India, Israel and Kargil

Save the Children has estimated over 21,000 children to be lost or under the rubble in Gaza, as “the latest displacements caused by the offensive in Rafah have separated more children and further increased the strain on families and communities.” A UN-backed panel of experts has found that almost half a million people in Gaza face starvation, and one in five households go whole days without food.

The chief of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Rafah described Rafah City as a “ghost town… you see very few people, high levels of destruction”. The UNRWA chief has decried a near total breakdown of public order and safety, making aid work impossible, adding that only two out of sixteen countries have resumed UNRWA funding.

The Gaza War may not have spilled out into the region, yet but it is boiling at the brinks. The unequaled suffering of the people of Gaza is a scathing price for their aspired freedom, a price perhaps only they are willing to pay. Uniquely so, present at the heart of human civilisation, Palestine presents a living model of genocide, apartheid, human rights violations and seven decades of oppression and abuse — an exhibit humanity sees everyday and does nothing about it! This is cold, wretched liberal, capitalist, individualistic indifference, a global pandemic we all share. But some perhaps more than others are not sick of it, they cherish it!

Among those are Israel’s western allies that give it funds, weapons and political backing in international forums. Right from the Balfour Agreement (1917) to date, they have backed the Zionist Project of stealing the land of Palestine from its rightful owners, and putting on a profane display of continuous persecution of a Muslim community in the heart of the Arab world, day in day out. This cannot be deemed a nostalgia caused by the religious underpinnings of the secular West. It is by far a conscious criminal act of evil against a targeted section of humanity — an evil that can easily be undone if the will for it be.

But this burden of guilt borne by the white Christian West is perhaps so attractive for someone in the East — i.e. India — that they have come running to share it.

Modi, as soon as winning a third term, had to come to the aid of hug-buddy Netanyahu. News is out of former Israeli ambassador to India Daniel Carmon claiming the India is supplying drones and artillery to Israel, in return of their favour in the Kargil War (1999) when Israel had done the same for them. One asks: what does India gain by becoming a part of a genocide that infuriates 1.9 billion Muslims worldwide, 204 million of whom live inside India? One asks: was such an act not evitable? Or was it inevitable, for India?

Inevitable because Israel and India share, perhaps not religion, but ideology, a sinister one. Time and again Modi and Netanyahu have expressed solidarity in the fact that they are both suffering from the same scourge of terrorism that India faces in Kashmir and Israel at the hands of the Palestinians.

In 2018, at Modi’s historical visit to Israel, Israeli Foreign Ministry Mark Sofer said, “I really don’t see any difference between the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Hamas.” Immediately after the Feb 2019 Pulwama attack, Netanyahu expressed his solidarity with Modi again saying “the Jewish nation stood behind India.” The Israeli envoy, Dr Ron Malka, then stated that “there is no limit” to the Israeli assistance to India, “we share our technique because we really want to help our really important friend.”

On Oct 10, three days after the Gaza attack, Modi called Netanyahu saying that he was deeply shocked and that “people of India stand firmly with Israel in this difficult hour. India strongly and unequivocally condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations”. Here ‘people of India’ are the extremist far-right Hindutva lovers expressing unity with Israel’s extremist far-right. And it’s not just Kargil where they have been collaborating, Israel has provided military assistance to India in the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars too.

In 2014, India and Israel signed agreements on ‘Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, Cooperation in Homeland and Public Security, and Protection of Classified Material’ and working groups regarding border management, internal security and public safety, police modernisation and capacity building for combating crime, crime prevention and cybercrime were established.

Since then, and especially after the abrogation of Article 370, Indian counterterrorism has increasingly imitated tactics used by Israel against Palestinians. These include surveillance of social media; installing CCTV cameras in schools across Kashmir; use of pellet guns; humiliating house searches in the middle of the night; and search and cordon operations.

Now in returning all those favours, how far can India go. Few months back Modi also offered 100,000 Indian construction workers to replace Palestinian workers in Israel. Just imagine how the Palestinians would feel about that; surely it would be clear to them, whose side India is on. Decisively so, India is on the side of Israel, the US, the West. And that is decisively the side opposite to that of the Russians, the Chinese, the Persians and increasingly so the Arabs — the very wrong side of history!

India has proven that as a nation it stands with genocide and oppression; that as a political entity it lacks the wisdom to appropriate friendship and enmity in the right places; that as a section of humanity it is unable to stand the moral stature required of great people with great civilisational heritage.

Is it lust or stupidity? Is it the unfruitful ambition to become a regional power? Or is it the collective nostalgia of the people who have allowed their fanatic far-right to drag them away from a future with the Global South, away from a coming century of prosperity and towards a confrontation with Asian neighbours — a confrontation with the BRICS friends and the Arabs — in a bid to partake in the power the West has, a power they are losing fast?