India complicit in Israeli action in Palestine, Gaza genocide: Subhasini Ali

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and external affairs minister S. Jaishankar have turned India into "lackeys of Israel and Western imperialism", alleged speakers at a convention by Indians for Palestine, organised at Delhi's Constitution Club of India.

Speaking at the convention, titled 'International Court & Justice in Gaza', CPI(M) leader and former MP Subhasini Ali said India is as complicit as the US in Israel’s war against Hamas by not opposing the occupation of Palestine by the Zionist state. The judiciary in Holland may have stopped the supply of aircraft spare parts to Israel, she pointed out, but India is "proudly sending" Adani-made drones, arms and weaponry to Israel to facilitate the "genocide in Gaza and the West Bank".

Women and children in London are protesting against the move to hand over a gallery to the Adani Group in the Science Museum, alleging that the group has blood on its hands, pointed out CPI(ML) general-secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya. The Israeli model of nationalism, suppression and surveillance, he alleged, have been adopted by the Modi government. Israeli-made spyware and drones are being used in Kashmir and against farmers in India, he added.

While South Africa, a victim of apartheid, dragged Israel to the International Court of Justice, India, a victim of colonialism and imperialism for 200 years, failed to even join South Africa in demanding action against Israeli genocide and occupation.

It is China, Bhattacharya pointed out, which has supported the Palestinian cause in the ICJ and asserted that armed resistance to the occupation was not just the right of Palestinians, but such right is also upheld by international law. Instead, the Indian government is working like a labour contractor and sending unemployed youth to replace Palestinian workers in Israel.

In her short intervention, AITUC general-secretary Amarjit Kaur said she was not at all surprised by the BJP government’s "capitulation to Western imperialism". During the freedom struggle, RSS ideologue and guru M.S. Golwalkar had, after all, clearly stated that the British were not enemies of India but Christians, Muslims, and communists were. The Modi government is merely carrying forward the RSS tradition of siding with fascism and turn India into a fascist state, she alleged.

In 1948, there was no country called Israel, Ali reminded her audience. Israel was an imperialist project created with an eye on the petroleum and mineral reserves in the area, and as a dagger aimed at the Arab world. Now, 76 years later, Israel has not only killed 29,000 Palestinians — a large number of them children and pregnant women — and displaced the entire population of Gaza, but is brazenly presenting a new map of the region by obliterating Palestine and Palestinians.  

Arabs had the same right to Palestine as the English to England and the French to France, said Mahatma Gandhi in 1938, Ali recalled. India, a victim of colonialism for 200 years, supported the Palestinian cause in 1948 and the tradition was continued by successive governments until Atal Bihari Vajpayee became prime minister and invited Israeli ministers to visit India for the very first time. That was the time when Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was also allowed to operate in India, speakers at the convention claimed.

The Indian foreign minister, said a scathing Ali, "mews and purrs like a pet while abroad" and explains that India is not anti-West but merely non-West. India abstains from voting on Palestine in the United Nations. India not only buys Israeli weapons but also supplies drones, arms and equipment to Israel, she said.

Even now that the mask on the face of Israel and the West has fallen, exposing the ugly face of imperialism, speakers lamented, India is yet to condemn Israel for its excesses. United Nations rapporteurs and visiting doctors have given horrific accounts of sexual abuse and rape of Palestinian women by Israeli settlers and reservists, but the Indian government remains unmoved.

The convention reiterated that Indian people stood with Palestine and the Palestinian cause. While the Indian government has forfeited its right to lead the global South, and the US its moniker as the land of the free and the brave, Indians must come together to condemn Israel and ensure that Indians do not fall prey to a fascist state.