India Speaking Up For Israel Is A Refreshing Change In Its Foreign Policy

[Solomon2]

India Speaking Up For Israel Is A Refreshing Change In Its Foreign Policy
Aravindan Neelakandan - October 20, 2016, 1:12 pm

SNAPSHOT

It’s heartening to see that India has been steadily moving away from its Nehruvian vote-bank based myopic stand.

We would be living in a fool’s paradise if we continue to believe that by being anti-Israel, we could gather Arab support for Kashmir.
​

When UNESCO came out with one of the most venomously anti-Semitic resolutions in recent history, claiming no relation between Jews and Temple Mount in Jerusalem, it should have been déjà vu for the Hindus. To deny the connection of Temple Mount and Judaism is to negate the very existence of Jews as a spiritual nation.

It is the same feeling of pain when some academics tried to remove the word 'India' and 'Hinduism' from the school textbooks; the same feeling of betrayal when The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) under the UPA claimed in the court that there were no 'historical records to incontrovertibly prove the existence of the characters or the occurrence of the event' described in Ramayana; the same feeling of anguish when an academic mafia of Stalinist kind indulged in a false propaganda questioning the very connection of Ram to Ayodhya.

As 24 nations voted in support of this resolution that insulted the collective intelligence of all humanity, Israeli Prime Minister rightly called the entire proceedings 'theatre of the absurd'. Only six nations voted against the resolution. However, there are certain significant changes which some discerning eyes in the media have noted. Outgoing Foreign Ministry director- general of Israel Dore Gold had noted that the majority of the nations have either abstained or voted in favour of Israel than voting against Israel. He specifically noted that India has changed its stand from its traditional position of abstaining from voting. For an average Indian, it’s heartening to see that India has been steadily moving away from its Nehruvian vote-bank based myopic stand, though not animated by anti-Semitism per se always favoured anti-Semitic forces in UN.

This is the first time India is reversing its earlier stand to one more supportive of Israel. For example, India which had voted in 1975 favouring a UN General Assembly resolution (No.3379) equating Zionism with racism, reversed its stand and voted for repealing the same resolution in 1991. Of course, these are small steps, given the possibilities of lost decades. Yet it is a good start for India.

A strong schizophrenic element had characterised India’s Israeli policy. Nehru started this duplicity when he sought Israeli assistance in agricultural technologies barely a few months after voting against Israel in the United Nations. David Ben Gurion critically observed that the high moral principles advocated by Gandhi and Nehru were never applied to India's Israel policy. In private conversations high profile Indian diplomats, even of Nehruvian vintage, acknowledged India’s need for recognition and close cooperation with Israel. Prof P R Kumaraswamy (International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University) points out that Sardar K M Panikkar, India's first ambassador to China, felt that India should become 'more sympathetic toward Zionist aspirations in Palestine and even lamented India's belated recognition of Isarel' and yet in his published autobiography he had to sing 'a different tune and joined the official chorus against the formation of Israel’. Even Krishna Menon thought that India should have established ambassador level diplomatic relations with Israel soon after its recognition. (P R Kumaraswamy, India's Israel Policy, Columbia University Press, 2010)

Despite the artificial hostile-to-Israel foreign policy imposed on India by Nehruvians, history has made India and Israel share mutual moral and spiritual obligations. Despite all his posturing against Israel and his prioritised frenzy with projecting India as China’s international propaganda satellite, Nehru had to write letters to David Ben Gurion seeking military assistance against the Marxist aggressor in 1962. David Ben Gurion obliged. Lal Bahadur Shastri was also not averse to getting Israeli help during the 1965 war. During the Six-day war in 1967 Indira Gandhi had not moved decisively left and was probably following Shastri's policies. India helped Israel with 'badly needed spare parts for Israeli Mystere and Ouragan fighter aircraft and the AMX-13 tanks’. (Prithvi Ram Mudiam, Indian Power Projection in the Greater Middle East: Tools and Objectives, 2007)

In 1971 when the US and its allies were supporting a genocidal Pakistani regime and enforcing a ban on selling arms to India, it was a Polish Jew and an Auschwitz survivor who came to the rescue of India. During the virtual arms embargo against India, P N Haskar the ace Nehruvian, who would have rejoiced every time India voted against Israel in UN, had to turn to a Jew for help. The Jew was Shloma Zabludowicz - an industrialist and 'an important architect of Israel's armaments industry'. Zabludowicz went out of the way and talked to the Israeli government. Srinath Raghavan in his book 1971 A global History of the creation of Bangladesh(2013) writes:

Zabludowicz had already spoken to the Israeli government and was 'hopeful of airlifting ammunitions and mortars in September'. He also agreed to send Israeli instructors with the first lot. Zabludowicz did more than he had promised. He not only diverted the weapons produced for Iran to India, but also prevailed upon Tel Aviv to release additional quantities from the Israeli defence force's stocks. In fact, Israeli Prime Minister Gold Meir was eager to accede to Indira Gandhi's request. After the consignment was airlifted to India, she asked Zabludowicz "to inform the Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi that we believe she will know how to appreciate our help at a time when they were in difficulties in the past and our complying with their approach now”. A copy of Golda Meir's letter, duly translated into English by the Israeli consular in Helsinki, reached Indira Gandhi's desk in the last week of September. But Prime Minister Meir's hint about establishing diplomatic relations as a quid pro quo was politely ignored.

As India frees herself from the Nehruvian stranglehold on her foreign policies, in the domestic front, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pointed out that the surgical strikes carried out by Indian armed forces place them in league with the Israeli forces, legendary for their daredevil acts.

Predictably Pavlovian, the barons of old media establishment decried the comparison. India born American leftist journalist Siddharth Varadarajan in his article criticising Modi's comparison claimed that “the vast majority of Indians believe India should stand with the Palestinians in their just struggle”. Nothing can be further away from reality. As a test one can go to any tea shop in any part of India, except perhaps those zones where radicalised Islamists stalk, and start a conversation about the topic of terrorism. Five minutes into the conversation you will find Indians, irrespective of their religion or language, appreciate and admire Israel's bold stands on terrorism.

Varadarajan then unleashes the Kashmir bugbear. India standing with Israel would make the Islamic world compare the Kashmir problem with the Palestinian problem. This is the most deceitful argument put forth by the old media even as it should know that the ground reality is ironically different. In reality, decades of Indian support to Palestinians never once resulted in unqualified support for India in the Kashmir issue from the so-called Palestinian organisations. We would be living in a fool’s paradise if we continue to believe that by supporting the so-called Palestinians we could gather Arab support for Kashmir. No Arab country condemned either the 1971 genocide of Bengalis by Pakistan or the 1988 ethnic cleansing of Hindus from Kashmir.

Yasser Arafat did not hesitate to attend the Islamic Summit conference organised by Pakistan in 1974, despite his cordial relations with Indira Gandhi. He was also reportedly jubilant about the ‘Islamic nuclear bomb’ of Pakistan. Such consistent non-reciprocal gestures have frustrated sensible Indians. This was revealed soon after India established full diplomatic relations with Israel in January of 1993, by none other than J N Dixit, then foreign secretary of India. He bluntly asked, "What have the Arabs given us, if I may ask? Did they vote for us in the Kashmir issue? Were they supportive of us when we had the East Pakistan crisis?" (Kumaraswamy, P R “Israel-India Relations: Seeking Balance and Realism,” Israel Affairs, Autumn/Winter 2004)

Worse, the so-called Palestinian jihadists have used Azad Kashmir (Azad Kashmir) for terrorist training against Israel and pro-Palestinian propaganda nodes in various nations including the US also import jihadists to fight jihad in Kashmir. For example, Nabil Awqil who provided logistics for the notorious 'shoe bomber' in Israel, was originally trained in Azad Kashmir. Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a supposedly non-fundamentalist organisation for promoting a 'positive image of Islam in the US' was co-funded by Omar Ahmed who also co-founded Islamic Association for Palestine. Not only that the organisation often takes a pro-Hamas pro-Hezbollah stands, its employee Randall Ismail was indicted in 2003 for his role in a US-based jihad network that visited and supported terrorist camps in Pakistan which trained jihadists to fight in Kashmir. (Matthew Levitt & Dennis Ross, Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, Yale University Press, 2007) Islamist missionary organisations like Tablighi Jamaat, working in US had recruited and indoctrinated African-Americans and had them sent for Jihad in Kashmir. (For a detailed study see Alex Alexiev, Tablighi Jamaat: Jihad's Stealthy Legions, Middle East Quarterly Winter 2005, pp. 3-11) So essentially, India’s perceived closeness with Israel does make no difference in the clash of civilisations unleashed by jihadist forces against the Hindus and Jews.

Whatever cuckoo land India’s old media barons prefer to live in, Israeli commando operations like the one in Entebbe have set the standards for the expected state response to terrorism in common men and women. If the old media feels perturbed by Prime Minister’s eulogising of Indian military surgical strikes drawing parallel with the legendary prowess of Israeli military, then there is another comparison with Israel to which their attention should be drawn. A visiting missile technologist from India to Israel praised Israeli media for providing positive, spirit lifting news of the accomplishments of Israeli common citizens against the backdrop of daily terrorist attacks which Israelis face. He wanted the Indian media to emulate this aspect of Israeli media. His name was Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.

It is time the Indian media heed his advice.

Aravindan Neelakandan

Aravindan is a contributing editor at Swarajya.

 

[Indus Falcon]

Barbarians supporting barbarians is not surprising, it is to be expected

 

[MilSpec]

100% Agree with the writer. I have always maintained India needs to clearly back Israel on all forums.

 

[Rashid Mahmood]

Israel has always been the support behind india, specially against Pakistan.
What israel is doing in Paelstine, india is doing in Kashmir.

 

[Path-Finder]

As Modi Dumps Palestine at UN, His Praise for Israeli Army Does Indian Military No Credit

In his zeal to harvest political capital from the Indian army’s recent action targeting terrorists along the Line of Control, Modi has conveniently forgotten that the Israeli army’s ‘valour’ has been against people fighting foreign occupation.

File photo of Israeli police officers on the roof of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Credit: Reuters.

Israel is not India and Azad Kashmir is not Occupied Palestine or Lebanon – where the Israeli army regularly violates the United Nations charter and the laws of war to attack people fighting to end the foreign occupation of their homeland.

All of these distinctions seem to have been lost on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his zeal to harvest political capital from the Indian army’s recent action targeting terrorists along the Line of Control in Kashmir.

Speaking at a public function in Himachal Pradesh on Tuesday, Modi appeared to compare the Indian army’s targeted action along the LoC to the Israeli policy of targeted assassinations and full-fledged aggression against the people of Palestine and Lebanon.

“Our army’s valour is being discussed across the country these days. We used to hear earlier that Israel has done this. The nation has seen that the Indian Army is no less than anybody,” PTI quoted him as saying.

It is one thing for lay persons and analysts to romanticise Israeli military actions, and another for the prime minister of India to do so. Modi needs to remember that Israel is an occupying power in Palestine. Its status as an occupying power has been acknowledged by the United Nations. Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with the Syrian Golan Heights remain the last territories in the world formally considered to be under foreign occupation.

According to a unanimous resolution passed by India’s parliament, a major part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is under Pakistani occupation. Pakistan is to India what Israel is to the Palestinians – an occupying power. The fact is that whatever Israeli military action Modi finds praiseworthy has been undertaken in defence of an illegal occupation against weak and ill-equipped adversaries. Is it then not insulting to compare the Indian army’s strikes against the terrorist proxies of an occupying power (Pakistan) to Israeli operations against the Palestinians (and the Lebanese)? What makes the comparison even more odious is that the Israeli army has been frequently and credibly accused of committing war crimes. Does Modi not know any of this?

The Israelis have always sought to suggest that New Delhi and Tel Aviv are in the same boat when it comes to terror but the Indian side has resisted facile comparisons. When Silvan Shalom, who was Israel’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister at the time, met leaders of the BJP-led government in Delhi in February 2004, he argued that the fence India was building along the LoC was no different from the ‘security fence’ Israel had erected to ‘protect’ itself from terrorist attacks – in reality, a monstrous wall built on Palestinian land. Shalom’s hosts, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was prime minister at the time, heard him out but rejected the comparison. They refused his request that India join Israel in telling the International Court of Justice not to take up the ‘security fence’ matter. Similarly, his demand that India declare Hamas and Hizbollah as terrorist organisations was not accepted.

There was smart politics at play here – Vajpayee knew that whatever his or the RSS’s preferences may be, the vast majority of Indians believe India should stand with the Palestinians in their just struggle. But he also understood two other important points. First, that accepting Shalom’s suggestions would strengthen the hands of those in Kashmir who paint their state as another Palestine, and India as an occupying power – a state no different from Israel. And second, that Israel’s methods of fighting its foes were not particularly effective. As Shashank Joshi wrote last month, the targeted assassinations and surgical strikes Mossad and the Israeli military have resorted to in Lebanon and Gaza have not made Israel more secure or decimated or even weakened the capability or resolve of those fighting them. It is this failure that has driven the Israeli military towards more and more reckless – and illegal – methods that the world at large reviles and condemns.

Modi’s remarks may be poorly conceived but they come from the reflexive adulation the Sangh parivar drills into its cadres about Israel. It is not surprising that the RSS’s skewed worldview should find expression elsewhere too. On Thursday, the Ministry of External Affairs changed its stand on an important UN resolution condemning Israeli violations of international humanitarian law in the Occupied Territories, particularly East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Israel’s attempts to permanently change the status of the Occupied Territories by building settlements, barriers and interfering with water flows have been well documented. Over the past year, its aggressive efforts in and around Jerusalem to prevent Palestinian and Muslim access to holy places under occupation have been the subject of discussion at the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).

In April 2016, India joined 32 other countries on the Unesco general board to condemn Israel for its excavation and exclusion policies around the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Al-Haram Al-Sharif area, much to the anger of the Israeli government. But when a similar resolution was put to vote on October 18, the Indian delegate was instructed by the MEA to abstain. Since the text of the resolution was more or less identical, the only explanation for the change in vote is Israeli and US pressure.

The Netanyahu government’s spin on the resolution is to ignore the substantive demands it makes on Israel as the Occupying Power and focus on the use of the name ‘Al-Haram Al-Sharif’ to describe the area that Jews also revere as the Temple Mount. This, Israeli officials claim, is tantamount to denying the connection between the Temple Mount and Judaism.

In fact, it was in order to refute this diversionary Israeli argument that the latest resolution included a line “affirming the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions”.

India’s change of stand in a resolution that correctly calls out Israel for its violations of the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and a raft of other treaties is inexplicable from the perspective of statecraft. Along with Modi’s adulation for an army notorious for enforcing illegal occupations, the unwarranted abstention damages India’s reputation as a serious power – as well as its national interest.

These are the highlights of the resolution India abstained on, after voting for similar language in April:

• Deeply deplores the failure of Israel, the occupying Power, to cease the persistent excavations and works in East Jerusalem particularly in and around the Old City, and reiterates its request to Israel, the occupying Power, to prohibit all such works in conformity with its obligations under the provisions of the relevant UNESCO conventions, resolutions and decisions
• Strongly condemns the escalating Israeli aggressions and illegal measures against the Awqaf Department and its personnel, and against the freedom of worship and Muslims’ access to their Holy Site Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif, and requests Israel, the occupying Power, to respect the historic status quo and to immediately stop these measures; Firmly deplores the continuous storming of Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif by Israeli right-wing extremists and uniformed forces, and urges Israel, the occupying Power, to take necessary measures to prevent provocative abuses that violate the sanctity and integrity of Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif;
• Deeply decries the continuous Israeli aggressions against civilians including Islamic religious figures and priests, decries the forceful entering into the different mosques and historic buildings inside Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharifby different Israeli employees including the so-called “Israeli Antiquities” officials, and arrests and injuries among Muslim worshippers and Jordanian Awqaf guards in Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif by the Israeli forces, and urges Israel, the occupying Power, to end these aggressions and abuses which inflame the tension on the ground and between faiths;
• Deplores the military confrontations in and around the Gaza Strip and the civilian casualties caused, including the killing and injury of thousands of Palestinian civilians, including children, as well as the continuous negative impact in the fields of competence of UNESCO, the attacks on schools and other educational and cultural facilities, including breaches of inviolability of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools; Strongly deplores the continuous Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, which harmfully affects the free and sustained movement of personnel and humanitarian relief items as well as the intolerable number of casualties among Palestinian children, the attacks on schools and other educational and cultural facilities and the denial of access to education, and requests Israel, the occupying Power, to immediately ease this blockade;

http://thewire.in/74039/india-aband...mparing-surgical-strike-illegal-israeli-acts/

 

[Zain Malik]

Israel has always been the support behind india, specially against Pakistan.
What isreal is doing in Paelstine, india is doing in Kashmir.

The conclusion will also be the same.
Their destruction .

 

[duhastmish]

I really felt same. We need friends with common goals. Peace and destruction of oppression.
Israel is a hallmark for survival against odds. India must support them. They will appreciate since in world forum they have very limited open supporters.

 

[SQ8]

Anti-Muslim majority supporting another anti-muslim majority, and this is surprising based on the representation we have here from both nations?

Im sure the day the current attitude India decides to gas its Muslim population, the current attitude Israelis will be technical advisers on the right formula.

 

[!eon]

Pakistan was not even threat or hostile to Israel but they wanted to destroy Pakistani nuclear facilities
India-Israel Coopertaion is not new thing.

 

[[Bregs]]

Anti-Muslim majority supporting another anti-muslim majority, and this is surprising based on the representation we have here from both nations?

Im sure the day the current attitude India decides to gas its Muslim population, the current attitude Israelis will be technical advisers on the right formula.

well that day will never come bro, when Indian society as a whole has to even think about such a savagery

 

[T-123456]

100% Agree with the writer. I have always maintained India needs to clearly back Israel on all forums.

The first time i see India backing a country.

 

[SQ8]

well that day will never come bro, when Indian society as a whole has to even think about such a savagery

As a whole does not matter. The entirety of the Khmer Rouge was not savage. Just a significant percentage was. The rest of it simply was too meek to speak up.

Never is history is there a nation of Barbarians, but there have been countless barbarians who control nations.

 

[Yashal Jalil Chishti]

This is a proof that India is with all those who love war and love to kill innocent people
Indeed India is a country who support terrorism in every area of world.

 

[duhastmish]

Anti-Muslim majority supporting another anti-muslim majority, and this is surprising based on the representation we have here from both nations?

Im sure the day the current attitude India decides to gas its Muslim population, the current attitude Israelis will be technical advisers on the right formula.

It's never about Muslim or non Muslim when it's national engagement

Remember pak China relationship was never deterred even when they oppressed local Uighur Muslim population. You tend to forget their mistakes.

 

[CorporateAffairs]

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