cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/30754
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to travel to Israel on Wednesday, February 25. During his visit, Modi is expected to meet his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, address the Israeli parliament (Knesset), and sign deals which will further intensify the security cooperation between the two countries during his two-day visit. Modi became the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel in 2017.
His visit has been met with strong opposition by opposition parties and civil society groups in India who question the objectives and timing of the trip.
Members of the Indian parliament’s standing committee on external affairs also questioned the timing of Modi’s visit to Israel on Monday.
Israel is currently facing widespread condemnation for the continuation of its genocidal attacks in Gaza and Lebanon in complete violation of ceasefire agreements. The official death toll in Gaza (widely recognized as an undercount) has surpassed 70,000, and continues to climb, and millions have been displaced across Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria from Israel’s relentless attacks over the last two and a half years. Meanwhile, Israel is making fresh attempts to annex the occupied West Bank and has threatened involvement in yet another war with Iran.
India itself issued an advisory to its citizens to leave Iran immediately on Monday, fearing a possible US strike there may lead to a regional war.
Iran has already declared that if it is subjected to a strike Israel and other US military installations in the region will be legitimate targets.
From anti-colonialism to pro-Zionism
Indian People in Solidarity with Palestine (IPSP), a group of civil society and political parties, protested against Modi’s visit in several cities last week, denouncing the country’s warming up to Israel and its shift away from its expressed commitments to anti-colonialism.
India was one of the few countries to vote against the UN partition plan for Palestine in 1947. It had advocated a federal Palestinian state with autonomy to Jewish and Arab regions instead. This was immediately after its independence from British colonial occupation.
India was also among one of the first countries to recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. The PLO opened one of its first diplomatic missions in the world in 1974 in India.
In 1988, India was one of the first non-Arab states to recognize Palestinian statehood.
India was one of the few countries which resisted recognition of Israel and even refused to maintain any formal diplomatic relations for decades after its formation in 1948.
The South Asian nation only formally recognized Israel in September 1950. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were established only in the post-Cold War period in January 1992 when India shifted away from non-alignment and adopted a neoliberal, pro-US foreign policy.
After the first National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government came to power under the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1998, relations between Israel and India accelerated. India soon became one of the largest buyers of its military equipment in the world.
Prabir Purkayastha, founding editor of NewsClick, in an interview with Peoples Dispatch, had termed the intensification of relations with Zionist Israel under the ultra-right-wing, Hindu-supremacist BJP as an ideological commitment.
This explains the open embrace of Israel and its Zionist stances since Modi came to power in 2014, with BJP hegemony in Indian politics.
Open embrace of Zionism
Though India still maintains its support for a two-state solution and pays occasional lip service to its commitment to anti-colonialism, international law, and the UN Charter, it has increasingly distanced itself from all actions pushing towards their realization.
India under Modi has largely maintained silence on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, ignored the occupation and apartheid practices in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and abstained on various resolutions critical to the Israeli genocide or demanding a ceasefire.
A major reflection of the Modi government’s reluctance to question Israel’s complete contempt towards international laws and the UN charter was visible when it refused to even condemn its unilateral attacks on Iran in June last year.
India refrained from criticizing Israeli violations of Iranian sovereignty and UN charter commitments and merely expressed “concerns” over it.
Today, India has developed a very close strategic relationship with Israel. Several of its defense manufactures, such as Elbit Systems and Rafael, have established joint ventures with Indian companies, such as Adani and Tata, to manufacture military equipment in India.
India is currently Israel’s second largest trading partner in Asia with a bilateral trade of over USD 6.5 billion in 2024.
After October 7, when Israel revoked work permits for 150,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, India emerged as one of the major providers of the labor force to Israel. Today thousands of Indians are working in Israel despite the war-like situation there, largely as a replacement for Palestinians.
Even during the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, when Israeli ministers, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich were sanctioned by even its close European allies and declared war criminals by the ICC with pending arrest warrents, India welcomed Smotrich to sign various trade and investment deals in September of last year.
Left parties in India have termed the growing defense and strategic relations between India and Israel as sponsoring Zionist occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine.
M A Baby, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), reacting to Modi’s visit to Israel amidst the ongoing genocide in Gaza, called it a betrayal of “India’s anti-colonial legacy” and longstanding support to Palestinians right to self determination. He also called it an “unholy alliance” between Modi and “war criminal” Netanyahu “an indelible blot on the nation’s soul.”
Former union minister and now head of the communication of the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC), Jairam Ramesh, has termed the Modi government’s policies towards Palestine as “cynical and hypocritical.” He questioned the “statements on its commitments to the cause of Palestinians” when in reality India under Modi fails to question Zionist crimes.
Modi’s visit to Israel makes a statement that such criticisms have failed to have any effect on his government’s approach to Israel.
The post Modi’s visit to Israel and India’s shift away from anti-colonial foreign policy appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.
From Peoples Dispatch via This RSS Feed.