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India and Israel: Common Allies; Common Targets
By Dr. Richard L. Benkin
Along with the United States, India and Israel are the nations most
prominently in the crosshairs of Islamists everywhere. Superficially,
the two countries could not differ more: population, area, poverty
levels, urbanization, and so forth. Their more essential commonalities,
however, make them natural allies against the same enemies: genocidal
Islamists from the outside; and a politically ascendant moral weakness
from the inside.
They came into being within a year of each other shortly after World
War II. Both waged a protracted resistance against European occupiers,
which along with the post war collapse of the British Empire won both
peoples independence on their ancient soils. Neither birth was without
trauma, however. Both nations faced partition demands from South Asian
Middle Eastern Muslims who refused to live under Hindu or Jewish
leadership. Though it was a blatantly racist demand, the international
community capitulated and offered to partition the new countries. While
it did not even debate the legitimacy of these Muslim demands, we can
only imagine how it would have reacted if the situations were reversed
and Jews and Hindus refused to live in Muslim countries. Quite
differently if history is any guide. Ancient Jewish communities in
newly created Syria and Iraq were in immediate danger, yet found no
protection or even support for autonomous status.
In South Asia, Muslims accepted the partition, and the largest and most
rapid migration of people in history that accompanied it; while exact
figures have been elusive, estimates of at least 30 million people are
considered reliable with an additional 500,000 killed. Thus were born
the nations of Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, part of which later
became Bangladesh. Yet, Muslim leaders to this day do not recognize
India’s legitimacy as a Hindu country. They argue that since there were
periodic Muslim leaders in the pre-British era, the entire nation is
Muslim in accordance with Muslim law.
Whether out of pique, overconfidence, or religious hatred, Middle
Eastern Muslims rejected partition. They vowed to destroy the Jewish
state and carry out a massive genocide. Several Arab nations jointly
tried just that, but newborn State of Israel prevailed against all odds
and with the hostility of that same international community. The Muslim
Arabs miscalculated badly, something they would do again and again.
Several subsequent Arab attempts at genocide were equally disastrous,
despite international passivity (save the United States in 1973).
Instead, Muslim race hatred was rewarded with massive amounts of aid
and an attempt to re-write some sort of historical legitimacy for the
Arabs. The Muslims of the Middle East, like their South Asian brethren,
still refuse to recognize this non-Muslim state’s right to exist.
As a result, both nations face the danger of a potential fifth column.
Indian Muslims hold clearly identified “Muslim” political positions,
often at odds with “Hindu” ones; and a large part of the Israeli Arab
community has made clear its loyalty to Arab positions that undermine
the Jewish state. Moreover, both Israeli Jews and Indian Hindus need to
wake up to the fact that, no matter how just their cause or how
defensive their actions, they cannot expect anything but opposition to
their fight against radical Islam from all but an oppressed minority of
Muslims. The goal of Islamists and their clients remains the same for
India and Israel: their total eradication and replacement by an Islamic
State. For decades, Arab states made no secret of their intention to
destroy Israel; some still do. Europe’s always lurking anti-Semitism
made marginalizing the world’s only Jewish state easy; India is just
too big. The Muslim states tried aggressive warfare against both
nations, b
ut failing at it time and again changed tactics so that Israel and
India face terrorist attacks by their surrogates. Israel has had to
deal with terrorism longer, and many Indians believe that the success
of Israeli counterterrorism makes it a model for them. But the most
curious and significant fact is that both nations have the power to
destroy their enemies; yet, both nations refrain from doing so.
Neither country needs to suspend the rule of law or otherwise become
like their enemies to succeed; they are better than that and need to
remain so. Their enemies make it clear that they can’t wait to get
their hands on some weapons of mass destruction so they can use them
against these two great democracies. On the other hand, both India and
Israel have had them for decades and have never used them. Alone they
can achieve success, but together they could be an indomitable force
against Islamist terror and the nations that support it. Moreover, they
both have to cast out the same demons and follow the same strategy for
it to happen.
First, stop pandering to the enemy, both inside and outside of the
country. Indians call it pseudo secularism. Israelis just call it
appeasement. Both democracies bend over backwards to show the world
that they are sensitive to their Muslim minorities; but let’s remember
that they are minorities in both countries. While free governments have
no moral right to deprive them of basic rights or of social or legal
equality. But that same system of morality does not require the
majorities—Hindus in India, Jews in Israel—to show their compassion by
giving into every alleged slight, merited or not.
Second, be unyielding in goals and principles. Leaders in both Israel
and India (as well as many in the United States) have a basic
misunderstanding how our enemies and their potential allies—who also
are out potential allies—understand our actions. Too often, they
confuse “understanding” with moral relativism. For instance, neither
they nor their cohorts in Europe spoke of “the white man’s burden” to
bring civilization to the rest of the world. Yet, how different is that
discredited concept from an Imam’s call to bring the rest of the world
under Islam or peoples of all faiths under Sharia law? And they have
never publicly condemned that imperialistic and racist policy. For
decades, democracies have prided themselves on inclusion and lowering
barriers that previously limited interaction among ethnic and religious
groups. Yet, in India, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, Muslims are
given free reign to apply Sharia law in various matters even if it
conflicts with natio
nal principles of freedom and decency. Those leaders who believe they
are showing their compassion are showing nothing more than weakness.
For if we are willing to look the other way when our enemies routinely
violate our principles we claim to hold dear, we appear to have no
principles at all—something that Islamists claim in order to seduce
converts to their cause.
Third, characterize the enemy with the inflammatory rhetoric that
accurately reflects what they are. Imagine even one Jewish Sabbath
service at which the Rabbi exhorts the congregation to seek out all
Muslims and slaughter them; even imagine an Israeli Rabbi saying the
same thing about all Arabs. You can’t; it doesn’t happen. And we know
that because if it did, there would be world wide outrage, newspaper
condemnations, cries or outrage from every human rights NGO, and maybe
even a UN investigation. Rabbis and the Israeli government would be
even quicker to condemn it. Yet, the converse occurs every Friday at
mosques throughout Israel—that’s every Friday—official PA and other
Muslim radio stations even carry those racist and murder-inciting
statements. But the Israeli government does not issue equally loud
condemnations or apply laws against incitement to religious hatred
(which it surely would apply to Jews). It does not protest to the
United Nations or to the various
Arab governments that claim to be “peace partners.” Why not? Every time
a Muslim leader—secular or religious—uses the language of hate,
Israeli, Indian, and US leaders must loudly condemn it as such. Call on
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN to investigate
it. Plaster every airwave with our outrage and the indecent statements
of imams and tyrants. Remain strong together and others will join. Make
those who would rather skulk away in silence stand in front of
television cameras and justify hatred again and again and again until
their duplicity and moral cowardice force a change.
Recently, I was part of a US Congressional briefing about minority
oppression in Bangladesh. When I rose to spoke, I expressed my own
outrage that I was the first speaker to call the action against
Bangladeshi Hindus what it really is: ethnic cleansing. I also asked if
there could be any doubt that Bangladesh’s Vested Property Act is
racist? Yet, no one calls it what it is. Every time that hated law is
mentioned, it should be described as the “racist” Vested Property Act.
Every time the plight of Bangladesh’s Hindus is noted, it must be
called ethnic cleansing. Our enemies use hyperbole all the time to
paint themselves as victims, and the world buys it. How much more
important is it that we use the same language to describe events that
actually fit it!
Fourth, reject outdated perspectives and the self-interest of
governments in trouble. Indian and Israeli governments both seek
approval from Europe like it is some sort of moral arbiter in this
world. Yet, Europe’s one consistent response to evil has been silence;
appeasement. Indian leaders especially need to drop their Euro-centric
bias. For Europe has never modeled moral behavior in the face of
immorality. All of Europe either participated or was complicit in the
Nazi holocaust of the Jews; it did nothing to stop genocide in its
former African colonies of Nigeria (Biafra), Rwanda, the Sudan, and in
countless other places where the body counts have been ignored. Can we
really expect Europe to do anything but express regret after Israel’s 6
million Jews are murdered; or after there are no more Hindus in
Pakistan or Bangladesh?
Moreover, we have seen weak governments in both countries choose the
course of appeasement in the false hope of strengthening their own
position. In India, the left-center Congress Party has entered into
agreements with Indian communists upon whom they are now dependent. In
Israel, a Prime Minister facing imminent indictment has just concluded
a deal that broke Israeli pledges never to release terrorists who had
Israeli blood on their hands. Indians and Israelis must let them know
that in an effort to save their own skins, they are willing to sell out
their children. And they must do so with profound outrage.
Fifth, use the military power at your disposal to dispatch those who
are killing your own children—and generally calling those who do heroes!
One final bit of perspective. Some years back, my mother, wife, and
daughter were enjoying a meal in a Jerusalem pizza parlor. Several
weeks later, an Arab terrorist walked into that same pizza parlor and
exploded a bomb, murdering 15 people including seven children. I
realized that if my mother, wife, and daughter were there that day, the
people who dispatched the murdered would have rejoiced in their deaths;
and further that anyone who would rejoice in the death of my mother,
wife, and daughter, is an enemy with whom peace is impossible.
And the time to act on that realization is now; tomorrow might be too late.
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