fed with a particular narrative as determined by the director. The director referred to here is that power that controls the media. They would decide the storyline, who is the good guy and who is the villain. They try to skew the people's mindset by emphasising what matters and what is newsworthy. The lure of romance and the captivating drama of Hollywood, new world order is put forth.

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/riflerangeboy/