{"id":138847,"date":"2023-12-09T18:07:46","date_gmt":"2023-12-10T01:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=138847"},"modified":"2023-12-09T18:07:46","modified_gmt":"2023-12-10T01:07:46","slug":"i2u2-the-israel-india-u-s-triangle-the-human-toll-of-the-new-quad-in-the-western-indian-ocean-will-be-incalculable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/12\/09\/i2u2-the-israel-india-u-s-triangle-the-human-toll-of-the-new-quad-in-the-western-indian-ocean-will-be-incalculable\/","title":{"rendered":"I2U2: The Israel-India-U.S. Triangle – The Human Toll of the new QUAD in the Western Indian Ocean Will Be Incalculable"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Priti Gulati Cox<\/a> and Stan Cox<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

In 1981, India\u2019s post office issued a stamp<\/a> showing the flags of India and occupied Palestine flying side by side above the phrase Solidarity with the Palestinian people.\u201d That now seems like ancient history. Today, Hindu nationalists are flying the flags of India and Israel side by side as a demonstration of their support for that country\u2019s catastrophic war on Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a match made in heaven (or do we mean hell?), because the two nations have similar problems\u201d they\u2019re trying to solve.\u201d Israel has long been engaged in the violent suppression of Palestinians whose lands they occupy (including the current devastation of Gaza, an assault that 34 U.N. experts have labeled a genocide in the making<\/a>\u201d). Meanwhile, India\u2019s Hindu nationalist government continues the harsh oppression of its non-Hindu minorities: Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and indigenous people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the time Zionist settlers were beginning their occupation of Palestine in the early 1920s, an Indian right-wing figure, V.D. Savarkar, fashioned the ideology of Hindutva<\/em> (Hindu-ness). Today, right-wing Hindu nationalists employ Hindutva<\/em> and physical violence to further its vision of India as a nation for Hindus and Hindus only<\/a>. Similarly, Zionism views historic Palestine as a land for Jews and Jews only<\/a>. These parallel visions, along with the two governments\u2019 increasingly authoritarian tendencies and ready use of violence, have drawn them into a dark alliance the consequences of which are unpredictable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India Makes New Friends<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Republic of India and the State of Israel were born nine months apart in 1947 and 1948, each an offspring of partition. The British-ruled Indian subcontinent was then split into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, while Israel was carved out of a portion of the British Mandate Palestine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the Cold War, India would be a leader of what came to be known as the nonaligned movement \u2014 formerly colonized nations that sought to develop independently of both American and Soviet influence. In the 1980s, it also became the first non-Arab nation to recognize the state of Palestine. A similar recognition of Israel didn\u2019t come until 1992, around the time India was shifting away from its nonaligned social-democratic stance toward its current adherence to neoliberalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent decades, India and Israel have established strong trading relationships, especially in the military sphere. In fact, given the massive militarization of its borders with China and Pakistan and its suppression of occupied Kashmir and its people, India has become the top importer<\/a> of weapons and surveillance equipment from Israel. In 2014, the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won power and its leader, Narendra Modi, became prime minister. In the process, India and Israel grew ever closer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 2016, as the Washington Post<\/em> reported<\/a>, after Indian commandos carried out a raid inside Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in response to an attack by militants on an Indian army post, Modi trumpeted the action, saying: \u2018Earlier, we used to hear of Israel having done something like this. But the country has seen that the Indian army is no less than anyone else.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, the Israeli weapons-robotics firm Elbit Systems has even established a drone factory in India and now has a $300 million contract to supply drones<\/a> to the Indian army occupying Kashmir. Meanwhile, Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have established a mutual-admiration society, dubbed by the media of both countries the Modi-Bibi bromance.\u201d And New Delhi has all but abandoned the Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Economic Alliances<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When, on October 27th, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution<\/a> calling for an immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities\u201d in Gaza, only the U.S., Israel, and a handful of small nations voted no.\u201d India abstained. (Apparently, the Modi-Bibi bromance wasn\u2019t quite enough to sustain a no\u201d vote.) Modi, however, immediately responded to the measure\u2019s passage by declaring<\/a> his solidarity\u201d with Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Economic, political, and diplomatic relations between New Delhi, Tel Aviv, and Washington (all nuclear powers<\/a>, by the way) had been strengthening even before the current conflict. Last year, for instance, India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States formed the I2U2 Group<\/a>\u201d to attract corporate investment for their mutual benefit. Projects now underway include food parks across India\u201d with climate-smart technologies\u201d and a unique space-based tool for policymakers, institutions, and entrepreneurs\u201d (whatever in \u2014 or out of \u2014 the world food parks\u201d and space-based tools\u201d might be).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, in September, the G-20 summit of the group of 20 major nations, meeting in New Delhi, approved an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor which, according to<\/a> Voice of America, would establish a rail and shipping network linking the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan to the Israeli port of Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea.\u201d And guess who now operates<\/a> that very port? A company led by Gautam Adani, India\u2019s richest person and (naturally!) a Modi buddy. Foreign Policy<\/em> notes<\/a>, It is also palatable for the Middle East to have India as a major energy market to diversify its exports and offset Chinese influence over critical commodities such as oil and gas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not surprisingly, the war in Gaza has thrown plans for such a new Indian-oriented economic corridor through the Middle East into limbo<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

High-, Medium-, and Low-Tech Warfare<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Militarily, the conflicts in occupied Palestine and occupied Kashmir are both lopsided mismatches. In each, a powerful nation-state is assaulting resource-poor populations, though the scale of slaughter, displacement, immiseration, and death wrought by the Indian regime doesn\u2019t faintly approach what\u2019s currently being done by Israel in the Gaza Strip \u2014 at least not yet. While the cases have similarities, magnitude isn\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Gaza, you have the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), a massive high-tech killing machine financed in large part by the world\u2019s richest nation, facing off against Palestinian resistance groups, including the Qassam Brigade, whose most effective weapons<\/a> are homemade Yassin antitank grenades and whose defenses largely consist of a network of fortified tunnels. Instead of engaging in face-to-face subterranean combat with the Qassam fighters \u2014 something that could turn out badly indeed for the IDF \u2014 the Israelis have been carrying out an industrial-scale bombardment of densely populated areas. As of late November, the result was approximately 15,000 civilians<\/a> killed (including more than 6,000 children) and the displacement of 1.6 million people, or two-thirds of Gaza\u2019s population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In India, the Hindu nationalists\u2019 onslaught against non-Hindu minorities has not been carried out by the Indian Army itself, but by a paramilitary organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in partnership with the BJP. That unofficial army, founded almost a century ago and modeled on Italian fascist Benito Mussolini\u2019s blackshirts\u201d and Adolph Hitler\u2019s Nazi stormtroopers, has a membership of five to six million and holds daily meetings in more than 36,000 different locales across India. Its shock troops rarely even carry firearms; their weapons are low-tech, crude, and exceptionally cruel, and their targets are unarmed, unsuspecting civilians. They kill or maim<\/a> using batons, machetes, strangulation, sulfuric acid to the face, and rape, among other horrors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such attacks by Hindu-nationalist gangs, different as they are from the military assault on Gaza, do have parallels in the occupied West Bank. There, Israeli settlers, some carrying government-supplied small arms, maraud<\/a> through parts of that area (where they live illegally), beating, torturing, and killing Palestinians, including ethnic Bedouin families. They have expelled people from their homes, stolen their money and possessions, including livestock, and destroyed houses and schools. It is now olive harvest season and Jewish settlers have attacked<\/a> Palestinians in their olive groves, sometimes forcing them off their ancestors\u2019 land, perhaps permanently. More than 200<\/a> Palestinians have been killed this way since October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Common Language<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the worst atrocities perpetrated against Muslims since India\u2019s partition occurred in 2002 in the western state of Gujarat. (Not coincidentally, that state\u2019s chief minister at the time was Narendra Modi.) Following the alleged torching of a train compartment in which 58 Hindu nationalist volunteers\u201d were traveling, Hindu mobs inflicted state-sponsored terrorism on the Muslim community across Gujarat. More than 2,000 Muslims were killed. Speaking in the aftermath of that horror, then-prime minister A.B. Vajpayee offered a perfunctory admission of regret for the carnage, only to ask rhetorically, Lekin aag lagayi kisne?<\/em>\u201d (But who lit the fire?<\/a>\u201d) The implication was that since some from their community were accused of committing the initial crime, all Gujarat Muslims were responsible and that, however regrettably, justified their slaughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similar allegations of collective guilt and justifications for collective punishment have a long history in Israel, as in the current conflict. In October, Israeli President Isaac Herzog claimed that there is an entire nation out there that is responsible.\u201d That comment earned Herzog a place in a greatest-hits video<\/a> of Israeli leaders attempting to defend atrocities inflicted on Gaza\u2019s 2.3 million inhabitants. Similarly, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. told Sky News<\/a>, I am very puzzled by the constant concern which the world\u2026 is showing for the Palestinian people, and is actually showing for these horrible inhuman animals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the language surrounding it can be similar. Allegations that, in their October 7th attack on Israel, Hamas fighters beheaded children and tore fetuses from women\u2019s wombs \u2014 none<\/a> of which have been substantiated<\/a> \u2014 eerily echo the sexualized violence committed by Hindu mobs in Gujarat in 2002 (rape, mutilation, the killing of women and their babies, and other horrors). A report<\/a> of attackers using a sword to cut a fetus out of a Muslim woman and burning the bodies of both fetus and mother has been told and retold countless times over the past two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And within mere hours of the October 7th attack in Israel, BJP politicians<\/a> <\/strong>and Hindu nationalists in India were spreading propaganda<\/a> on social media, including accusations that Palestinians were worse than animals<\/a>\u201d and were cutting fetuses<\/a> from wombs, beheading<\/a> children, and taking girls as sex slaves<\/a>.\u201d This started in India before IDF spokespeople began spreading similar claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Unnatural Disaster<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing a comparison to the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the Israeli agriculture minister, a member of the security cabinet, recently explained his government\u2019s goal<\/a> to a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Ha\u2019aretz<\/em> this way: We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.\u201d (Nakba<\/em> was a reference to Israel\u2019s forcible expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians from large portions of their territory in 1948.) When the incredulous reporter tossed the minister a lifeline, asking if he really meant what he\u2019d said, he doubled down: Gaza Nakba 2023. That\u2019s how it\u2019ll end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of now, it certainly looks that way. The IDF bombed apartment blocks, shelters, schools, and hospitals in northern Gaza to force the migration of the population there toward supposedly safe\u201d south Gaza. They then began bombing southbound car caravans and even ambulances in which refugees were fleeing. Large groups of other Gazans were forced to make the long journey south on foot through narrow IDF-designated corridors. As the Guardian<\/em> reported<\/a> in mid-November,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those walking south under the tense gaze of Israeli troops, through a hellscape of tangled rubble that had been buildings two months ago, along roads shattered by weapons and churned to mud by tanks, had little hope of rest when they reached the south. Shelters are crammed, food and water supplies are so low the UN has warned that Palestinians face the \u2018immediate possibility\u2019 of starvation, infectious diseases are spreading, and the war there is expected to intensify in coming days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel soon began bombing parts of South Gaza, too, clearly trying to drive the refugees further south, possibly even through the Raffah gate into Egypt. But Egypt has refused to participate in such an ethnic-cleansing campaign. So, figuratively speaking, millions of desperate Palestinians have their backs to the wall, or in this case, fence, with nowhere to run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As economic and geopolitical ties among Israel, India, and the U.S. have only continued to strengthen, Joe Biden has chummed it up with both Netanyahu and Modi, averting his eyes from their antidemocratic and all-too-violent national visions. He has backed the assault on Gaza all the way and as late as November 18th was still arguing in the Washington Post<\/em> against a ceasefire<\/a>. At the same time, he called for increasing the flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza to remedy critical staggering shortages of food, water, housing, and fuel. In other words, the Biden administration is treating the catastrophe there like a natural disaster, acting as if there\u2019s something terrible happening, something beyond his (or anyone\u2019s) power to prevent, so all that can be done is to aid the survivors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In truth, administrations in Washington have been treating Israel\u2019s occupation and immiseration of the West Bank and Gaza like a natural disaster for more than half a century now. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People\u2019s Campaign<\/a>, recently pointed out<\/a> an incident that suggests just how disingenuous that claim is. In November, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant came under withering criticism for permitting a few small, wholly inadequate truckloads of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza from Egypt. As Theoharis noted, Gallant defended his decision to allow the aid this way: The Americans insisted, and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?\u201d This puts the lie to the idea that Washington has no influence over the progress or outcome of this war. It does have influence over Israel \u2014 more than $3 billion worth in the form of military aid provided by Washington every year, not to speak of the $14 billion<\/a> the Biden administration still wants to reward Israel with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we write this, we don\u2019t know what will happen to the people of Gaza once the temporary ceasefire for prisoner exchanges expires. But rest assured that the governments of India and Israel will continue to feed off each other as they develop new strategies, tactics, and propaganda for their respective campaigns of occupation and oppression, campaigns the U.S. government, through both action and inaction, is endorsing. Consider them now three nations under god(s) of hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright 2023 Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Featured image: an Israeli bomb explodes in Gaza<\/a> by Jim Forest<\/a> is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a> \/ Flickr<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow TomDispatch on <\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a> and join us on <\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer\u2019s new dystopian novel, <\/em>Songlands<\/a> (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky\u2019s novel <\/em>Every Body Has a Story<\/a>, and Tom Engelhardt\u2019s <\/em>A Nation Unmade by War<\/a>, as well as Alfred McCoy\u2019s <\/em>In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power<\/a>, John Dower\u2019s <\/em>The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II<\/a>, and Ann Jones\u2019s<\/em> They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America\u2019s Wars: The Untold Story<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Priti Gulati Cox<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Priti Gulati Cox<\/strong>, (@PritiGCox<\/a>), a TomDispatch<\/em> regular<\/a>, is an artist and writer. Her work has appeared in Countercurrents<\/em>, CounterPunch<\/em>, Salon<\/em>, Truthout<\/em>, Common Dreams<\/em>, the Nation<\/em>, AlterNet<\/em>, and more. To see her art please visit occupiedplanet.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See All Articles<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stan Cox<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stan Cox<\/strong>, a TomDispatch<\/em><\/a> regular, is the author of The Path to a Livable Future: A New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic<\/em><\/a>, The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can<\/em><\/a>, and the current In Real Time<\/a> climate series at City Lights Books. Find him on Twitter at @CoxStan<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox In 1981, India\u2019s post office issued a stamp showing the flags of India and occupied Palestine flying side by side above the phrase Solidarity with the Palestinian people.\u201d That now seems like ancient history. Today, Hindu nationalists are flying the flags of India and Israel side by side […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}