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Both tiny Israel and mighty India are victims of the same ideology: jihadism. The Muslims in Pakistan and the Muslims in “Palestine” share the same desire to harm the Infidels — Hindus and Jews, respectively. The terror groups that Pakistan’s military nurtures and arms — Jaish-e-Muhammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba — and then helps to cross into India to murder civilians are brothers under the skin to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. One Israeli journalist, Zvika Klein, editor of the Jerusalem Post, has, in the light of the latest flareup between India and Pakistan, considered the natural alliance that India and Israel should forge. More of his observations can be found here: “Editor’s Notes: Hypocrisy of silence on Kashmir’s massacre and the West’s moral failure – comment,” by Zvika Klein, Jerusalem Post, May
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine this: Harvard Yard, spring 2025. After a brutal massacre of 26 innocent civilians by armed terrorists, students leap into action. Encampments spring up overnight. Social justice clubs organize teach-ins. Professors sign petitions. Placards demand “Justice for Kashmir,” “Stop Pakistani Terror,” and “From Pahalgam to the Hague.” The world responds in outrage. Western capitals condemn the attack. The UN convenes an emergency session. The media calls it what it is: a terror attack.
If only.
But that’s not the reality.
Because this time, the victims were Indian civilians – most of them Hindu – gunned down in cold blood by Pakistani terrorists in the scenic valley of Pahalgam, Kashmir. And suddenly, the world is quiet. No tents. No hashtags. No solidarity. No moral outrage.
The same voices that erupt when Israel defends itself against terror are silent now. The same campuses that turned into 24/7 protest zones after October 7 have nothing to say about April 22.
No vigils. No outrage. No headlines. Just silence.
On that day, Pakistani-backed terrorists opened fire on Indian tourists, killing 26 people – fathers, husbands, grandfathers, sons. A disabled woman had to crawl down a mountain to safety. A 20-year-old was grazed by a bullet while shielding his family. The killers asked victims to recite Islamic verses to prove they weren’t Hindu before executing them.
This is terrorism – pure and simple.
And yet, the West can’t seem to find its voice. When Hamas slaughtered Israelis on October 7, the world couldn’t decide whether to condemn the butchers or the butchered. Now, it can’t even muster confusion. Just silence.
On October 7, the West did condemn Hamas, but in a matter of weeks, that sympathy for Israel had dissipated, and once the IDF had been sent deep into Gaza, it was the Jewish state that received condemnation for its “aggression,” which in time metamorphosed into charges of “ethnic cleansing” and even “genocide.”
India, unlike many of its critics, didn’t stay silent. It responded. Within days, the Indian military launched targeted strikes across the Line of Control, destroying nine terrorist infrastructure sites in Pakistan. These weren’t random attacks – they were precise retaliations against known Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed training centers.
Pakistan, predictably, denied everything. Then claimed victimhood. Then escalated. Drone attacks, airspace closures, and threats of war followed. But the world still didn’t blink. No front-page outrage. No sanctions. No Nobel Prize winners calling for restraint.
We’ve seen this script before. Because we, as Israelis, live it every day.
India is Israel in this story. A democracy fighting for its citizens’ lives, accused of “escalating” simply by refusing to die quietly. And Pakistan, like Hamas, hides behind plausible deniability while exporting terror with impunity….
Pakistan has been supporting Muslim terrorism in India for a long time. In 1990, 150,000 Hindu Pandits (Brahmins) fled a Muslim-majority valley in Indian Kashmir after attacks by Muslim fanatics. Those fanatics were fully supported by Islamabad. Similarly, the November 2008 shooting and bombing attacks on various sites in Mumbai, that took place over four days, were committed by 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based Islamic terror groups. And the December 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi was carried out by members of another Islamist group, Jaish-e-Muhammad, that was based in Pakistan. where it was free to train and arm itself without interference from the government.
Zvika Klein thinks that India has been as firm a friend to Israel as Israel has been to India. I’m not convinced. It is true that India buys a great many weapons from Israel, but that’s out of self-interest. Israeli weapons are first-rate, and cheaper than what the US and European powers have for sale. The key test of whether India will no longer hide its close relations with Israel, but proclaim it to the world, will be how India votes at the UN. The nadir of Indian-Israeli relations came in 1975, when India voted in favor of the infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution.
In recent years, however, India has been abstaining on votes concerning Israel. But is that really the most Israel should expect of India? India should prove its friendship, in the only way that makes sense, and vote in support of Israel, along with the US and another dozen states that consistently oppose the anti-Israel resolutions put to a vote, both at the General Assembly and at the Human Rights Council, where India has been a member for 16 of the UNHRC’s 18 years. The UNHRC has been particularly damaging to Israel. It has Agenda Item #7 on its permanent calendar, devoted to the “Human Rights Situation in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories.” India, when it is back on the UNHRC, should speak up for Israel. And should India be made a permanent member of the Security Council, as has been suggested would be fitting given its huge population, it should add its veto to that of the Americans on those endless anti-Israel resolutions, to demonstrate its solidarity with the Jewish state.
And then we can safely say, as Rick says to Captain Renault as they walk off together at Casablanca’s end, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
India politics is too convoluted and complex to worry so much about. Many millions of leftists, who were probably responsible for the anti-Israel situation in 1975. The current India government is conservative so needs to be supported.
The hypocrisy here is sadly amusing. I have not seen an article about the Armenian Christians slaughtered and expelled from Nagarno Karabach in September of 2023. 100,000 people attacked by the muslims! It appears that only jews matter.
Azerbaijan is an Israeli ally, which might be one reason why the clear similarity between Armenia’s situation, and those of Israel and India, is not often pointed out. Armenia is also a victim of a fake narrative – see https://www.meforum.org/mef-observer/azerbaijan-treats-the-khojaly-massacre-as-original-sin-but-its-narrative-is-fiction
I’ll explain why – as a 1.5 generation indian-american (I came to America when I was four years old).
India has a LARGE number of muslims – upwards of 300+ million.
The religious census figures are all distorted. There is always a persistent overreporrting of Hindus to make it look like they are some sort of super-majority. They are not, the numbers are lies.
India is really more of a 65% Hindu country.
Any uprising would severely affect India – I think moreso than any other country in the world because of these demographics. Even Israel I believe is 80% Jewish.
So that’s reason #1.
Here’s reason #2: India consumes A LOT OF OIL. Like a TON – second only to China.
If there were any sort of religious element against Muslims, India may be boycotted by middle-eastern countries. That is a huge problem, and would grind the country to a halt and collapse the economy overnight.
This is one of the reasons, and one of several cards, that Pakistan has which leads to its continued aggression.
Israel *can* be supported with oil from external sources, given that the country is substantially smaller; i.e., they can tell the middle eastern countries to go shove it.
The Dharmic religions – Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs – by and large are extremely tolerant.
And it rubs everybody the wrong way to go against any particular religion.
Support of Israel would have to be 100%, as there are no halfways.
But any government in India that attempts to do that will be met with major political liability.
India was never about that.
So that’s reason #3.
Any one of those reasons by themselves are decent arguments (though not sufficient) for India to toe a “neutral” line towards Israel. All three combined, it makes sense at least from the point of view of India.
But let me clear about this:
Hindus/Jains/Sikhs from India are largely, and fervently, pro-Israel.
Yes there are the screeching Leftists who control the media in India.
The government is in an awkward position.
But really, in the end, who the hell cares about these governments that come and go anyway?
I can tell you that the Indian and Jewish civilization have been doing just fine peacefully together for thousands of years, with hundreds of different governments.
Why should it be any different this time?