Awakening India
India’s Israel Envy
Shashi Tharoor
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NEW DELHI – As Israeli planes and tanks exact a heavy toll on Gaza, India’s leaders and strategic thinkers have been watching with an unusual degree of interest – and some empathy.
India’s government has, no surprise, joined the rest of the world in calling for an end to the military action, but its criticism of Israel has been muted. For, as Israel demonstrates anew its determination to end attacks on its civilians by militants based in Hamas-controlled territory, many in India, still smarting from the horrors of the Mumbai attacks in November, have been asking: why can’t we do the same?
For many Indians, the temptation to identify with Israel was strengthened by the terrorists’ seizure of Mumbai’s Jewish Center (the Lubavitcher Chabad house) and the painful awareness that India and Israel share many of the same enemies. India, with its 150-million strong Muslim population, has long been a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and remains staunchly committed to an independent Palestinian state. But the Mumbai attacks confirmed what has become apparent in recent years: the forces of global Islamist terror have added Indians to their target list of reviled “Jews and crusaders.”
Just as Israel has frequently been attacked by rockets fired from across its border with Gaza, India has suffered repeated assaults by killers trained, equipped, financed, and directed by elements based next door in Pakistan. When President George W. Bush’s press secretary equated members of Hamas with the Mumbai killers, her comments were widely circulated in India.
Yet there the parallels end. Israel is a small country living in a permanent state of siege, highly security-conscious and surrounded by forces hostile to it; India is a giant country whose borders are notoriously permeable, an open society known for its lax and easy-going ways.
Whereas many regard Israel’s toughness as its principal characteristic, India’s own citizens view it as a soft state, its underbelly easily penetrated by determined terrorists. Whereas Israel notoriously exacts grim retribution for every attack on its soil, India has endured with numbing stoicism an endless series of bomb blasts, including at least six major assaults in different locations in 2008 alone. Terrorism has taken more lives in India than in any country in the world after Iraq, and yet, unlike Israel, India has seemed unable to do anything about it.
Moreover, whereas Israel’s principal adversary is currently Hamas, India faces a slew of terrorist organizations – Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, and more. But, whereas Hamas operates without international recognition from Gaza – its legitimacy questioned even by the Palestinian Authority – India’s tormentors function from Pakistan, a sovereign member of the United Nations. And that makes all the difference.
Hamas is in no position to repay Israel’s air and ground attacks in kind, whereas an Indian attack on Pakistani territory, even one targeting terrorist bases and training camps, would invite swift retaliation from the Pakistani army. Israel can dictate the terms of its military incursion and end it at will, whereas an Indian military action would immediately spark a war with a well-armed neighbor that neither side could win. And, at the end of the day, one chilling fact would prevent India from thinking that it could use Israel’s playbook: the country that condones, if not foments, the terror attacks on India is a nuclear power.
So India has gone to the international community with evidence to prove that the Mumbai attacks were planned in Pakistan and conducted by Pakistani citizens who maintained contact with handlers in Pakistan throughout the operation. While India’s government had briefly hoped that the proof might enable Pakistan’s weak civilian government to rein in the malign elements in its society, the Pakistani authorities’ reaction has been one of denial.
Yet no one doubts that Pakistan’s all-powerful military intelligence has, over the last two decades, created and supported terror organizations as instruments of Pakistani policy in Afghanistan and India. When India’s embassy in Kabul was hit by a suicide bomber last July, American intelligence sources revealed that not only was Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence behind the attack, but that it made little effort to cover its tracks. The ISI knew perfectly well that India would not go to war with Pakistan to avenge the killing of its diplomatic personnel.
The fact is that India knows that war will accomplish nothing. Indeed, it is just what the terrorists want – a cause that would rally all Pakistanis to the flag and provide Pakistan’s army an excuse to abandon the unpopular fight against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the west for the more familiar terrain of the Indian border in the east. India’s government sees no reason to play into the hands of those who seek that outcome.
Yet, when Indians watch Israel take the fight to the enemy, killing those who launched rockets against it and dismantling many of the sites from which the rockets flew, some cannot resist wishing that they could do something similar in Pakistan. India understands, though, that the collateral damage would be too high, the price in civilian lives unacceptable, and the risks of the conflict spiraling out of control too acute to contemplate such an option. So Indians place their trust in international diplomacy and watch, with ill-disguised wistfulness, as Israel does what they could never permit themselves to do.
Shashi Tharoor, an acclaimed novelist and commentator, is a former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
www.project-syndicate.org
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anand 10:11 21 Apr 09
Mr.Tharoor has rightly presented the dilemmas of Indian Political Establishment, but not the public mood. Now, it is the duty of the entire Islamic civilization to counsel Pakistan not to drive India, a nation of pacifists, into the alliance of American and Israeli crisaders.
karina1510 08:02 26 Aug 10
Mr. Tharoor has presented an interesting insight. However, Israel is a land that has been recently formed out of a former Palestinian nation (perhaps one can debate that the Israel nation preexisted the Palestinain), while the Pakistani nation has been created from an undivided India, merged with some remnants of Afghanistan. Israel has seen war for the better part of its existence, with the prospect of war present during the country's declaration . India, has remained where it is for thousands of years, in spite of different invasions. There in lies the underlying reasons for the different responses
Ajay 06:18 05 Mar 11
India and Israel today, away from the public glare, have stitched together a tight-knit alliance especially in the security and agricultural sector.
Relations between the two countries have improved by leaps and bounds. Yet India is pathetically scared of resuming normal relations with Israel fully in public gaze.
Given that there is so much in common between the two nations, especially as far as the security scenario goes, there is no reason why India should baulk from high-level contacts with Israel.
To assume that India's Muslims would be upset with it, is a patently jaundiced vision, and questions their patriotism. It is not without reason that every survey on the subject reveals very favourable image of Israelis in the Indian mindspace.
It is time we embrace our most-trusted ally (after Russia) fully in public and celebrate it.
redmanrt 01:47 06 May 11
Excellent article. Like it or not, India is still part of the Commonwealth, as is the US. Israel would be an honorary member if it could trust anybody.
docMusic 09:20 05 Aug 11
IF Indira Gandhi was alive she would have fixed the problem like a true practical woman that she was. But today her grandchild is too weak to fix the problem becayse of the inhouse muslim breeding. Indira Gandhi would have bombed the mad-rassas out of existance in 4 quick days . Job done . No apologies.
docMusic 09:24 05 Aug 11
I have a feeling the movie series PLANET OF THE APES is a parrallel to the islam problem we're facing as a planet. Think about it. take your time....lookwell.
salil 09:53 15 Aug 11
Interesting to see someone is speaking truth in a society of incompetent and timid people.
docMusic 10:09 15 Aug 11
Because We Live in the 21st Century Doesn't Mean That Others Don't Live in the 7th Century
Soon the whole world will be muslim. Superb.
Children will be raped legally because mohammad did it. Too good .
And murder will be sanctioned because mohammad did it. Super cool.
Women will lose their faces and their identities and all dignity. Fantastic.
What a glorious age it will be.
Smelly beards and semen stains on clothes will be high fashion. So good.
Islam is glorious. Islam is the one . What a planet it will be. Allah o akbar allah o akbar….allah o akbar…. Islam is on the march….allah o akbar….
When the whole world turns muslim and the real muslim age will start that will be the final passing of our lovely age that we had always thought that it would last forever and we'd live on mars and have fancy toys and all would be happy and lovely ....but we hadn't the guts to stop islam and then every one had to turn muslim OR DIE and hell started and suddenly we were and will always be in the seventh century barbariaty and before we know it we AND OUR CHILDREN were the imposed dynosaurs thanks to islam .... The days of logic had long passed ... Passed ....passed...
And what the brits and the yanks and all all all non-muslims don't understand is that the islam juggernaut is going to show the world just how it's going to happen to everyone else...as the british scream and shout at islam to behave islam is just not listening ...as islam boot-crushes the UK first and turns it's head and attention to the next nearby victim...the rest of the planet will feel fear and fear only...then it's just a matter of time.... The full world will be muslim.
Welcome to the glorious age of islam...our sweet and dear great grand children will be in it as muslims.
The teenager of tomorrow is named Mohammed, and he takes his inspiration not from the constitutional laws, but the vile Koran. His heroes are not MAHATMA GANDHI or Winston Churchill or George Washington, but that bloody butcher of men and raper of women and little girls, the Islamic self proclaimed prophet Mohammed. He thinks of non-muslim girls as whores, of non-muslim culture as corrupt and worthless, and feels he owes no obedience to its laws or its governments. The word 'Islamophobia' makes him chuckle. He likes the idea that the natives are afraid of him. "They should be," he thinks. They should be indeed. Because ISLAM IS EVIL AND EVIL IS RISING.. ....thru him .....watch....
seekerOfTruth 01:21 30 Mar 09
I am glad Mr. Tharoor never got to become the UN secretary general. I don't see how he compares Indian experience with Israel. Palestinians are fighting to reclaim their homeland just as Kashmiris are fighting for their homeland -- this much is common. Both India and Israel are occupiers. Mr. Tharoor got it wrong.