The Incomparable Israel-India Alliance

"It is a privilege and an honour for me to stand before this distinguished House. I do so as the Prime Minister of India, and as a representative of one ancient civilization addressing another."

"I bring with me the greetings of 1.4 billion Indians, and a message of friendship, respect, and partnership."

"India has also endured the pain of terrorism. We feel your pain. We share your grief. India stands with Israel, firmly with full conviction, in this moment and beyond."

"Like you, we have a consistent and uncompromising policy of zero tolerance for terrorism, with no double standards."

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi 

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in Jerusalem on February 25, 2026. (Photo by ilia YEFIMOVICH / AFP via Getty Images)

 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi just concluded his second visit to Israel. His first took place in 2017, becoming the first prime minister of India to visit Israel. He spoke of the acknowledgement of much in common, historically, culturally and politically between the two nations. In speaking of India's high alert over terrorism, addressing the Knesset, it is clear that Islamist terrorism that has kept Israel on guard since 1948, is the very menace that India too has faced, and from that very same year-before, when Pakistan divided from India and a mass exchange of population took place through partition.

 

The Partition offer made by the United Nations between Israel and those calling themselves Palestinians failed to conclude with two states side-by-side, when Israel gratefully and ebulliently took up the offer and the Arab Palestinians rejected it. That rejection has continued with each offer Israel has made through negotiations where concessions were never enough for the Palestinians demanding the ultimate concession of  Israel's dissolution and the land 'from the river to the sea' turned over to the Palestinians; land historically and ancestrally Judean. 

 

India and Pakistan continue to confront one another over the disputed border of Kashmir. India aspires to live in peace with its combative neighbour, while knowing that there will be eruptions of violence emanating from Pakistan into India. Internally, India hosts the third largest Muslim population globally as citizens, about 14 percent of its population. Distrust between the fractious nature of Muslim vs Hindu can flare at any time. India with its vast population base and huge ethnic/religious/ideological groups must also grapple with threats from its Sikh population that promotes a geographic schism in the Punjab called Kalistan. 

 

But it was a fundamentalist Islamist Pakistani group that launched a massive attack on India's financial hub in south Mumbai that brought home the extremist hatred of religious domination through jihad when a dozen coordinated attacks in 2008 shut the city down for three days while Indian security forces battled with murderous armed terrorists shooting and setting off explosives in a catastrophic scene of pandemonium and bloodshed, where in total 175 civilians, security personnel, and nine attackers, were killed. Bodies of many of the dead hostages showed signs of torture or disfigurement. 

 

Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008, fire engulfs a part of the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, India. Teams of gunmen stormed luxury hotels, a popular restaurant, hospitals and a crowded train station in coordinated attacks across India’s financial capital,taking Westerners hostage and leaving parts of the city under siege. The terror lasted for three day which killed 195 people. (AP Photo/Gautam Singh)

"[India honours the ancient Jewish communities of India]: the Bene Israel of Maharashtra, the Cochini Jews of Keralam, The Baghdadi Jews of Kolkata and Mumbai, and the Bnei Menashe of the North East have enriched India."

"In my home state, Gujarat, there is a school set up by a Bene Israeli family -- Mister and Missus Best. It is an excellent school, and of course, it is called the Best School!"

Prime Minister Modi  

Cochin Jews, c. 1900.

 

India is forced to arm itself in readiness for the prospect of defending itself against further violence from Pakistan. Like Israel, India is also a nuclear power ... as is Pakistan. Pakistan battles its own insurgent Islamists as it happens, as well as preparing itself for conflict with Afghanistan where skirmishes have already taken place between the two through accusations by Pakistan that Afghanistan is giving haven to Pakistan's Taliban that threaten Islamabad. The irony being that Pakistan had sheltered and its Intelligence Services had trained the Afghanistan Taliban.

 

According to the Stockholm International Research Institute, 34 percent of Israel's total arms exports between 2020 and 2024, valued at roughly $20.5 billion have gone to India. Israel supplies India with "missiles, seekers, radars, sensors, electronic warfare suites, UAV technologies, and a host of force multipliers." 

 

India represents one of the few geographies where persistent antisemitism has not made its way into the culture; Jews have lived safely in India for centuries; unlike the Jewish experience throughout Europe where diaspora Jews have lived for millennia. In India no pogroms threatened the security of Jews living there, no expulsions took place, nor state-institutionalized persecution. Much less ghettos imposed upon Jewish-Indian enclaves.  

 

Times of Israel

"Israel is often called the 'startup nation'." 

"Our aspirational spirit aligns naturally with Israel's innovation ecosystem. I see a lot of synergies in areas such as quantum technologies, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence."

"We are also working with Israel on creating cross-border financial linkages using our Digital Public Infrastructure." 

Prime Minister Modi 

Collaborationists in Mutual Harmony

China government official

China hopes the Afghan #Taliban will put Afghanistan's national interests first, uphold commitment to peace talks, embrace the goal of peace, create a positive image and adopt an inclusive policy.

"The hasty withdrawal of the U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan actually marks the failure of the U.S. policy toward Afghanistan. [Beijing stresses the need for foreign forces to stage a] responsible withdrawal [to ensure no security vacuum is created]."

"[The movement -- East Turkestan Islamic Movement; ETIM] poses a direct threat to China's national security and territorial integrity."

"It is the common responsibility of the international community to fight against ETIM."

"We hope the Afghan Taliban will make a clean break with all terrorist organizations, including the ETIM, and resolutely and effectively combat them to remove obstacles, play a positive role and create enabling conditions for security, stability, development and cooperation in the region." 

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi

 

"Politics, economy and issues related to the security of both countries and the current situation of Afghanistan and the peace process were discussed in the meeting."

"Wang pointed out that the Afghan Taliban is an important military and political force in Afghanistan and is expected to play an important role in the country's peace, reconciliation and reconstruction process."

Mohammad Naeem, spokesperson, political office, Taliban

 

"With a U.S. exit from Afghanistan and the inability of [Afghan] President Ashraf Ghani to secure the country's borders, neighbors and regional powers have to hedge their bets regarding the future."

"While the Taliban give promises of security to Afghanistan's neighbors, Kabul keeps asking for help." "This perception of an embattled President Ghani doesn't make for good looks."

Torek Farhadi, former Afghan government adviser 

 

"[The Taliban] will never allow any force to use Afghan territory to engage in acts detrimental to China." 

"The Afghan Taliban has the utmost sincerity to work toward and realize peace. It stands ready to work with other parties to establish a political framework in Afghanistan that is broadly-based, inclusive and accepted by the people and protect human rights, especially rights of women and children."

Taliban deputy political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar 

Brazen lies. For consumption by the international community. China, on the other hand knows full well with whom it deals in making a pact with the devil. Afghan Taliban politics is quite familiar to Beijing; a reflection of their own, where stark reality is in conflict with the comforting language of tolerance, sweetness and light. Each, China and the aspiring, soon-to-be reconquest of Afghanistan, are devoted to the ruthless journey of subduing and commanding their respective populations by all and any means.

 

The awkwardness between reality and diplomatic assurances shielded by the exercise in public relations where each paints itself as cognizant of the well-being of those whose lives they directly impact being uppermost in mind. Not that their manner of dictatorial rule must prevail and nothing must stand in the way of complete control. For the Chinese government that means any dissenters, be they ordinary citizens rebelling against tyranny or Chinese billionaires who risk all to criticize government be rewarded with the death sentence of life imprisonment.

 

The Taliban, not the least bit squeamish over distinctions of applying capital punishment for those who defy their theocratic dictatorship, simply slaughter those who stand in their way, those who make overtures to representatives of the democratic west, those who assume their protests will be allowed impunity. The hushed world looking in at the implosion of yet another country whom violent Islamists have destroyed, deplore the fate of women and girls once again imprisoned in their homes.

 

The Taliban with its links to al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Pakistan intelligence service, employs the empty pantomime of  'peace talks' with the legitimate government of Afghanistan, its transparent intention to imitate such talks to appease outside critics while rampaging through the country attacking the Afghan national police and armed forces, sending suicide bombers to message civilians and foreign diplomats and NGOs that they will brook no resistance, expand the territory they control.  

Humvees belonging to Afghan Special Forces destroyed during heavy clashes with Taliban, Kandahar Province, July 13, 2021.

 

They now have complete control of Afghanistan's border crossings with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, China and Pakistan; Afghan government revenues from customs now in Taliban hands, as are the routes for trade. The Chinese Communist party in Beijing congratulates the Taliban on its demonstrated journey toward 'peace and reconciliation' with the government of Afghanistan which it is slowly and inevitably destroying. 

The Taliban leadership, however, is anxious for good relations with its neighbours to support its own legitimacy to claim itself the new government of Afghanistan, returning after an unfortunate hiatus. And China is only too happy to oblige, to legitimize its treachery. For a price, for nothing is ever as simple as it may appear. China, prepared to support the Taliban's rule giving it the opportunity to append a critical addendum; the Taliban must fulfill an obligation to China for China's full blessing.

When Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomed a nine-person delegation of the Taliban the opportunity to negotiate support for Taliban rule in exchange for an obligation to pledge non-support for Islamic separatist elements in Xinjiang making one contingent upon the other was timely and to the point. China through Mr.Wang stating its expectation the Taliban "play an important role in the process of peace, reconciliation and reconstruction" of Afghanistan. Even while the Taliban is actively engaged in destroying 'peace, reconciliation and reconstruction'.

 

This is not cynicism. This is diplomacy, Beijing-style. Where the U.S. and NATO failed because they attempted to destroy the ambitions of the Islamist Taliban and free Afghanistan from their anti-humanitarian shackles, what transpired was a "hasty withdrawal" concluding two decades of Western effort to pull Afghanistan up by its own bootstraps with foreign aid, investment, military strength and NGO efforts to democratize and opportunize the country to the benefit of its people. 

China's sequestration of its Uyghurs and other Muslims in 're-education' camps, to neutralize Beijing's fears of Islamist uprisings in Xinjiang province not a matter for the Taliban to raise in solidarity with other Islamist groups in a country hostile to their presence in the currently far-greater interests of Chinese support for Taliban rule in Afghanistan. So for the present the Taliban surrenders its support for and assistance to the Islamist insurgents in Xinjiang. All in good time, all in good time.

A guard stands in a watchtower in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China, May 3, 2021