Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is a much-despised figure in many parts of the world with an arrest warrant against him from the UN-backed International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Since he went to war in response to a Hamas attack on Israel in Oct. 2023, the Israeli war machine has killed over 72,000 people, half of them women, children and the elderly in Gaza. The killing apparatus has taken the life of a child every 52 minutes on average for the last 28 months. The death toll and numbers of injured at over 170,000 are widely accepted globally, including by the perpetrators of these killings, Israel. The “indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians (as) government policy – knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated” in the words of a former Israeli Prime Minister from Netanyahu’s party, Ehud Olmert, has turned Israel into a pariah State.
A similar playbook is now unfolding in Iran, which has been turned into a killing field with the joint Israeli-US war offensive that has already killed the Iranian leader Ali Khamenei and is now raining more death and destruction as the offensive picks up. Note that the war does not enjoy widespread support in the US itself, and President Donald Trump will likely pay a heavy political price for it in the mid-terms. Many speculate that the war-mongering Netanyahu, who faces charges of corruption domestically, finally got his chance by playing an egotistic Trump who is in the grip of neocons and trapped in the Epstein files that are waiting to be unmasked.
How did it come to be that India with its rich history, a clear stance against imperialist forces for the most part since gaining Independence and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity with a commitment to peace and stability in the world, got entangled with this ogre of imperialism that is spreading havoc around the globe? Consider how quickly events have stacked up to present an unhappy picture for India and the nation’s position of “strategic autonomy”: The signing of the Indo-US trade deal with its many onerous clauses for India in return for lower US tariffs on India; the ill-timed visit of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Israel and his speech to the Knesset just two days before Israel attacked Iran, with which India has had extraordinarily good relations; Netanyahu’s reported claim citing a phone conversation with Modi after the attack on Iran that India stands with Israel though India offered no such statement on record(and indeed reiterated “the need for an early cessation of hostilities”); the US waiver to India allowing the import of Russian crude for a month in the wake of supply disruptions caused by the war; a certificate of good conduct implicit in remarks by the US treasury secretary Scott Bessent that Indians have been “good actors”; the sinking in the Indian Ocean of an Iranian frigate that was a guest of India for the Presidential Review of the naval fleet and not in combat mode.
All of these individually and most certainly when taken together paint a picture of an India pushed to the wall, genuflecting to world bullies and unable or unwilling to stand up as a proud nation with an independent voice. While Modi’s presence in Israel can be said to have boosted Netanyahu, who is shunned by world leaders given his shameful record of war crimes, India got nothing in return but defence or trade deals that are of questionable value, given that they will likely push India deeper into an Israeli embrace that may well curb India’s freedom of choice in upcoming deals and relations. The Netanyahu-Trump axis will not last long. By getting too cosy with a leadership whose signature call is narcissism and atrocities, India risks long term damage to its standing and will be seen from here on as a legitimate target for all manner of pressure tactics by other players.
That these are short term interests at play and not friendships being built is also clear. Consider remarks like that of US deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau that it would not allow India the economic advantages it gave China and so build a competitor for itself, or a well-circulated clip from a television show in Israel where a commentator boasts that Israel would be busy selling defence systems to the world after the war and that while they have no production lines, “we took over all of India”, whose 1.4 billion people will make these systems for Israel to sell!
From an Indian perspective, it should be clear now that these are dangerous liaisons that the nation must quickly exit to reassert its independence and reclaim its standing based not only on policies dictated by realism but by working within the frame of principles and values that will outlast shorter term power equations in a world order that is changing fast. The Indian Council of World Affairs publication on 75 years of Indian foreign policy offers voices that emphasise the moral dimension that India can and must bring to world affairs. For example, a former ambassador to the Russian Federation said India must “step on to the world stage and play its part in filling up the strategic and intellectual deficit, as well as the moral deficit”. A former principal adviser to the defence ministry said India looks at national interest and the “good of humanity”. Another voice in the publication wrote that India must build a “vocabulary which essentially projects to the world the moral values to which Indian foreign policy works”. While the remarks were offered by diplomats and experts in specific contexts, they also point to aspirations for reaching higher ground, of India taking on a larger role based on its ideas of values and principles that lie at the core of the Indian civilisational ethos.
Billion Press
(The writer is a journalist and
faculty member at SPJIMR.)
