Robert Fisk: Israel’s fingerprints are all over India’s escalating conflict with Pakistan
India was Israel’s
largest arms client in 2017, paying £530m for Israeli air defence, radar
systems and ammunition, including air-to-ground missiles – most of them tested
during Israel’s military offensives against Palestinians and targets in Syria. Israel itself is
trying to explain away its continued sales of tanks, weapons and boats to
the Myanmar military
dictatorship - while western nations impose sanctions on the government which
has attempted to destroy its minority and largely Muslim
Rohingya people. But Israel’s arms trade with India is legal, above-board and much advertised by
both sides. The Israelis have
filmed joint exercises between their own “special commando” units and those
sent by India to be trained in the Negev desert, again with all the
expertise supposedly learned by Israel in Gaza and other
civilian-thronged battlefronts.
At least 16 Indian
“Garud” commandos – part of a 45-strong Indian military delegation – were for a
time based at the Nevatim and Palmachim air bases in
Israel. In his first visit to India last year – preceded by a trip to Israel by
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi
Israeli prime minister... Brussels researcher Shairee Malhotra,
whose work has appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz,
has pointed out that India has the world’s third largest Muslim population
after Indonesia and Pakistan – upward of 180 million people. “The India-Israel
relationship is also commonly being framed in terms of a natural convergence of
ideas between their ruling BJP and Likud parties,” she wrote last year. Hindu nationalists had
constructed “a narrative of Hindus as historically victims at the hands of
Muslims”, an attractive idea to those Hindus who recall partition and the
continuing “turbulent relationship” with Pakistan. In fact,
as Malhotra pointed out in Haaretz, “Israel’s biggest
fans in India appear to be the Internet Hindus who primarily love Israel for
how it deals with Palestine and fights Muslims.”
Malhotra has
condemned Carleton University professor Vivek Dehejia for
demanding a “tripartite” alliance between India, Israel and the US – since they
have all suffered “from the scourge of Islamic terrorism”. In fact, by the end
of 2016, only 23 men from India had left to fight for Isis in
the Arab world although Belgium, with a population of only half a million
Muslims, produced nearly 500 fighters. Malhotra’s argument
is that the Indian-Israeli relationship should be pragmatic rather than
ideological... read more:
