The subjective compulsion might be Netanyahu’s need to keep a war going to stay in power, but the objective result is driving home the point that might is right
As Israel and Iran exchange missiles, and Iran gets battered, with its oil and gas facilities getting destroyed, what is at stake for India? Should India worry about anything beyond the price of oil going up, and of possible disruptions to shipping through the straits of Hormuz? Or, as Islamophobes tweet in India, should India be happy that the Islamic theocracy of Iran is being humiliated? Does Israel’s support of the Indian position over Operation Sindoor override all other considerations, including moral compunctions over the genocide still underway in Gaza? Or should collateral damage to the Haifa port, operated by an Indian company, the Adanis, be the major consideration for India?
It is human nature, probably as an instinct in service of survival of the collective, to empathise with justice and oppose injustice, to side with the weak against the strong seeking to oppress, to cheer David, as he confronts Goliath, with just a sling in his hand. The weak, in the Israel-Iran contest, is Iran, not tiny Israel. Israel is the regional proxy for the United States, the mightiest power on earth, which, in the course of its active domination of the world, has been defeated by just one other nation—Vietnam.
Also read: Why closure of Strait of Hormuz could double crude oil prices in India
History of Jews’ oppression
Israel comprises just 10 million people, about as much as East Delhi. Their existence as a state has been under attack, ever since its inception in 1948. It has fought wars and won them, against heavy odds. It has been the victim of vicious terror attacks, and learned to thwart them, and punish the attackers. It spends about 5.5 per cent of its GDP on research and development, and is an innovator of sophisticated weapons systems, including a missile that India used in Operation Sindoor. There are many things to admire about Israel.
Jews have had an oppressed existence in most parts of the world, especially Christian Europe. Martin Luther, the pioneer of the Reformation, was stridently antisemitic in his later life, after he failed in his mission to convert Jews to Christianity. As moneylenders, Jews were disliked by the indebted peasants. Antisemitic sentiment flows freely in The Merchant of Venice. Pogroms were convenient ways to write off unpayable debts. Jews in the Islamic world also faced oppression, but were, on the whole, better off than in Christendom.
Yet, the Jews survived, and some of them thrived, as financiers and as thinkers and scholars. A conspiracy theory holds the Rothschilds, successful bankers since the 18th century, to be worshippers of Satan: an entire subculture on the Internet is devoted to it. Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein, whose thinking shaped the 20th century, were all Jews by birth and upbringing, if not by conviction. So were J Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists who fled Nazi Germany and took refuge in the US and non-fascist Europe. People of Jewish origin still flourish in academia, the media and the world of finance.
The PLO was a nationalist movement, not based on religion. Israel funded the Hamas, as a religion-based rival to the PLO. Right now, Israel is funding and arming another Islamist rival to the Hamas
Zionist movement
The Zionist movement began in the 19th century, as a movement to build a nation in Palestine — Zion is the name of a hill in Jerusalem, and the Jews believe they were expelled from Judah, an area now part of the West Bank, by the Babylonians in the 6th century BC — in which Jews would be the majority, and thus free from oppression.
Britain promised Jewish leaders that it would settle Jews on the Palestinian territory it would take over from the Ottomans, after the Allies’ victory in World War I. This promise was contained in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. Jews began to migrate to Britain’s so-called Palestinian Mandate.
After World War II, after European Jews had been subjected to the horrors of the Holocaust, as expiation of their past collective sins against the Jews, the victors of World War II founded the state of Israel in 1948 — on Palestinian soil. The theory was that Jews, a people without a land of their own, were coming to a land without a people. In practice, the Palestinians lived there. They were driven out by force, Palestinians marking that experience as the Nakba.
The West, led by the US, built up Israel as its proxy force in the Middle East, arming it to the teeth, giving it liberal doses of aid, and importing Israeli produce with open arms. Israel is a participant in the Eurovision song contest, as a cultural member of Europe, even if geographically outside it.
Also read: Israel’s attacks on Iran are hurting global oil prices, impact is set to worsen
The Frankensteins of Israel
Jews were victims for most of their history. But their attempt to emerge from their victimhood by forming a nation of their own, in turn, victimised the Palestinians. Instead of creating a composite nation, in which Jews and Palestinians find citizenship and coexistence, the Jewish nation drove the Palestinians into largish concentration camps, where they live at Israel’s mercy, work on Israel’s farms and construction sites, and depend otherwise on external aid for subsistence, without political rights or essential freedoms.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was a nationalist movement, not based on religion. Israel funded the Hamas, as a religion-based rival to the PLO. Right now, Israel is funding and arming another Islamist rival to the Hamas.
The October 7 terror attack by Hamas on Israel did not take place in a vacuum, said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterrez, while condemning the attack. That non-vacuum consists of Apartheid-like treatment of the Palestinian people, despite the fact that most Israelites think of themselves as a western democracy. The sensible way out of this quagmire is a two-state solution, the composite state no longer acceptable to the majority of either Israelites or Palestinians.
Also read: Are Netanyahu's two war aims to destroy Iran's nuclear plan and regime change achievable?
Netanyahu’s precarious position
Benjamin Netanyahu has always rejected the need for any political solution to the Palestinian problem, preferring to think that armed confinement would suffice. Netanyahu is prime minister only because of the support of religious fundamentalist parties that believe Gaza and the West Bank are part of the lands God had given Israel, and that Jews have the right or even the duty to occupy these territories. Their representatives in Netanyahu’s Cabinet, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalal Smotrich, will bring down the government if he does not give in to their demands. If he goes out of office, the corruption charges against him could put Netanyahu in prison.
The slaughter in Gaza has been revolting enough to persuade Britain, Canada and Norway to sanction these two ministers. Netanyahu probably calculates that although he must continue the war to stay on in power, it should continue outside Gaza, where drastic curtailment of aid is starving the Palestinian population to death or displacement. The proper description of either eventuality would be ethnic cleansing. International law bars the use of hunger as an instrument of war. So, Netanyahu has decided to move away from this mess and hit Iran, instead, and claim that the aim is to prevent Iran getting the nuclear bomb.
The attack has happened in the midst of US negotiations for a fresh nuclear deal with Iran to prevent Iran getting a nuclear bomb. By attacking Iran, Netanyahu has essentially declared that he has no faith in Donald Trump’s ability to cap Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Instead of taking offence at this slight, Trump has advised Tehran to conclude the deal immediately.
Also read: Iran allows safe passage for Indian nationals via its land borders
Iran’s self-respect
Self-respecting nations do not sign off on deals at the point of a missile. Iran is doing what it can to defend its self-respect, by retaliating against Israel. Ordinary Israelites and Iranians pay the price.
Whatever Netanyahu’s subjective compulsions, the objective result of Israel’s attack on Iran is to reinforce the domination of the US over the non-Western world, exerted through force, direct and indirect. To side with the US proxy in this confrontation is to collude in this subjugation of the entire developing world, even revel in making America great again at the expense of the rest of the world. Shouldn’t we focus, instead, on defending and expanding the autonomy we have built up over decades as a nation that has fought off imperial control?
The bigots who root for Israel merely because Iran is an Islamic nation attack India’s own freedom to choose how it should grow, what its tariffs or economic policy should be, from whom it should buy its oil and gas at what price, and who its friends should be. It is no coincidence that bigotry harms India’s core interests.
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