Why does India court Israel?

-Dr. Abdul Ruff

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No one country does anything just for fun and every nation seeks benefits from its foreign links.  India found a useful ally in Israel in state terror operations, rather too late.

It is generally believed that many countries seeking favors from USA first buys terror goods from Israel so that it helps them connect with USA because of Tel-Aviv’s overt and covert links with Washington and Pentagon. India had to somehow  become in the US “good books”  to advance its  military and economic interests globally since India was viewed as an enemy  by Americans for its close military links with Russia, with which Washington successfully fought a Cold War and which was disintegrated by America though concerted strategic operations in and around Russia. As Moscow refuses to play the rule it used to play, India thought it should use Israel by purchasing its terror goods to come closer to USA.

Indian idea for reaching “USA via Israel” worked well, at least until now. On many occasions the visiting Israeli leaders even made fun of Indian “idea” saying those interested in US should approach it directly without taking the Israel route. India used its aggressive Hindutva forces that have common fascist instincts with Israel to “talk” to Jewish regime, although officially India supported Palestine. One may call this as double-speaking feature of Indian diplomatic system but India would say that is a part of triclomacy. 

India has gained a lot from its Israeli connection. Apart from advanced weaponry, technology and intelligence sharing, India also got support of the dreadful Israeli  intelligence agency Mossad and powerful Israeli lobbyists operating in Washington and elsewhere to work for India and against Pakistan and Kashmir. Indian strategic analysts say New Delhi has reaped only benefits from its Zionist links and it is high time it abandoned the Palestine baggage to get into US-Israel inner circle for more benefits, as Palestinians would not give anything concrete to India. 

Like capitalist countries that need each other, all colonialist nations also cooperate with one another, coordinating their exploitative and criminal operations. But Indo-Israeli ties are meant for more than that. Apart from latest weapon systems, India seeks Israeli support for consolidating its strategic arrangement with USA.

India’s fellow colonialist power Israel is way ahead of India in all respects. But both kill Muslims in their respective vicinity occupied by its military by calling them “terrorists”.  Imperialist US super power regulates all terrocracies.

It is no more a joke that India sustains its global ambitions and continues to dream to be a veto power on the strength of its fast growing population, economic growth, military capability including nuclear arsenals and above all its status as a colonialist power, recklessly occupying neighboring Jammu Kashmir.

Anti-Islamism, Islamophobia and state Hindutva

Anti-Islamism and Islamophobia have brought India and Israel together. India and Israel hate Islam and Muslims. India hates Islam and Muslims because it has tow Muslim neighbors who do not obey New Delhi instructions like Bhutan does. Israel hates Islam and Muslims because it is unable to silence the Palestinians whose lands Israeli military occupies, killing Muslims in a routine manner on some pretext or other, the operations are backed by USA and Europe. 

India occupies parts of neighboring Jammu Kashmir and ruthlessly kill Kashmiri Muslims in a sustained manner.  Neither USA nor Europe nor UNSC condemns the atrocities committed in Kashmir for years now, allowing Indian military and police to deal with Kashmiris they way they think fit. 

Already over 100,000 Kashmiris have been slaughtered by India but UN pretends it does not and cannot see anything

India courts Israel by purchasing its weapons to make an unwilling Kashmir to  support its brutal occupation.

International community condemns the fascist Israeli occupation of West bank and regular attacks on Gaza strip to kill Muslims and confiscate their remaining lands for more Jewish colony constructions.

Public opinion in India remains divided, however, and Indians of all stripes have expressed horror at the Israeli siege of Gaza. But the extent of public support in India for Israel’s current offensive would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

Inspired by Zionism, RSS leader Savarkar believed that Hindus and Jews shared a history of oppression at the hands of Muslims, and he underlined his support for the Zionist cause. "If the Zionists’ dreams were realized, if Palestine became a Jewish state, it would gladden us almost as much as our Jewish friends." 

Under Modi’s leadership, India seeks to build an even closer friendship with Israel, no matter what degree of devastation is unleashed in Gaza this summer.

Fascism is universal and spreads like venom in global scenario. Both India and Israel with common anti-democratic ideology have a common political platform. 

Anti-Islamism is the reason for the unity among India, Israel and USA, Russia, china and many other western/eastern nations.

Former Indian PM Indira Gandhi had instructed the Indian premier intelligence agency RAW to maintain contacts with Mossad and Israel. That speaks  volumes of  designs of Indian policy for Mideast.  

Quiet policy shift benefits

India enacted a policy shift towards Mideast, especially Israel without in fact making any announcement.

India is too clever in not only identifying new allies like a criminal regime called Israel that kills even children in Palestine, but also in not antagonizing big powers by exposing all terror operations the NATO seems to have been undertaking, killing millions of Muslims in Islamic world mainly because India also considers Muslims as a problem in Hindu dominated nation where Muslims are being targeted, injured, killed, insulted. India used the Sept-11 hoax to its own advantage. 

India’s foreign policy shift on Israel began with the international impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Non-alignment and anti-colonial solidarity seemed moth-eaten in a world of unrivaled American power and triumphant capitalism. India pivoted, aligning itself more closely with the United States. It also began to strengthen ties with Israel, with both countries exchanging ambassadors in 1992.

On September 17, 1950, India officially recognized the State of Israel. In the 1950s, Israel was permitted to open a consulate in Bombay (now Mumbai). However, the Nehru government did not want to pursue full diplomatic relations with Israel as it supported the Palestinian cause, and believed that permitting Israel to open an embassy in New Delhi would damage relations with the Arab world.

From India's recognition of Israel in 1950 to the early 1990s, the relationship with remained informal in nature. India's opposition to official diplomatic relations with Israel stemmed from both domestic and foreign considerations. Domestically, politicians in India feared losing the Muslim vote if relations were normalized with Israel Additionally, India did not want to jeopardize the large amount of its citizens working in the Arab Gulf states, who were helping India maintain its foreign-exchange reserves. India's domestic need for energy from Arab world was another reason for the lack of normalization of ties with Israel, in terms of safeguarding the flow of oil from Arab nations. 

India’s engagement with Israel has grown substantially in the last two decades on military, scientific, commercial and agricultural matters. The affinity has been less ideological than pragmatic, each side understanding the other’s needs. Israel remains uncomfortable about India’s close ties with Iran, just as India looks warily at Israel’s relationship with China. Pakistan never criticizes Israel for its inhuman attacks on Gaza children. India uses Israeli guns to kill Kashmiri Muslims. There have been no serious attempts by the Arab world to put pressure on Pakistan to reign in the cross-border insurgency in Kashmir. India said it was being disappointed by the Arab world’s simplistic position on the thorny issue of Kashmir.

India's foreign policy goals and alliances also proved problematic to formal relations with Israel, including India's support for the pro-Palestine Liberation Organization Non-Aligned Movement, India's tilt towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and India's desire to counter Pakistan's influence with the Arab states.

India says it has received no worthwhile backing from the Arab countries in the resolution of problems it faces in its neighborhood, especially Kashmir where Arabs take the Pakistani side.

Public opinion in India remains divided, however, and Indians of all stripes have expressed horror at the Israeli siege of Gaza. But the extent of public support in India for Israel’s current offensive would have been unimaginable a decade ago. As India and Israel speak for each other in controlling the nations they occupy, today India offers just periodic lip service to the Palestinian plight and supports Palestine in order to sustain trade relations with Arab nations.

India, known for double-talks, now supports Israel more than Palestinians in order to promote the national military interests. A burgeoning strategic partnership with Israel matters more to India than reflexive solidarity with the Palestinian cause. India backed a call for a United Nations Human Rights Council investigation into Israel’s ongoing onslaught in Gaza last week when the United States opposed the resolution. But that was a largely symbolic vote not in favor of a fellow colonialist Jewish regime. At home, the newly elected government led by Narendra Modi’s Hindutva ultra nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) blocked parliamentary votes to condemn Israeli actions. A colonialist nation as part of US led imperialist system of  rule, cannot oppose any other colonist regime and therefore Indian parliament was allowed to criticize Israeli crimes against humanity.

Until the end of the Cold War, India had maintained consistent support for Palestinians. Mahatma Gandhi had poured scorn on the idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East. . India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, voted against Israel joining the United Nations in 1949. And the Nehruvian principle of solidarity with anti-colonial causes guided Indian foreign policy for much of the 20th century. In 1974, India became the first non-Arab state to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the official representative of Palestinians. It treated Israel with much the same diplomatic disdain it reserved for apartheid South Africa.

In 2000, Jaswant Singh became the first Indian Foreign Minister to visit Israel. Following the visit, the two countries quickly set up a joint anti-terror commission to pursue military trade. .In 2003, Ariel Sharon was the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit India.

In early 2006 Indian Congress government ministers Sharad Pawar, Kapil Sibal and Kamal Nath visited Israel. Former Gujarat Chief Minister and the current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi has also visited Israel.  In May 2014 after victory of Narendra Modi in 2014 general election Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu personally congratulated Modi.^[49] Also Narendra Modi met his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu in New York on the side line of UN General assembly during his US visit in 2014  and the same year former Israeli President Shimon Peres visited India.

Pakistan believes intelligence relations between India and Israel threatened Pakistani security. Israel moved very cautiously and used US-Pakistan card to woo India.  Some even saw the growing Indo-Israeli ties at as an echo of India’s own confrontations with Pakistan as New Delhi perhaps thinks that Islam is exclusive Pakistani religion. Pakistani regime thinks if one takes Islam out of Pakistan and makes it a secular state; it would collapse.

On demand from USA and on its own, Israel also provided India with crucial information during its multiple wars.  After decades of non-aligned and pro-Arab policy, India formally established relations with Israel in January 1992 and ties between the two nations have flourished since, primarily due to common strategic interests and security threats. 

Now India’s defenders of Israel and its crimes see both nations engaged in a common conflict against so-called “Islamist extremism”, placing Hamas in a continuum that runs all the way to South Asia.

They mean business

Israel now ranks second only to Russia as the biggest supplier of military equipment to India. The outgoing Israeli ambassador Alon Ushpiz last June hailed his country’s relationship with India as one in which two intimate partners who trust each other start thinking of “challenges together and solutions together and what follows together.”

Two decades ago, India refused even to keep an embassy in Israel. But where protests and public denunciations of Israeli excesses became just routine, today many Indian and Jewish commentators see India’s traditional support for Palestinians as “anachronistic and inimical” to the so-called national interest.

The earliest signs of collaboration came during the 1962 Sino-Indian war, when Israel gave India military aid. Israel also aided India during the two wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971. India reciprocated during the Six-Day War in 1967 by providing Israel with spare parts for Mystere and Ouragan aircraft, as well as AX-13 tanks

The two countries enjoy an extensive economic, military, and strategic relationship. India is the largest buyer of Israeli military equipment and Israel is the second-largest defense supplier to India after Russia. At the 2009 Aero India trade show held in Bangalore, the Israeli arms company Rafael won a $1 billion contract that year to provide India with surface-to-air missile systems, and along with other Israeli companies it has supplied New Delhi with an estimated $10 billion in military gear over the last decade.

Business and technological ties are also growing, and India and Israel recently agreed to set up a $40 million India-Israel cooperation fund to promote joint scientific and technological collaborations. Relationships have been defined by defence deals and the 38,000 mostly young Israelis who visit India each year to de-stress after their compulsory two-three years of military service. The traffic isn’t all one-way though, more than 40,000 Indians visited Israel in 2013, the largest number of tourists from an Asian country.. 

The highlight of the partnership was Israel’s supply of artillery shells during the Kargil war, when India faced a shortage. In the late 1990s, a crucial defence deal was the Indian purchase of Barak 1, an air-defence missile, bought specifically for its capability to intercept US-made Harpoon missiles deployed by Pakistan. India’s imports of unarmed vehicles have almost all been from Israel. Of 176 UAVs purchased from Israel, 108 are Searcher UAVs and 68 are Heron UAVs.

From 1999 to 2009, the military business between the two nations was worth around $9 billion. Military and strategic ties between the two nations extend to intelligence sharing on terrorist groups and joint military training.  As of 2013, India is the third-largest Asian trade partner of Israel, and tenth-largest trade partner overall. In 2013, bilateral trade, excluding military sales, stood at $4.39 billion. As of 2015, the two nations are negotiating an extensive bilateral free trade agreement, focusing on areas such as information technology, biotechnology, and agriculture.

In 1997, Israel's President Ezer Weizman became the first head of the Jewish state to visit India. He met with Indian President Shankar Dayal Sharma, Vice President K R Narayanan and Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda. Weizman negotiated the first weapons deal between the two nations, involving the purchase of Barak 1 vertically-launched surface-to-air (SAM) missiles from Israel. The Barak-1 has the ability to intercept anti-ship missiles such as the Harpoon. The purchase of the Barak-1 missiles from Israel by India was a tactical necessity since Pakistan had purchased Lockheed P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft and 27 Harpoon sea-skimming anti-ship missiles from the USA.

Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd signed a US$2.5 billion deal with India in 2007 to develop an anti-aircraft system and missiles for the country, in the biggest defence contract in the history of Israel at the time. 

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and Israel in 1992, bilateral trade and economic relations have progressed rapidly. From a 200 million dollars in 1992 (primarily of diamonds), Indo-Israeli trade has increased sharply reaching US$ 4747.1 million in 2010.  In 2010, India stood at the sixth place in terms of Israel’s trade partner countries and the third largest trade partner in Asia after China and Hong Kong (trade data includes diamonds) and remained a ‘focus’ country of the Israeli Government for increased trade effort. India purchased 50 Israeli drones for $220 million in 2005. India was considering buying the newer Harop drone. India is also in the process of obtaining missile-firing Hermes 450s

In 2015 a delegation from Israel's Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs visited India, led by former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold. Shared strategic interests were discussed, including combating radical Islam. Indian external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) had clandestine links with the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence agency. This was suggested as a countermeasure to military links between that of Pakistan and China, as well as with North Korea. Israel was also concerned that Pakistani army officers were training Libyans and Iranians in handling Chinese and North Korean military equipment

Major exports from India to Israel include precious stones and metals, chemical products, textile and textile articles, plants and vegetable products, mineral products, rubber and plastic products, base metals and machinery. Major exports from Israel to India include precious stones and metals, chemical and mineral products, base metals, machinery, and transport equipment.

While India’s exports to Israel in areas other than diamonds have increased over the years, Diamonds still constituted around 49% of the bilateral trade in the year 2010.

Iran

Iran has been a major target of Israel and it tires all tricks to make Iran and enemy of the Western powers but has failed as West signed, ignoring all protests from Israel against any deal with Iran,  an agreement on Iranian nuclear issue. Israel expected Indi a to join to fix Iran but also failed as India does not want to strain relations with a nation that supplies oil.  

Israel is unhappy that Russia, an ally of india, has reached a new agreement with Iran to supply that nation with the S-300 integrated air defense systems. Under the new deal, Moscow will supply a version of the powerful surface-to-air missile system to Tehran.

Iran is suing Russia over a previous $800 million sale in 2007 of five battalions worth of the S-300PMU-1 missile systems in the International Court of Arbitration. Moscow suspended that deal in 2011 after the UNSC imposed sanctions on Iran over its nuclear activities. Manufacturer Almaz-Antey still builds the S-300PMU-2 Favorit and the S-300VM—also known as the Antey-2500. Both have a range of more than 120 miles and can hit targets as high as 100,000ft. The weapons can engage half-a-dozen or more targets simultaneously. Either version of the weapon is extremely capable and could render entire swaths of Iran nearly invulnerable to attack via conventional strike aircraft.

The S-300 series is a deadly threat to everything except the most advanced stealth fighters and bombers. The problem is further compounded by the fact that the S-300 system is mobile—and can move at a moment’s notice.

Upon West-Iran nuclear deal, Israel seems to have stopped threatening Iran with terror attacks as it does in Gaza strip.

Moreover, Israel is annoyed that in a symbolic gesture India joined others BRICS nations in voting at the United Nations Human Rights Council for a probe into the alleged human rights violation in Gaza. 

Politico-ideological links

India’s resurgent right-wing Hindutva is far more ideologically sympathetic to Israel. Prime Minister Modi, then-chief minister of Gujarat with a reputation as an anti-Muslim firebrand, visited Israel in 2006. India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj insisted in July that “there is absolutely no change in India’s policy towards Palestine, which is that we fully support the Palestinian cause while maintaining good relations with Israel.” It’s a policy shared by all Indian governments of the past 20 years.  The new Internet army of right-wing Indians that supported Modi’s election has mobilized in support of Israel.

As India looks to use Israel as a tool to make Iran come closer to India, Indian PM Narendra Modi has announced he would makes a trip to Israel sometime later this year as the first Indian Prime Minister to visit, formalizing a relationship often conducted behind closed doors, clandestine meetings and secret agreements.

PM Modi in fact follows the footsteps of Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, belonging to Congress party, making it, rather competing for, a bipartisan trip to Israel.  Already India has changed its pro-Palestine policy amending it to be neutral and see its Israeli connection as an inevitable corollary to the convergence of the ideologies of Hindutva and Likud. In its ties India tires to find common ideological roots of fascism in Israel.

Several ministerial and high-level official visits to Israel precede Modi’s forthcoming tour. These include visits by L.K Advani, former Home Minister/Deputy PM in 2000 and Home Minister Rajnath Singh in November 2014.

Israel has also pledged support to the ‘Make in India’ mission in the defence sector.

So, the impression gained that Indo-Israeli relations are merely a RSS-BJP maneuvering is a not tenable as it is Indian government that seeks ties with Israel. Palestine has become an irritation the growing military ties- the RSS-JP is just a tool to fool Islamic world, especially Arab nations.

The military ties have grown so much  that if India stops buying Zionist terror goods, Israel can hit back India very harshly.

Since India needs Israel more than the other way round, the relationship cannot but stay on, if not advance further. India has no reasons to abruptly cut the Zionist links now or in the near future.