Jerusalem Reset

By standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel’s leadership and unequivocally condemning the October 7, 2023 atrocities committed by Palestinian terror outfit Hamas, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made clear that India will not mumble platitudes when confronted with the deliberate slaughter of civilians.

The timing of Modi’s pathbreaking visit to Israel was deliberate. Welcomed personally by Benjamin Netanyahu, Modi arrived at a moment when much of the so-called Global South has sought distance from Israel for its war in Gaza. For Netanyahu, Modi’s presence punctures the narrative of diplomatic isolation. For India, it signals that its foreign policy and national interests will not be choreographed to satisfy fashionable opinion in Western campuses or drawing rooms in Lutyens’ Delhi.

Predictably, the meltdown was instantaneous. India’s left-liberal establishment of academics, activists, cultural arbiters and a familiar chorus orbiting the opposition Congress, erupted in indignation. Such voices argued that India had reportedly abandoned ‘balance’ and compromised its moral voice.

This passion for nuance was conspicuously absent when Israeli civilians were being butchered in their homes by Hamas terrorists during the October 7 attacks. India’s self-appointed moral custodians were silent when the Hamas gunned down Jewish families, brutally assaulting women and murdering children while filming their barbaric deeds. Instead, they blamed Israel’s ‘apartheid’ and ‘settler colonialism’ for having driven the Hamas to carry out their atrocities.

Modi’s Knesset address exposed the moral evasions of India’s left intelligentsia and their global reference points. For decades, anti-Israel posturing functioned as a badge of progressive virtue across elite Indian campuses, where ‘resistance’ is uttered with near-religious reverence.

This romantic indulgence was lethal in their Kashmir and Naxal narratives, where the violence perpetrated by the JKLF and the outlawed CPI (Maoist) was long viewed in certain academic and activist circles as embodiments of political yearning. Modi’s blunt declaration at the Knesset that no cause can justify the murder of civilians cuts through this cultivated ambiguity.

The defence cooperation with Israel is even more consequential. Israel is offering deeper technology transfer on systems such as Iron Dome and the emerging Iron Beam at a dramatically lower cost to India.

Critics argue that by embracing Israel so visibly, India risks alienating the Arab world. The evidence suggests otherwise. The old binaries of the Islamic bloc versus Israel are eroding. Gulf states have deepened ties with both Jerusalem and New Delhi. West Asia is no longer frozen in the rhetoric of the 1970s. It is transactional, interest-driven and impatient with ideological grandstanding.

By aligning openly with Israel while sustaining robust partnerships with Gulf monarchies, India reduces the space for Pakistan to weaponize religious solidarity diplomatically. Islamabad’s traditional narrative of automatic Muslim-world alignment against India now looks increasingly dated.

Modi’s Israel visit is less about breaking with India’s past than about discarding its euphemisms. Strategic partnerships are being pursued openly. Terror is being condemned without qualification. And diplomacy is being conducted with an eye to technology, security and economic gain.