The state visit of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to India this week should come as no surprise to those familiar with the Zionist and fundamentalist Hindu states run by Ariel Sharon and his counterpart Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Indeed, it follows logically that the amicable military and philosophical relationship that Israel once held with apartheid South Africa should now be re-established with a like-minded country such as India, currently led by what one could reasonably call a "Hindu Likud."
The similarities, dilemmas, and conundrums faced by the two nations lend themselves to be natural allies. Both countries are, and have been, fruitlessly struggling to combat the uprisings of indigenous peoples resisting the imposed military occupation of their land. They being, of course, the Palestinians of occupied Palestine and the Kashmiris of occupied Kashmir.
Likewise, both nations have snubbed their noses at United Nations resolutions which have gone against their perceived interests (Israel far out paces India in the number of U.N. General and Security Council resolutions which it has ignored, even those extremely rare resolutions the United States joined the world community in supporting).
The most obvious reason for a strategic and military alliance between these two nuclear powers is an ideology based on racist nationalism founded in extreme interpretations of Judaism and Hinduism.
For its part, Israel is an apartheid state that fulfills even the most liberal definitions of a "rogue" state: it has placed an indigenous civilian population under military occupation, has transferred its own civilian population into that land (a violation of the Fourth Geneva Conventions), and has failed in the most basic way to protect the lives of those citizens which it occupies. More significantly, Israel actively engages in policies deliberately making those Palestinians who live under the yolk of their occupation as miserable as possible. These include, but are certainly not limited to, harassment at checkpoints, prevention of ambulances from reaching hospitals, indefinite curfews on entire towns and villages, crowd control of stone throwing youths with live ammunition, as well as bulldozing of homes, orchards, and olive groves. This occurs not only of those "terrorists" who committed "crimes," but of those SUSPECTED of such, their families, and the villages in which they live. Whereas the Israelis conclude the implementation collective punishment will force the Palestinians to “control their own,” in fact it has only strengthened their will to collectively resist.
India is often-touted as the world’s largest democracy. Actually, it is the world's largest country which actively practices racism against its own citizens. "Castism" may be a more appropriate description, but otherwise it shares all the ignorable characteristics of institutionalized racism. The Hindu caste system, which designates millions of its citizens as "untouchables," who are not permitted to mix with those of the upper castes and are kept separate from them, makes India, like Israel, an apartheid state. This inherent form of discrimination was condemned by Mahatma Gandhi himself, yet continues to this day.
The fundamentalist Hindu BJP party, which Prime Minister Vajpayee leads, is more concerned, however, with their non-Hindu citizens, the Muslims. This is both within the country proper(which has a Muslim population larger than the whole of Pakistan) as well as in occupied Kashmir. Recently, in the Gujarat province of India, nearly one thousand Indian Muslims were massacred by rampaging Hindu mobs. Those families are still waiting for the well-known criminals who perpetrated and instigated such violence, some of which are in local government, to be held accountable for their crimes.
The photo-op of Prime Minister Vajpayee shaking hands with Prime Minister Sharon should not be thought of as symbolic of once estranged countries undergoing a rapprochement. Rather, it is a pact between two racist parties and ideologies: Zionist Likud, and Hindu BJP. Their agreed understanding is to make sure that Islam will never be strong enough to confront the continued occupation and subjugation of peoples who are not interested in their rule.
The emergence of a new Israel-India alliance is worrisome. What can be called labeled a “nefarious nuclear nexus” in one in which all Arab and Islamic people will now have to confront.
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Rannie Amiri is an observer, commentator and exponent of issues dealing with the Arab and Islamic worlds.
