{"id":192972,"date":"2019-08-10T05:56:55","date_gmt":"2019-08-10T05:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=192972"},"modified":"2019-08-13T07:17:40","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T07:17:40","slug":"analyst-israel-playing-a-big-role-in-indias-escalating-conflict-with-pakistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=192972","title":{"rendered":"Analyst: Israel playing a big role in India\u2019s escalating conflict with Pakistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Fisk \u2013 Press TV Aug 8, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

This picture taken on August 7, 2019 shows Indian security personnel standing guard on a street in Srinagar, as widespread restrictions on movement and a telecommunications blackout remain in place after the Indian government stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomy. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

When I heard the first news report, I assumed it was an Israeli air raid on\u00a0Gaza. Or\u00a0Syria. Airstrikes on a \u201cterrorist camp\u201d were the first words. A \u201ccommand and control centre\u201d destroyed, many \u201cterrorists\u201d killed. The military was retaliating for a \u201cterrorist attack\u201d on its troops, we were told.<\/span><\/p>\n

An Islamist \u201cjihadi\u201d base had been eliminated. Then I heard the name\u00a0Balakot\u00a0and realised that it was neither in Gaza, nor in Syria \u2013 not even in\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0\u2013 but in\u00a0Pakistan. Strange thing, that. How could anyone mix up Israel and India?<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, don\u2019t let the idea fade away. Two thousand five hundred miles separate the Israeli ministry of defence in Tel Aviv from the Indian ministry of defence in New Delhi, but there\u2019s a reason why the usual\u00a0cliche-stricken\u00a0agency dispatches sound so similar.<\/span><\/p>\n

For months, Israel has been assiduously lining itself up\u00a0alongside India\u2019s nationalist BJP government<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0in an unspoken \u2013 and politically dangerous \u2013 \u201canti-Islamist\u201d coalition, an unofficial, unacknowledged alliance, while India itself has now become the\u00a0largest weapons market for the Israeli arms trade<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not by chance, therefore, has the Indian press just trumpeted the fact that Israeli-made Rafael Spice-2000 \u201csmart bombs\u201d were used by the Indian air force in its strike against\u00a0Jaish-e-Mohammed\u00a0(JeM) \u201cterrorists\u201d inside Pakistan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like many Israeli boasts of hitting similar targets, the Indian adventure into Pakistan might owe more to the imagination than military success. The \u201c300-400 terrorists\u201d supposedly eliminated by the Israeli-manufactured and Israeli-supplied GPS-guided bombs may turn out to be little more than rocks and trees.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there was nothing unreal about the savage ambush of Indian troops\u00a0in Kashmir on 14 February\u00a0which the JeM\u00a0claimed, and which left 40 Indian soldiers dead. Nor the shooting down of at least one Indian jet this week.<\/span><\/p>\n

India was Israel\u2019s largest arms client in 2017, paying \u00a3530m\u00a0for Israeli air defence, radar systems and ammunition, including air-to-ground missiles \u2013 most of them tested during Israel\u2019s military offensives against Palestinians and targets in Syria.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel itself is trying to explain away its continued sales of tanks, weapons and boats to the\u00a0Myanmar\u00a0military dictatorship \u2013 while western nations impose sanctions on the government which has attempted to destroy its minority and largely Muslim\u00a0Rohingya\u00a0people. But Israel\u2019s arms trade with India is legal, above-board and much advertised by both sides.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Israelis have filmed joint exercises between their own \u201cspecial commando\u201d units and those sent by India to be trained in the Negev desert, again with all the expertise\u00a0supposedly learned by Israel in Gaza<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0and other civilian-thronged battlefronts.<\/span><\/p>\n

At least 16 Indian \u201cGarud\u201d commandos \u2013 part of a 45-strong Indian military delegation \u2013 were for a time based at the\u00a0Nevatim\u00a0and\u00a0Palmachim\u00a0air bases in Israel. In his first visit to India last year \u2013 preceded by a trip to Israel by nationalist Indian prime minister\u00a0Narendra Modi, Israeli PM Benjamin\u00a0Netanyahu\u00a0recalled the 2008 Islamist attacks on Mumbai in which almost 170 civilians were killed. \u201cIndians and Israelis know too well the pain of terrorist attacks,\u201d\u00a0he told Modi. \u201cWe remember the horrific savagery of Mumbai. We grit our teeth, we fight back, we never give in.\u201d This was also BJP-speak.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several Indian commentators, however, have warned that right-wing Zionism and right-wing nationalism under Modi should not become the foundation stone of the relationship between the two countries, both of which \u2013 in rather different ways \u2013 fought the British empire.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Indian Border Security Force (BSF) personnel stand guard near the India-Pakistan Wagah Border post, some 35 km west of Amritsar, on August 8, 2019. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Brussels researcher\u00a0Shairee\u00a0Malhotra, whose work has appeared in the Israeli newspaper\u00a0Haaretz<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, has pointed out that India has the world\u2019s third largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan \u2013 upward of 180 million people. \u201cThe India-Israel relationship is also commonly being framed in terms of a natural convergence of ideas between their ruling BJP and\u00a0Likud\u00a0parties,\u201d\u00a0she wrote last year<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hindu nationalists had constructed \u201ca narrative of Hindus as historically victims at the hands of Muslims\u201d, an attractive idea to those Hindus who recall partition and the continuing turbulent relationship\u00a0with Pakistan.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, as\u00a0Malhotra\u00a0pointed out in\u00a0Haaretz, \u201cIsrael\u2019s biggest fans in India appear to be the\u00a0\u2018internet Hindus\u2019 who primarily love Israel for how it deals with Palestine and fights Muslims.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Malhotra\u00a0has condemned Carleton University professor\u00a0Vivek\u00a0Dehejia\u00a0for demanding a \u201ctripartite\u201d alliance between India, Israel and the US \u2013 since they have all suffered \u201cfrom the scourge of Islamic terrorism\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, by the end of 2016, only\u00a023 men from India<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0had left to fight for\u00a0Isis\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/a>in the Arab world, although Belgium, with a population of only half a million Muslims, produced nearly 500 fighters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Malhotra\u2019s\u00a0argument is that the Indian-Israeli relationship should be pragmatic rather than ideological.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it is difficult to see how Zionist nationalism will not leach into Hindu nationalism when Israel is supplying so many weapons to India \u2013 the latest of which India, which has enjoyed diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992, has already used against Islamists inside Pakistan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Signing up to the \u201cwar on terror\u201d \u2013 especially \u201cIslamist terror\u201d \u2013 may seem natural for two states built on colonial partition whose security is threatened by Muslim neighbours.<\/span><\/p>\n

In both cases, their struggle is over the right to own or occupy territory. Israel, India and Pakistan all possess nuclear weapons. Another good reason not to let Palestine and Kashmir get tangled up together. And to leave India\u2019s 180 million Muslims alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Robert Fisk is The Independent<\/em>\u2019s multi-award-winning Middle East correspondent, based in Beirut. He has lived in the Arab world for more than 40 years, covering the war in Syria and Lebanon, five Israeli invasions, the Iran-Iraq war, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Algerian civil war, Saddam Hussein\u2019s invasion of Kuwait, the Bosnian and Kosovo wars, the American invasion and occupation of Iraq and the 2011 Arab revolutions. In this piece written on\u00a0Thursday 28 February 2019, he reflects on the escalation of tensions between neighboring India and Pakistan, highlighting the role played by Israeli supplied ammunition and aircraft in fanning the flames of conflict between these two countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Fisk\u2019s analysis of Israel\u2019s role in the Indian-Pakistan conflict exposes Zionism\u2019s dark designs. Is that why it didn\u2019t feature in his Independent column? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,58,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Behind_The_News","category-Current_Affairs","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192972"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192977,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192972\/revisions\/192977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}