Indo-Israeli Relations Piloted by Modi Netanyahu Coalition

India and Israel have positive relations for the past thousands of years. In 1000 BCE, Indian merchants used to sell peacocks and organize monkey games in the places which has Israel under its control now. The Saravathi Civilization of India and the Babylonian culture of present Israel were exchanging goods and services. The age-old friendship made the troubled Jews to seek asylum in India. One can find Jewish synagogues in Cochin, Mumbai and many other cities of India. But the independence of India in 1947 and its compulsion to go along with the Arab nations to counter the anti-Muslim image projected by Pakistan, India opposed Israel’s entry into the United Nations. India supported Palestine. All changed in 1992 with P.V.Narashima Rao as the Prime Minister. He redefined foreign policy of India and made it more pragmatic than sentimental as in the past.  After Rao’s focus on Israel the subsequent governments be it BJP or Congress, embraced Israel. Narendra Modi has taken the Indo-Israeli relations to a new height.

When the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu was hugged and welcomed at the Indira Gandhi International airport by his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, few in the world would have expected the grand opening of bilateral ties for the betterment of both nations. From defence equipments to entrepreneurship, from agriculture to the startup culture, from innovation to industrial development, from aviation to artificial intelligence, India and Israel are collaborating. Definitely India is going to be the big gainer. As a perennial victim of the terrorist attacks, India has many lessons to learn from Israel.

India a major victim of terrorist attacks and cross border terrorism needs Israeli support to put a full stop to this long pending problem. With state of art of surveillance gadgets, Israel can be the best support to India. TraceGuard, a chemical process which can free particles from luggage for a quick detection. This technique was co-developed by Israel with the USA. This method can detect explosives easily and leave out harmless ones like perfumes.

Suspect Detection Systems (SDSs) is another easy method to filter out terrorists from ordinary citizens entering airports. This is an automated interrogation and background technology which can pinpoint terrorists. SDS combines detection and robotic characters which can prevent terrorists from entering vital installations.

WeCu mixes psychology with the hi-tech mechanisms to draw attention from terrorists roaming around airports. It projects pictures of dear ones of terrorists on the wall which can be seen by terrorists only. This two way method can easily alert the security agencies about the nearing of terrorists.

Vigilant Surveillance Systems can be alert 24x7 even if the human security personnel fall sleep. This is an intelligent digital monitoring system which can prevent crime and terror attacks on the streets. This is an all-time monitoring mechanism which is need of the hour.

Safe drinking water for every citizen is the biggest challenge for India. Israel has proper mechanisms to help India in this regard. A cost effective method to install desalination plants to provide safe drinking water for every Indian can be realized with the help of Israeli technologists.

Israel is considered as the land of innovations and inventions. In the last 63 years of Israreli independence it has developed 45 indispensable innovations for the world. Given Imaging is the world leader in providing patient friendly solutions especially intestinal visualization.

Netfim is a global leader in providing micro irrigation. For a water starved parts of India, this can be of great help.

Ormat Technologies specializes in geo thermal energy.

Pythogras Solar makes smart solar windows which provides energy efficient windows with the help of photo voltaic cells.

Decell Technologies provide real time road traffic which is needed to clear the chaotic roads of Indian cities and towns.

Takadu provides minute information about water leaks, zone breaches, busts etc.

Cubital provides solid rapid protyping machines which will revolutionise the engineering, printing, medical industry and every other manufacturing process around the world.

There are hundreds of innovations and simple solutions which India can learn from Israel. Netanyahu Modi collaboration can develop both countries effectively. Both countries must shed their pre-reserved ideas and march ahead of the other nations.  

Israel Teaches Hatredness

Text Books are the source of teaching hatred. this is especially true in the war torn countries like Israel Palestine, India Pakistan, Iran Iraq etc. Ian Black writes in The Guardian about this intellectual menace

Israel’s Education Ministry has ordered the removal of the word ‘nakba’ — Arabic for the “catastrophe” of the 1948 war — from a school textbook for young Arab children, it was announced on Wednesday.

The decision — which will alter books aimed at eight- and nine-year-old Arab pupils — will be seen as a blunt assertion by Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud-led government of Israel’s historical narrative over the Palestinian one.

The term ‘nakba’ has a similar resonance for Palestinians as the Hebrew word shoah — normally used to describe the Nazi Holocaust — does for Israelis and Jews. Its inclusion in a book for the children of Arabs, who make up about a fifth of the Israeli population, drives at the heart of a polarised debate over what Israelis call their “war of independence”: the 1948 conflict which secured the Jewish state after the British left Palestine, and led to the flight of 7,00,000 Palestinians, most of whom became refugees.

Mr. Netanyahu spoke for many Jewish Israelis two years ago when he argued that using the word ‘nakba’ in Arab schools was tantamount to spreading propaganda against Israel.

Palestinians have always maintained that the 1948 refugees were the victims of Israeli “ethnic cleansing.” But, in recent years, a new generation of revisionist Israeli historians has rejected the old official narrative that the Palestinians were responsible for their own misfortune.

Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud takes a different view. “There is no reason to present the creation of the Israeli state as a catastrophe in an official teaching programme,” said Education Minister Gideon Saar.

“The objective of the education system is not to deny the legitimacy of our state, nor promote extremism among Arab-Israelis.” There was bitter controversy in 2007 when ‘nakba’ was introduced into a book for use in Arab schools only, by the then Education Minister, Yuli Tamir, of the centre-left Labour party.

“In no country in the world does an educational curriculum refer to the creation of the country as a ‘catastrophe’,” Mr. Saar told MPs in the Knesset on Wednesday. “There is a difference between referring to specific tragedies that take place in a war as catastrophes, and referring to the creation of the state as a catastrophe.”

Arab MP Hana Sweid accused the government of “nakba denial.” The follow-up committee for Arab education said: “Palestinian-Arab society in Israel has every right to preserve its collective memory, including in its school curriculum.”

Jafar Farrah, director of Mossawa (Equality), an Israeli-Arab advocacy group, told Reuters that the decision to excise the term ‘nakba’ only “complicated the conflict.” He called it an attempt to distort the truth and seek confrontation with the country’s Arab population.

Yossi Sarid, a dovish former Education Minister, said the decision showed insecurity. “Zionism has already won in many ways,” he said. “We need not be afraid of a word.”

Israeli Arab activists have also pledged to carry on marking Nakba Day in the face of planned legislation that would withhold government money from institutions that fund activity deemed detrimental to the state.

These include commemorating the ‘nakba’ — on the same day as Independence Day — “rejecting Israel’s existence as the state of the Jewish people” and supporting an “armed struggle or terrorist acts” against Israel.

Relieve the Palestinean Pain

For decades the Palestine problem has been on the boil. With the right initiative by the US president Barack Obama one is getting back the hope to see a solution to the burning problem.

Seema Sirohi writes in The Times of India (18 June 2009)

US president Barack Obama's speech to the Muslim world was an opening to begin afresh but Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
response was laden with old conditions and negations. Obama embraced the idea of Palestine as a just cause, but Netanyahu envisions a defanged, demilitarised and demoralised state dotted with Israeli settlements. Obama thinks continued Israeli settlements are unacceptable, but Netanyahu wants expansion and recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state" to prevent future attempts by Palestinian refugees to return home in large numbers.

The two visions are painfully at odds with each other but that is welcome news. For too long US policy has overwhelmingly been in sync with Israel's, eased by a myriad winks and nods. Consider Netanyahu's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who cheerily declared on assuming office that the Obama administration can't launch new peace initiatives without Israel's permission. "Believe me, America accepts all our decisions," said the perky minister. He has been quiet lately.

Six months into office, Obama has shocked Israel repeatedly and tried to reposition the US as a more honest broker. He came out quickly in favour of a two-state solution, gave his first TV interview to an Arab channel, invited the king of Jordan as his first Middle East state guest and his first visit to the region began in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, not Israel. He is willing to talk to Iran, despite Israel's opposition. The pattern is clear. He seems determined to change the parameters of US policy, which for decades has had an overload of Israeli concerns and fears. He wants to establish a real dialogue with the Arabs and not just with their dictatorial leaders-for-life. And for that Obama has chosen to try to heal the oldest wound.

No single cause breeds more terrorism and anger than the dispossession and humiliation of the Palestinians. It fuels mullahs in their mosques and propels factories of fanatics. Add to it the long list of short-sighted policies funding a fundamentalist Mujahideen war in Afghanistan and then dropping the puffed-up Islamists like yesterday's fashion, a misguided war against Iraq, continued squeezing of Iran and Syria, and most recently saying little against Israel's brutal 22-day pounding of Gaza and you are bobbing in an angry well. Israel has its own list of concerns, living as it does amid hostility and threat of terrorist attacks.

But Obama has calculated he can afford to annoy Israel a bit. Netanyahu's right-wing coalition has made quick adjustments in the face of new and sustained pressure from Washington. From a firm "No" to a two-state solution, the prime minister has moved to a "may be" in less than three months. That is lightning speed given the glacial pace of progress in the Middle East where many a peace process has died of intransigence, insincerity or plain old exhaustion. But Palestinian leaders are not exempt. They too have to rise to the occasion, control their rockets, and present a united front, before they can come to the table.

True, Washington has huge levers in the region, especially in Israel, which receives $3 billion annually in aid from US taxpayers besides generous donations from the many American Jewish organisations. But only once has a US president dared to use those levers George Bush senior withheld loan guarantees to force-freeze Jewish settlements. He was ultimately successful in pushing Israel to participate in the 1991 Madrid peace talks but he lost his own re-election, partly because of the immense power of the pro-Israeli lobby.

Obama has chosen the same issue settlements to change the dynamics because it has become a litmus test for the Palestinians, who helplessly watch their future state shrink. Since the 1967 Six Day War when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza, religious Jews have built mini towns in occupied lands with the encouragement of successive governments. They are illegal under international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention (article 49), which prohibits demographic changes by the occupying power. The word 'settlement' might conjure a frontier post with few facilities but these are concrete, sprawling modern communities complete with shopping malls and schools.

Today, more than 280,000 people live in 121 settlements, occupying a total of 35 per cent of the West Bank through an elaborate system of jurisdiction, security rings, separate roads and industrial hubs. Palestinians are barred from entering or using the special road system. Another 1,90,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem, the envisioned capital of a future Palestine. Then there are settler outposts of small mobile homes usually within shooting distance of an existing settlement. Netanyahu said he will not freeze existing settlements but will remove the outposts, which are illegal even under Israeli law.

The gun-toting, volatile settlers are a bargaining chip for Israel politicians who promote settlements later claim that forcible removal would cause civil strife and destabilise the government. But Obama doesn't need to buy the argument because a freeze on settlements has the support of nearly every group, including Israelis and American Jews. In the past, Israel has always been strong enough to resist a two-state solution. But with the US president shifting the balance, there is a fighting chance for peace.

If the Isreali Prime Minister exhibits maturity this decades old problem can be solved and peace be bestowed in the region

Stop Pounding Gaza

The Israeli air attack is not stopping. Its non stop strikes on the Gaza city have killed over 400 people in the last six days. The jsutification came out from the Israel government is that the Hamas terrorists are firing rockets into its southern cities. In the interest to defend its population, Israel government is striking out the terrorists. One cannot defend Israel or object to it. Defence is not possible due to across the board air strikes killing innocent lives. In the 30 attacks carried out in the last six days only one of the Hamas terrorist was killed. They have destroyed strategic spots of the Hamas. For every one terrorist’s life Israel is killing 400 innocent lives. This troubles those who love progressive civilization.

In a calculated strike it is possible to segregate common people and terrorists. Israel is in possession of high technological instruments to differentiate the two. Then why it is not killing the terrorists alone? Why it is using its intelligence and ground forces to capture the terrorists?

At the same time Israeli government has its duty to save its people and properties. Hamas cannot be supported and allowed with its terrorist activities. The six months old cease fire had a bit of cooling effect on the two sides. The only solution to the long pending problem is to bring the two groups to the talking table.

Without a give and take policy the region will continue to be the battle ground for the years to come. The international community should prevail upon both the sides to negotiate. Any casual approach to the Palestine problem by the world nations will have spill over effect. The deaths scenes in Gaza will embolden other countries to strike in a similar fashion. That will be the biggest bolt to the fragile peace processes in other regions..

The military strikes in Northern Sri Lanka will be justified. The Government of Sri Lanka will quote the Israeli attacks and justify its action. The Indian Government can give Gaza as example to strike Muzzarfabad to root out its strikers. The Governments of Sudan, Eriteria, Ethiopia will have a solid handle to restart their strikes against independence seeking separatists.

In the larger interests of the globe, Israel should abandon its air strikes. In the advanced world we need peace. Our scientists have invented super specialties to all the ailing problems. Unfortunately we have not yet discovered any method which can root out terror and military mentality altogether from the world. As long as the hawk mindset continues there is a less possibility for the meaningful continuation of the civilization. It all depends on the sane few to prevail upon the warmongering hawks. It is the battle between war and peace. It is the war between progressive and regressive civilizations. It is the battle between the good and evil. It is the battle between good and bad. It is the battle for survival of humanity.

Who will bell the cat is the crucial question? All those who believe in the long-term survival of the human civilization should join together and end all the hostiles. Anyone can talk war but only those who understand the meaning of human civilization can talk about peace. It is high time to increase the number of people who talk peace. Automatically war will collapse and peace will prevail in the globe.