Sm Nahiduzzaman
In a world where genocide in Gaza is played out in front of our very eyes, India’s foreign policy is being charged with moral bankruptcy. Once a defender of oppressed nations, only in Geneva to find itself standing with the oppressor. In light of the Israel–Palestine conflict, critics argue that India is no longer neutral: it is helping Israel carry out its brutal campaign against Palestinians.
A Betrayed Legacy of Solidarity
India’s betrayal of Palestine stands in significant contrast to its own former stance. After independence, India went fully with the Palestinians, and famously voted against the 1947 UN Partition Plan, as well as recognizing the PLO in 1974. India was even the first non-Arab state to recognize Palestine in 1988.
But now this glorious legacy has been thrown in the garbage. Solidarity with the oppressed has been supplanted by complicity with the oppressor. India has forsaken its historical role in the Non-Aligned Movement and has sacrificed moral righteousness at the altar of realpolitik.
From Resistance to Complicity: Israel Embrace
The actual journey was begun in 1992 with normalization between India and Israel. What began as neo-phytic diplomacy has transformed into collaboration. Under Modi, this collaboration is no longer a “partnership,” but a convergence of ideologies.
India is the largest arms procurer for Israel. It is big business for arms manufacturers in Israel. India has poured billions into armed drones, missiles, and surveillance systems for Israel. Many of these weapons systems are used to bomb and surveil Palestinians. Modi’s visit to Israel in 2017 and Netanyahu’s spectacles in India, were not about friendship, they were about India’s capitulation to Israeli interests. And India, by helping to finance Israel’s killing machines, is at least complicit with the suffering of Palestinians.
Empty Humanitarianism
India continues to support Palestine in a superficial way (sending aid and reissuing the same statements about a “two-state solution”), but it is only formulaic.
- Abstaining on UN resolutions shows India does not want to even identify Israeli massacres.
- Stifling of pro-Palestinian protests reveals the governments’ interest in repressing dissent while permitting anti-Palestinian protests primarily orchestrated by Hindu Nationalists.
The “balancing act” is a ruse. When India abstains it is siding with Israel while pretending to plead humanitarian concerns.
The Unflattering Drivers Behind India’s Policy
a) Counterterrorism
India uses the pretext of “counterterrorism” to rationalize providing cover for Israel’s actions. By likening Palestinian resistance to “terrorism”, it parrots Israeli propaganda, while sidestepping the underlying issues: occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
b) Economic Narcissism
While trade between Israel and India may be hovering around $4 billion, at what price? Selling out everything that has ever been India’s moral voice for dirty money, and military contracts, is the ugliest opportunism.
c) Ideological Congruity
Ruling BJP politicians and Party rhetoric rest well with Israel’s ethno-nationalist project. Supporting Israel is not only about strategy, but more about an alignment in bigotry against Muslims, both at home and abroad.
Public Pushback India Wants to Ignore
There are dissenting voices, but they are ignored. Congress leaders like Priyanka Gandhi, who entered Parliament carrying a Palestine handbag, met an Israeli official’s ire—no response from the government. Opposition politician Asaduddin Owaisi is dismissed as “minority appeaser.”
By extinguishing internal dissent, India’s ruling class has enabled a single narrative: unqualified support for Israel.
Helping to Destroy Palestine
Do not be misled, India is not a neutral participant. The silence, abstentions, arms purchases and ideological affinity have positioned India as an enabler to the crimes of Israel.
– Each drone and missile purchased by India funds the occupation of Israel.
– Each abstention in UN votes relieves Israel of accountability.
– Each suppression of pro-Palestine voices takes the wind out of every pro-Palestine argument, facilitating a greater Zionist propaganda.
India is in a race to help destroy Palestine; not with bombs of its own, but with providing Israel the diplomatic cover and funding it needs.
Image Crisis in the World
India’s hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed:
– Arab States: The Gulf countries remain polite for now but are restless, especially because millions of Indian workers in the Gulf and important oil imports are stake.
– Muslim World: India’s silence isolates it from 50+ OIC counties that still stand for Palestine.
– Global South: India was once a leader of the oppressed, now it rounds second base looking like a turncoat, less vocal than even European states like Spain, Norway, and Ireland who recognized Palestine official.
This isn’t diplomacy, its moral collapse.
Domestic Repercussions: Division, and Anger
In India, the government’s pro-Israel stance is creating communal division:
- Muslims feel betrayed since their government and leaders are clearly indifferent to the plight of the Palestinians.
- Anti-Israel demonstrations in Delhi were quickly quashed, while pro-Israel Hindu national groups enter Government offices pent-up with pride waving their kosher talisman.
- Opposition parties have seized the pro-Israel posture and successfully painted the government and BJP as disloyal, dishonest and hypocritical towards their principals.
The government has decided not to unite Indians around a moral principle it has chosen to pursue division for the political spoils of its supporters.
India’s Disgraceful Dilemma
India’s leaders claim they are ambivalent between both Israel and Palestine. The reality is worse; they are siding with Israel, at the expense of justice.
- Pro-Israel option: which propagates genocide and turns Indians against the Arab world.
- Pro-Palestine option: which would simply restore moral clarity; the government has no courage to choose.
- Strategic ambivalence: is a euphemism for cowardice. India has lost moral authority when it refuses to hold the oppressed?
Expert Voices—India Ignores Them
While diplomats at the UN continue to repeat empty pledges for a two-state solution, India reveals its true intentions through its actions. Its voting record, its alliances, and its economic decisions speak louder than platitudes.
While opposition leaders and experts at the UN condemn Israel for its war crimes, India looks away.
India’s Hypocrisy in Action
India loves to project itself as the “voice of the Global South”, a champion of the oppressed, and a nation with an anti-colonial history. However, when confronted with Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid, India promptly drops all this and moves on.
- Double Standards: India loudly condemns terrorism, but ignores the state terrorism perpetrated by Israel. Deaths of civilians in Gaza are dismissed, while October 7 is repeated ad nauseam as justification.
- Selective Humanitarianism: India sends token medicine to Palestinians while pouring billions into arms deals with Israel. A few cartons of medical supplies do not wash the bloodstains of financing an occupying regime.
- Moral Bankruptcy: When India chooses to abstain from UN resolutions or chooses silence amid massacres it reveals to the world that it cares more about business deals, and ideological posturing, than lives.
This is not simply a diplomatic failure—it is the epitome of hypocrisy.
The Cost of Choosing the Wrong Side of History
India’s alignment with Israel is not only profoundly immoral, it is strategically stupid. The world is changing—Spain, Norway, Ireland, and countless other countries are now officially recognizing Palestine. Global public opinion is likewise shifting, while India has chosen to swim against the current.
- Discontent in the Arab world: Silence today may mean retaliation tomorrow. Millions of Indian workers and laborers in the Gulf states can be weaponized, and energy imports leave India with vulnerability.
- Inconsistency in global leadership: India aspires to a permanent seat on the UNSC while claiming to elevate the Global South but simultaneously betrays Palestine. How could India claim to support justice while siding with an apartheid state?
- Domestic self-undermining: India is complicit in sowing division at home by siding with Israel and repressing pro-Palestine voices. India’s int’l policy will also be fueling division at home.
India risks not only a moral crisis, but long-term diplomatic ostracism. Choosing to align yourself with Israel might garner some short-lived military contracts, but it ultimately guarantees you nothing but long-term shame.
Final Word
India has abandoned its claim of neutrality in the Israel-Palestine conflict and has shown itself to be openly betraying humanity. India’s military support, growing economic ties, and endorsement of Israel’s security story, even as it sits idle to the massacre of Palestinians, has irrevocably put India on the wrong side of history.
The country that once championed anti-colonial struggles is now aiding an occupying force to destroy an oppressed nation. Every abstention at the UN, every mumbling by India on civilian deaths, every timid handshake with Israeli leaders is yet another nail in the perdition of India’s moral history.
This is not balancing, this is complicity: India is aiding Israel in the systematic destruction of Palestine.
It is indisputable: India’s evolving foreign policy has not been about finding balance, it has been about choosing sides, and the side it has chosen is Israel. No amount of forms of billions of dollars of arms purchases along with joint defense deals can hide the true allegiance of India and New Delhi….beyond token shipments of aid and insincere statements of concern, India has not and will not support Palestine.
In this sense, India has traded solidarity with the oppressed for complicity with the oppressor. By allowing Israel’s military machine, and declining to confront its war crimes, India should not expect to hold the mantle of acquired innocence. Silence is complicity, and commerce is endorsement.
History will not remember this arrangement as a “delicate equilibrium” in International Relations. It will remember India as a nation that aligned itself with Israel as it tightened the noose around Palestine.
