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Authors: Shashi Tharoor
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ubiquitously shrill 24/7 news channels pointed enviously to Israel’s decisive action against neighbouring territories that have provided sanctuary for those conducting terrorist attacks upon it. They clamorously asked why India could not do the same.
As Israeli planes and tanks exacted a heavy toll on Gaza barely a month after 26/11, these opinion leaders in India watched with an unusual degree of interest—and some empathy. New Delhi joined the rest of the world in calling for an end to the military action, but its criticism of Israel was muted. For as Israel demonstrated anew its determination to put an end to attacks upon its civilians by militants based in Hamas-controlled Gaza, many in India, still smarting from the horrors of the Mumbai attacks, asked: couldn’t we do it too?
For many Indian commentators, the temptation to identify with Israel was strengthened by the seizing of Mumbai’s Jewish centre (the Chabad-Lubavitch house) by the terrorists on 26/11 and the painful awareness that India and Israel share many of the same enemies. India, with its 150-million-strong Muslim population, has long been a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and remains staunchly committed to an independent Palestinian state. But 26/11 confirmed what had become apparent in recent years—that the forces of global Islamist terror had added Indians to their reviled target-list of ‘Jews and crusaders’. If Israel was frequently attacked by rockets raining upon it from across its border, India had suffered repeated assaults by killers trained, equipped, financed and directed by elements based next door in Pakistan. When White House Press Secretary Dana Perino equated members of Hamas to the Mumbai killers, her comments were widely circulated in India.
Yet there the parallels end. Israel is a small country living in apermanent state of siege, highly security-conscious and surrounded by forces hostile to it; India is a giant country whose borders are notoriously permeable, an open society known for its lax and easygoing ways. Whereas Israel’s toughness is seen by many as its principal characteristic, India is seen even by its own citizens as a soft state, its underbelly penetrated easily enough by determined terrorists. Where Israel notoriously exacts grim retribution for every attack on its soil, India has endured with numbing stoicism an endless series of bomb blasts, including at least six other major assaults in different locations in 2008 alone. Terrorism has taken more lives in India than in any country in the world after Iraq, and yet India, unlike Israel, has seemed to be unable to do anything about it.
If Israel has Hamas as its current principal adversary, India has a slew of terrorist organizations to contend with—Lashkar-e-Taiba and its transmogrified cousins, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Jamaat-ud-Dawa and more. But whereas Hamas operates without international recognition from the territory of Gaza, where its legitimacy is questioned even by the Palestinian Authority, India’s murderous enemies function from the soil of a sovereign member state of the United Nations, Pakistan. And that makes all the difference.
Hamas is in no condition to resist Israel’s air and ground attacks in kind, whereas an Indian attack on Pakistani territory, even one targeting terrorist bases and training camps, would invite swift retaliation from the Pakistani Army. Israel can dictate the terms of its military incursion and end it when it judges appropriate, whereas an Indian military action would immediately spark a war with a well-armed neighbour that neither side could win. And at the end of the day, one chilling fact would prevent India from thinking it can take a leaf out of the Israeli playbook: the country that foments, and at the very least condones, the terror attacks on India is a nuclear power.
So India went to the international community with evidence to prove that the Mumbai attacks were planned in Pakistan and conducted by
As Israeli planes and tanks exacted a heavy toll on Gaza barely a month after 26/11, these opinion leaders in India watched with an unusual degree of interest—and some empathy. New Delhi joined the rest of the world in calling for an end to the military action, but its criticism of Israel was muted. For as Israel demonstrated anew its determination to put an end to attacks upon its civilians by militants based in Hamas-controlled Gaza, many in India, still smarting from the horrors of the Mumbai attacks, asked: couldn’t we do it too?
For many Indian commentators, the temptation to identify with Israel was strengthened by the seizing of Mumbai’s Jewish centre (the Chabad-Lubavitch house) by the terrorists on 26/11 and the painful awareness that India and Israel share many of the same enemies. India, with its 150-million-strong Muslim population, has long been a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and remains staunchly committed to an independent Palestinian state. But 26/11 confirmed what had become apparent in recent years—that the forces of global Islamist terror had added Indians to their reviled target-list of ‘Jews and crusaders’. If Israel was frequently attacked by rockets raining upon it from across its border, India had suffered repeated assaults by killers trained, equipped, financed and directed by elements based next door in Pakistan. When White House Press Secretary Dana Perino equated members of Hamas to the Mumbai killers, her comments were widely circulated in India.
Yet there the parallels end. Israel is a small country living in apermanent state of siege, highly security-conscious and surrounded by forces hostile to it; India is a giant country whose borders are notoriously permeable, an open society known for its lax and easygoing ways. Whereas Israel’s toughness is seen by many as its principal characteristic, India is seen even by its own citizens as a soft state, its underbelly penetrated easily enough by determined terrorists. Where Israel notoriously exacts grim retribution for every attack on its soil, India has endured with numbing stoicism an endless series of bomb blasts, including at least six other major assaults in different locations in 2008 alone. Terrorism has taken more lives in India than in any country in the world after Iraq, and yet India, unlike Israel, has seemed to be unable to do anything about it.
If Israel has Hamas as its current principal adversary, India has a slew of terrorist organizations to contend with—Lashkar-e-Taiba and its transmogrified cousins, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Jamaat-ud-Dawa and more. But whereas Hamas operates without international recognition from the territory of Gaza, where its legitimacy is questioned even by the Palestinian Authority, India’s murderous enemies function from the soil of a sovereign member state of the United Nations, Pakistan. And that makes all the difference.
Hamas is in no condition to resist Israel’s air and ground attacks in kind, whereas an Indian attack on Pakistani territory, even one targeting terrorist bases and training camps, would invite swift retaliation from the Pakistani Army. Israel can dictate the terms of its military incursion and end it when it judges appropriate, whereas an Indian military action would immediately spark a war with a well-armed neighbour that neither side could win. And at the end of the day, one chilling fact would prevent India from thinking it can take a leaf out of the Israeli playbook: the country that foments, and at the very least condones, the terror attacks on India is a nuclear power.
So India went to the international community with evidence to prove that the Mumbai attacks were planned in Pakistan and conducted by
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