Netanyahu's visit shows Israel stands with India as much as India stands with Israel
Anecdotal tales are often a fair and accurate indicator of public opinion, though they may not fit into the highfalutin theorising that passes as commentary on foreign policy or the faithful regurgitation of what is fed to media persons by foreign office mandarins. In the least, anecdotes, even if apocryphal or exaggerated, provide glimpses of popular perceptions and emotions.
Making history
Last July, I was in Israel to report on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's historic visit. Truth be told, I was there more as a witness to history being made. The first ever prime minister of India setting foot on Israeli soil seven decades after both countries became independent sovereign entities and 25 years after they established diplomatic relations with each other was an occasion not to be missed.
The day Modi arrived in Israel, I was walking back to my hotel in Jerusalem after a late dinner with an Israeli friend, years older than me. He suddenly burst into a full-throated rendition of "Ichak Dana, Bichak Dana", a song from the 1955 Raj Kapoor starrer Shree 420. How do you know this song, I asked him, mildly amused. "Oh, we all sang it as kids… I had forgotten about the song, but it suddenly came back… The prime minister of India visiting Israel is a very happy moment for all of us, it has a special meaning," he replied.
There was no contact between India and Israel in 1955. Carried away by his rather bloated sense of self-importance and destiny, Jawaharlal Nehru saw himself as one of the Triumvirate - the other two were Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia - leading the post-colonial world (to nowhere really). Having thrown India's lot with the Arabs, Nehru had to strike a virulently anti-Israeli posture, illogical though it was. In Nehru's view, Israel was a pariah state - a view wholeheartedly endorsed by Nasser.
Yet, Shree 420 made its way to Israel, or at least its music did, and Israeli children in kibbutzim grew up singing a song whose traces still remain buried in the crevices of their childhood memories.
It was not only we in India who saw Modi's visit as a formal end to an irrational estrangement that had kept two natural allies away from each other, more to India's detriment than the other way around. Israelis saw it that way too. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said while receiving Modi at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, "Prime minister, we have been waiting for you a long time, almost 70 years."
True, words are often no more than facilitators to generate goodwill in diplomacy. But the sincerity with which they are spoken also underscores the sincerity of leaders. It would not be incorrect to say that Israel has never hesitated to reach out to India, even before diplomatic relations were established; it is India which resisted Israel's overtures in the early decades and later hesitated lest its Arab friends be offended. A "marriage made in heaven" 25 years ago has only now been consecrated on earth.
Dogma and ideology
Precious time was lost in pursuing a policy that was clearly not founded in common sense. In the meanwhile, with Nasser gone, Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel as did Jordan. Most of the Gulf states have abandoned their policy of the past, as has Saudi Arabia. Ideology, unlike dogma, is not an inelastic constant; it evolves with changing realities.
In India, we mistook dogma for ideology, unwilling to take the blindfolds off. We still choose to vote blindly in the UN and its various organisations because we think it is morally right to be seen backing the Palestinians who, in turn, believe their first commitment is to the ummah and hence they vote against India in the OIC and their top officials share public platforms with jihadis and global terrorists such as Hafiz Saeed and his ilk.
Yes, we have dehyphentated Israel and Palestine, but we continue to slip on the banana skin called moral righteousness.
Genuine warmth
But let's not digress. The genuine warmth that marked Modi's visit to Israel is replicated in the warmth with which Netanyahu has been received in India. Rarely have prime ministers exchanged visits within such a short span of time: six months are not long enough to actualise agreements, especially given India's famed bureaucratic lethargy and mindboggling red-tape. A case in point is that ISRO officials got around to meeting their Israeli counterparts in November to discuss and deliberate on two major space agreements signed in July during Modi's visit.
Hence, to expect startling outcomes from Netanyahu's return visit in January would be futile. It would have to be largely aimed at ceremonial events (the long overdue renaming of Teen Murti Chowk as Teen Murti Haifa Chowk), reaffirmation of cooperation in areas where there is already significant work happening (water, agriculture and space security) and some add-ons like Israeli technology for the solar energy sector. Cooperation on homeland security and cyber security is already at a high; we are now assured of further alignment of interests.
What Netanyahu's visit achieves, above all, is to send out an unambiguous message to the region and the world: Israel stands with India as much as India stands with Israel in a relationship that is no longer kept hidden behind the purdah of New Delhi's false notions of righteous conduct in global affairs. Geostrategy and geopolitics require a realism that was missing all these decades. It is now up to India how it carries this strategic partnership forward.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)