An informed debate on Israel is missing in India

PUBLIC discourse in India on Israel and Palestine has been one-sided throughout. It was so during the preparations, and thereafter, for the partition of Palestine under the auspices of the United Nations in November 1947. It was equally so in the run-up to and after the creation of the Jewish state in May 1948. In the early years of India’s independence, the discourse was heavily pro-Palestine and pro-Arab. Now, these conversations are immoderately tilted towards Israel. There has never been a balance, which is a necessary prerequisite for informed public opinion.

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Historians say that India distanced itself from the State of Israel in its infancy because Mahatma Gandhi did not endorse the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine without the consent of its Arab inhabitants. The torchbearers of India’s freedom movement also found contradictions between them and adherents of the Zionist movement, which paved the way for creating Israel.

The current unrestrained support in India for Israel, especially on social media and on this country’s streets, by and large, is based heavily on misinformation and clever public outreaches by special interests. They do not make for a good mass approach to the issues involved.

Fortunately for India’s national interests, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has so far been judicious in dealing with this month’s flare-up between Israel and Hamas and has not acted in haste. The MEA has taken into account India’s strategic relationship with Israel along with this country’s people-to-people relationships on the Arab street. Unfortunately, that cannot be said of non-government actors in India.

In these days of mounting domestic criticism of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, it may seem ironical that he was the earliest Indian leader after Independence to call for a balanced policy on the Arab-Israeli dispute. Nehru unfailingly conveyed his innermost thoughts on important matters in writing to the chief ministers on the 1st and 15th of every month. Between 1947 and 1963, he wrote 400 letters, which offer invaluable insights into that period of Indian history.

In one such letter in May 1949, a day after Israel was founded by partitioning Palestine against India’s wishes, Nehru cautioned against blindly supporting the Arabs. “It is about time that we made some of these Arab countries feel that we are not going to follow them in everything in spite of what they do.” Historian Sarvepalli Gopal has quoted this important letter in the second volume of his highly acclaimed three-part biography of Nehru.

There is much more evidence that Nehru wanted greater balance in India’s policy towards Israel, although India voted at the UN against Israel’s membership of it. One of the earliest meetings between Indian and Israeli diplomats was between Nehru’s sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit — then Indian Ambassador in Washington — and Eliahu Elath, her Israeli counterpart, in September 1949. A month later, when Nehru visited Washington, she arranged a meeting between Elath and the PM. Within a year, in 1950, Nehru extended de jure recognition to Israel without diplomatic relations. India’s pathway to Israel, and vice versa, has always been through Jewish and pro-Jewish lobbies in the US. A wise investment made by Nehru in Israel even before its recognition was in Abba Eban, who succeeded Elath in Washington a year after he met Nehru. Eban was invited for the second Republic Day parade in 1951. Eban was a secret channel of communication between the two countries when he was Foreign Minister for eight years from 1966 — especially in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War.

The current culture in India of spoon-feeding material to outlets of public information is primarily responsible for the absence of an informed debate on the latest flare-up between Israel, Hamas and their backers. Indian TV channels have rushed to Israel, mainly to the safe base of Tel Aviv, simply because it is Israel’s capital. From Tel Aviv, they send their footage without facing any of the challenges of being in a zone of conflict, while falsely claiming to be on ground zero of the war.

In contrast, Western journalists are in hordes in South Lebanon, which is where you can find some balance in this war. That is also the region where several journalists have already paid with their lives for taking risks, being in an actual war zone and faithfully reporting the conflict. It is equally important for Indian news outlets to be in Egypt, which is where reporters can find important stories of a different kind, now that the border to Gaza at Rafah has been opened to let in aid.

Reporting from Israel is important, but it offers only one side of the story. There is no balance, more so if correspondents prefer the safety of Tel Aviv. Besides, the complete absence of any Indian reporting from the Arab street — from countries where there are millions of Indian expatriates — is jarring and ignores India’s vital interests.

There are many myths about the world’s longest and most intractable conflict, which have taken root in India among the masses, more so after the NDA governments came to power. These are now having a disproportionate influence on this country’s public discourse.

One of these myths is that Israel is against Muslims. Those who gain Israel’s confidence are often told — once they have its trust — that the Jewish state’s existential problems are not caused exclusively by Muslims. They are caused entirely by Arabs and that includes Maronites, Copts and other Arab Christian denominations, Druze, Berbers, Alawites and Ismailis, who prefer to be identified as separate from traditional Islam. How many Indians know that Syria, which is intractably opposed to Israel, has a Christian population of about two million? When aircraft hijacking was a frequent political tool of the Palestinians, most of the hijackers were Palestinian Christians, led by George Habash of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Indians, especially Hindus, should overlook only at their peril that Jews, Muslims and Christians are ‘people of the Book’, their ancient common or similar scriptures. Hindus are outside this classification. As Indians intensify their engagement with West Asia, it is necessary to do so with open eyes.