Benjamin Netanyahu’s angry reaction to Sir Keir Starmer’s threat unilaterally to recognise Palestine announces to the world exactly how he rates Narendra Modi. Yes, it’s nice to be courted by the leader of the world’s most populous nation, but when all’s said and done, India is just another of the 147 countries whose diplomatic recognition has made no difference on the ground to the Palestinians. On the contrary, India’s prudent abstention in June when the United Nations voted resoundingly in favour of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza may have made observers wonder whether India’s foreign policy decisions are taken in Washington or Tel-Aviv, sorry, Jerusalem.
This is the sad lament of someone who has admired the Zionist homeland struggle and survive since what Arabs call the Naqba, the catastrophe, and privately visited the Promised Land as long ago as 1970. Possibly the only other Indian who made no bones of his admiration for the Jewish
State was the late Saumyendranath Tagore, the controversial leader
of the Revolutionary Communist Party of India. But his view was part of a bundle of perceptions that distinguished an ambitious political activist.
One of Golda Meir’s senior diplomats told me once of how disappointed he was when he sought Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s help before the Second World War. Apparently raising his hands as if to ward off some danger, Gandhi refused to be drawn into the controversy. He may have reconsidered his position later for he wrote in Harijan that “the Jews have been cruelly wronged by the world.” Yet Gandhi took a benign philosophical view when he overlooked centuries of intense devotion to a cause and an idea to add, “But for their heartless persecution, probably no question of return to Palestine would ever have arisen. The world should have been their home, if only for the sake of their distinguished contribution to it.”
Were Jews content with being the world’s most talented minority? No. Moreover, Britain supported their demand for a sovereign home. “But, in my opinion, they have erred grievously in seeking to impose themselves on Palestine with the aid of America and Britain and now with the aid of naked terrorism”, Gandhi wrote. “Their citizenship of the world should have and would have made them honoured guests of any country. Their thrift, their varied talent, their great industry should have made them welcome anywhere… No wonder that my sympathy goes out to the Jews in their unenviably sad plight. But one would have thought adversity would teach them lessons of peace. Why should they depend upon American money or British arms for forcing themselves on an unwelcome land? Why should they resort to terrorism to make good their forcible landing in Palestine? If they were to adopt the matchless weapon of non-violence whose use their best Prophets have taught and which Jesus the Jew who gladly wore the crown of thorns bequeathed to a groaning world, their case would be the world’s and I have no doubt that among the many things that the Jews have given to the world, this would be the best and the brightest. It will make them happy and rich in the true sense of the word and it will be a soothing balm to the aching world.”
That is not, however, the world that rejects the proposal for an arms embargo on Israel to prevent it from continuing to bombard the two million inhabitants of Gaza while starving them to death. Nor is it the world where companies like Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India Limited, Premier Explosives, and the State-owned Munitions India Limited rake in handsome profits by supplying drones and weapons to Israel. It is not the world either where the claim of Mizoram’s Tibeto-Burman Bnei Menashe on the basis of some tribal elder’s dream that they are one of the Lost Tribes of Israel is readily accepted by European settlers with a virtually insatiable demand for menial workers.
They are not the first. On that long-ago trip to Israel I met some ‘Black Jews’ packing blue roses in Beersheba. Conversation wasn’t possible for they spoke not a word of Hindi or English and I had no Malayalam or Hebrew. I have since read of an 800-year-old tombstone with Hebrew writing in a coconut field in Tamil Nadu suggesting an ancient colony of Yemenite Jews. Today, more than 70,000 Indian Jews live in Israel, while fewer than 5,000 remain in India.
India’s response to Israel has always been transactional. Even recognition in 1950 arose from Jawaharlal Nehru’s disgust with King Farouk of Egypt who then led the Arab bloc. Israel’s dramatic destruction in 1981 of Iraq’s French-built nuclear reactor may have appealed to the Hindutva Right but the Congress then relied heavily on the Muslim vote. The two factors combined to confine the Israelis to a low-level consulate in Bombay.
There was talk of setting up paramilitary settlements like the original armed kibbutzim along the Chinese border and of buying Israel’s Uzi submachine gun. India sought Israeli help in 1962 and David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli leader, overcame his disinclination to help a country that had repeatedly cold-shouldered him and responded by despatching enough 120-millimetre Tampella mortars plus ammunition and spares for two regiments. But Gamal Abdel Nasser’s objections and Nehru’s squeamishness about any public acknowledgement of Israeli help put an end to further cooperation. “No flag. No weapons” was said to have been Ben-Gurion’s verdict. Morarji Desai, too, succumbed to cold feet after inviting General Moshe Dayan to New Delhi. Instead of diplomatic relations, he treated Dayan to a lecture.
The wheel has turned full circle. Since Donald Trump suggested that large numbers of Palestinians should leave Gaza to “clean out” the Strip, Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu, have enthusiastically promoted forced deportation. But nothing has been solved. Starmer has categorically promised not to recognise Palestine if a ceasefire is established, if Israel promises not to annex the West Bank, and commits to “a long-term peace process that delivers a two-state solution”.
Can it ever? Even liberal and moderate Israelis (the late Shimon Peres, for instance) held that there was no such entity as Palestinian, and no scope for another sovereign nation in West Asia. Others point out that the residual territory in Palestinian hands does not meet all the criteria that the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States laid down for statehood. Moreover, the settlements of more than 700,000 Jewish immigrants have fragmented Palestinian towns, reducing them to the level of what used to be derided as ‘Bantustans’. There are now in effect two Palestines, the desolation that Hamas controls in Gaza, and the West Bank under Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority. They must merge into a single nation as visualised in the Oslo Accords.
Gandhi’s beatific view ignored these practical difficulties to seize on the heart of the matter. He agreed — as we all do — that Jews have been wronged down the ages. He wondered — as we all must — that adversity has not taught Jews the lessons of peace. An Israel at peace with its neighbours would not need to continue the terrorism of the early Jewish settlers and groups like Irgun, the Stern Gang and others, but on a grand global scale. This would not be to reward Hamas for the infamous raid of October 7, 2023 which triggered the present ethnic cleansing. It is to ensure that such barbarism can never again be repeated.
French and British recognition of Palestine alone will achieve nothing. Only sustained American pressure can force Israel to move towards a reconciliation. The interaction of Jews and Arabs must be monitored at every step and Netanyahu forced to abandon external war as a means of remaining in office. Otherwise, no non-Jew will ever be able to understand how yesterday’s victim could have turned into such a vicious oppressor today.
