A Visit Beyond Symbolism

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his two-day visit to Israel on Wednesday (February 25). Earlier, he visited Israel in 2017 as the first Indian Prime Minister to ever visit the country. Modi’s two-day visit to Israel was marked by a welcoming embrace from his counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, and a conspicuous silence about Israel’s genocidal war in the occupied Palestinian territory. During the visit, the two leaders lauded their strong friendship, which they said has deepened bilateral ties, and signed agreements on a range of issues, including innovation and agriculture. Netanyahu hosted a dinner after they had spoken to the Knesset, where Modi was conferred with the parliament’s highest honour. Like his previous stay in 2017, this time also, Prime Minister Modi did not visit Palestine despite India’s long history of supporting the Palestinian cause.

In his address to the Knesset, Modi told the Israeli parliament that he carries “the deepest condolences of the people of India for every life lost and for every family whose world was shattered in the barbaric terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7” in 2023. “We feel your pain. We share your grief. India stands with Israel firmly, with full conviction, in this moment and beyond,” he said. Modi received a standing ovation after declaring: “India stands with Israel firmly, with full conviction, in this moment and beyond.”

India-Israel relations

Mahatma Gandhi was against Zionists and the attempt to create a state of their own by force in Palestine, which the Palestinian Arab people already inhabited. Unlike Mahatma Gandhi, Hindu nationalists held a fascination with Jews and Zionism. Proponents of Hindutva, from Savarkar to Golwalkar, admired Zionism, as both are characterised by ethno-nationalist ideologies that prioritise factors like race, territory, and nativism. V. D. Savarkar expressed deep sympathy for a more comprehensive understanding of the Jewish race and underlined its appropriateness for the Hindutva ideology. India voted against the resolution in the very first UN Resolution on the two-state solution of Palestine, adopted by the UNGA on November 29, 1947. India also voted against the motion on May 11, 1949, when the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 273, admitting Israel as a full member state. On September 17, 1950, India officially recognised the State of Israel. In a historic UNGA vote on September 12, 2025, 142 nations endorsed the New York Declaration, which backs a two-state solution, with India’s support marking a break from its earlier stance on Palestine.

Since 2014, when Narendra Modi became India’s Prime Minister, India’s relations with Israel have become stronger. Between 2020 and 2024, Israel supplied 13 per cent of India’s total arms imports, while India accounted for roughly 34 per cent of Israel’s defence exports. In September 2025, India signed a bilateral trade and investment agreement with Israel at a time when Israel was overseeing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and famine in Gaza. Post Narendra Modi visit, India and Israel eye joint defence production and exports. Officials and experts see the latest round of talks as laying the groundwork for India to combine Israeli battlefield-tested technology with its own production scale, potentially turning the partnership into a platform for defence exports to third countries beyond the two nations.

Decoupling of US interests from Israeli national security

After Trump returned from the Middle East in mid-May 2025, a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy, the decoupling of U.S. interests from Israeli national security, began. Since then, the US has been increasingly focusing on relationships with Arab states, particularly in the Gulf, which offer greater economic benefits, reducing the strategic necessity of a solely Israel-centric Middle East policy. Commenting on this in Haaretz, the noted Jew columnist David Rosenberg says, the US president loves the multi-billion-dollar deals he gets from the Gulf powers and gives them what they want in return, like a Palestinian state. Israel can't match that kind of influence.

This shift in the US policy actually began in Trump’s first presidential term, when in 2020 he initiated the signing of a series of agreements, the Abraham Accords, to normalise relations between Israel and several states with Muslim-majority populations. To date, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco have signed the accord with Israel. The name of the accords was given in reference to the biblical Abraham, whom Jews and Arabs consider their common ancestor, and as an expression of brotherhood. This strategic move has diffused Israel’s aggressive campaign for the Promised Land of ‘Greater Israel’, which encompasses all or part of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Though US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a Christian Zionist, recently started a furore by supporting the concept of a “Greater Israel,” which raised alarm bells across the region, it does not have any serious takers. Instead, now it is widely believed that the Zionist regime of Israel is desperately trying to push the USA into a full-fledged war against its staunch enemy Iran, which does not come under the professed territory of ‘Greater Israel’. In an exclusive interview with India Today in Tehran, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also alleged that Israel is trying to pull the United States into a regional conflict amid nuclear talks in Geneva.

The 10-year US-Israel memorandum of understanding for military assistance is set to expire in 2028, with speculation that a new administration might not maintain the same level of aid. During his recent sit-down interview with The Economist, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he intends to wean Israel off U.S. military assistance by the end of the decade. "I want to taper off the military aid within ten years," he told the editors of the British magazine. "It's already in the works." Analysts interpret this as Netanyahu's desperate attempt to spin his failure by recasting the likely U.S. move away from Israeli military support as a win for Israel

Anticipating an impending crisis for American Jew community, Jordan Chandler Hirsch, a Jews scholar and a senior fellow in the Technology, Security, and Global Affairs Program at the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas, in an article in SAPIR (November 2025)- a quarterly journal of ideas for a thriving Jewish future, argued for a Jewish Sovereign Wealth Fund. He observed that the golden age of American Jewry is indeed ending — and the Jewish community can’t see past its fading reflection. The institutions upon which American Jewish flourishing once relied are crumbling. It’s time for American Jewry to build new foundations for its next phase of achievement, and to build them stronger than before. Referring to the 1648 Jews persecution in Poland, he observed that, in gaining unprecedented communal autonomy, the Jewish community sacrificed its political flexibility. Having latched themselves so closely to existing institutions — and having thereby lost their manoeuvrability — the Jews were dangerously exposed when, in 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky launched the Cossack revolt, shattering the ruling structure. The integration that had protected Polish Jews made them prime targets, particularly of anti-Jewish peasants who resented Jewish land management on behalf of the hated nobility. In village after village, Jewish communities found themselves abandoned by their allies and defenceless against forces that recognised no authority, honoured no agreements, and gleefully slaughtered Jews by the thousands. Hirsch foresees the same crisis for the American Jews. Much as in 1640s Poland, American Jews have become identified with the United States’ institutional authority and its core characteristics — among them, meritocracy, expertise, and prosperity — at precisely the moment when that authority is fading. The institutions Jews invested in are crumbling. Trust in government and media is at a historic low. Confidence in higher education has similarly plummeted.

Harsh argues that, instead of investing so much financial and political capital in lobbying efforts to preserve the Jewish establishment, the community should invest that money in something Jews directly control: a Jewish sovereign wealth fund. The Israeli Citizens' Fund (ICF)- a sovereign wealth fund in Israel- became operational in 2022. As of December 2024, the fund has USD 1.47 billion in assets under management and USD 1.83 billion of total levies collected.

At present, the Gulf region’s sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are central to industrial strategy, technology acquisition, and clean-energy diplomacy. Together, Gulf SWFs account for about 40 per cent of global SWF assets and six of the ten largest funds worldwide, underscoring their systemic weight. In the near future, ICF plans to play a significant rolein the region.

Israel needs India for a thriving Jews future

The Gaza genocide, which killed over seventy thousand Palestinian civilians in their own land, has made Israel increasingly isolated in the global community. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defence minister and a Hamas military commander for alleged war crimes. In a joint statement by around a hundred countries and international organisations, which was read out by the Palestinian Ambassador to the UN, Riyad Mansour, on Tuesday (February 17) in New York, criticised the Israeli government for several moves to expand its control over the West Bank areas under the Palestinian Authority.

A new research report by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) reveals that China is pivoting toward antisemitism. Beijing’s escalating rivalry with the US, alignment with Muslim nations, and adoption of anti-Western narratives are changing its previously positive attitude toward Jews. Using a comprehensive analysis of Chinese media publications, statements by influencers and academics, and social media activity, senior JPPI fellow Shalom Wald identified an “anti-Semitic wave” that had intensified following the Gaza conflicts in 2021 and 2023, which has wide potential ramifications given China’s global influence, noted JPPI, an independent Israeli think tank.

In his speech at the Knesset, the Indian Prime Minister mentioned both India and Israel as ancient civilisations. Judaism emphasises Halakha, guiding everyday conduct through law and practice. Hindu philosophy speaks of Dharma, the moral order that shapes duty and right action. In both traditions, ethical life is lived through action, and faith is expressed through conduct, he said. Highlighting quite a few commonalities between the two nations, the Indian Prime Minister promised “friendship, respect and partnership” with Israel at a time when Israel’s world standing has suffered because of the war in Gaza.

It appears that the Indian Prime Minister's primary objective of the visit was to develop a long-term strategic alliance with the Zionist state of Israel based on some religious similarities between Hinduism and Judaism. For example, both Brahmins and Jews view themselves as ‘God's select’ people. Both religions have special communities of priests, and both play a profound role in global history. Most significantly, both religions now consider Islam as a major threat to their existence. Thus, the Gaza genocide on Palestinian Muslims, where over 70,000 civilians have been brutally annihilated during the last two years, by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), is never mentioned by the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy, presently ruled by a Hindu nationalist party.