The Indian right-wing has long admired Israel. This was highlighted by anti-Palestinian misinformation put out by Indians in the wake of the October 7, 2023 massacre and Israel’s ensuing war. For many, the coming together of the Indian and Israeli right-wing was based on mere anti-Muslim prejudice. There may be an element of truth to that, and there is precedent. Efraim Halevy, the former Mossad chief, documented in Man in the Shadows how Ariel Sharon had advocated (though it was rejected) arming the Serbian genocidaire, Slobodan Milosevic, because both countries were fighting the same enemy.
But there has also been an additional aspect of the right-wing’s admiration of Israel – which is that no matter what Israel did, however many laws it flouted, it seemed to get away with it, often without even a slap on the wrist. This startling impunity was something long admired, and one that India’s extremists also hoped to emulate. Modi’s speeches after the Balakot strike, statements about murdering people in Pakistan and overseas, and the slogan of “ghar mein ghus ke mara” echo Israel’s history of (not very) secret murders in other countries.
The naive understanding was that Israel’s value as a key ally in West Asia for the US and European countries, its vibrant economy, and the logic of the neverending “War on Terror” with its anti-Muslim rhetoric was what allowed for this. If such was the case, India could replicate all such values and enjoy a similar impunity. After all, India is a frontline state in the US and its allies’ confrontation with China, it has one of the biggest economies in the world, and has been touting its own version of the “War on Terror” for far longer than the US.
What most Indians – of whatever persuasion – do not understand is how support for Israel is not so much an international issue as a domestic one for the US and Europe. Much of this stems from the horror of the Nazi actions in World War II which were unprecedented in world history. Other horrors and mass killings, even genocides (though the term was only created after World War II) had preceded the extermination campaign of the Nazi state, true enough, but the peculiar specificity, the modern techniques used based on centuries of prejudice made this a very European crime. It destroyed the credibility of European claims to civilisation under which it has colonised and ruled the world.
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The rhetoric used to condemn the Nazi regime is evocative of that, the claims of barbarity, of it being not-Western, all reveal a desire to insulate the “West” from what was a quintessentially “Western” crime. The attitude of the United States – with its own deep history of anti-Semitism with organisations like the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan – as well as of the United Kingdom, which has ignored its own Nazis and their high social status until the war put an end to it – also reflects this shame and submerged guilt.
The value of Israel as an ally in West Asia – for most voters and politicians in the US and Europe and its former colonies – is secondary to the need to rescue the reputation of the “White Man” and “Western civilisation” as anything else. This is what drives the smug policing of anti-Israel sentiments in these countries because it is a way of saying, “We are better than this, and we are better than the rest of the poor savages in the world.” The moral superiority that underlay “The White Man’s Burden” has merely changed shape and focus, not its intent or usage. Just as the colonised paid the price of the old justification, the Palestinians and those who support their rights – even if they are Jews and even Israeli Jews – have laboured under the new one.
Support for Palestine in Market Street, SF, CA. Photo: Tinou Bao
Of all Israeli leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu has been the most gifted – and ruthless – navigator of this guilt and shame, but even he has gone too far. Worse, he has failed. The disastrous policy of propping up Hamas to undercut support for wider support for the Palestinian cause has exploded. The latest war has made nobody safer. With the International Court of Justice acknowledging that there was probable cause of seeing it as a genocide, and even the US State Department having to (very reluctantly) acknowledge that Israel was probably violating international humanitarian laws, Israel is facing a backlash like never before. The impunity it enjoyed is slowly coming apart – and all its use as a strategic asset, its economic success and its touting of acting against terrorism is not helping it.
This, by itself, should be a salutary lesson for Modi. He seems to have understood this as he has stopped – very quickly – from using the “ghar mein ghus ke mara” language immediately after (very gentle) US statements. But even more damning for India is the commentary that has accompanied Israel’s increasing isolation. Dahlia Scheindlin, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz told the Guardian newspaper that, “Netanyahu himself did start diversifying his portfolio of international allies to the less democratic world – towards courting Putin in Russia and Modi in India – in what he thought would be [an] insurance policy.” Of course, Russian statements that allegations of the Indian policy of murder abroad were US interference in Indian elections tie India even more closely to this.
The impunity that Israel enjoyed was due to very specific domestic factors in the US and Europe, as well as strategic interests. Netanyahu has managed to significantly erode it by showing its allies that blind support makes them unable to continue with the illusion of civilisation. He has also demonstrated that his policy of murder and more murder, accompanied by ethnic cleansing and land grabs undermine both Israel’s and the US’s strategic interests. India, too, enjoyed considerable support due to its vibrant – if flawed democracy – and its strategic value as a stable pillar of democracy. Modi’s ten years of misrule and his government’s evident toothlessness in the face of Chinese actions and an alleged policy of international assassinations is leaving India in a far weaker place.
In the end, the US and Europe will not abandon Israel, but they would like to be rid of Netanyahu and his catastrophic failures and crimes. Much the same is likely to be the case for India.
Omair Ahmad is an author and journalist.
