Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting Israel. It is a historical visit. It is the first time an Indian Prime Minister is visiting Israel. Putting aside all protocol norms Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Ben-Gurion Airport to welcome Modi.
Let’s step back and take a broader view of this historical visit. The Israeli Knesset (parliament) recently passed a bill that defines Israel as the “national home of the Jewish people.” According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the Arab population in 2013 was estimated at 1,658,000, representing 20.7% of the country’s population. 1.65 million Palestinian Arabs have become second class citizens in the Jewish national home.
So Modi is visiting the dreamland of his Guruji Golwalkar, the second Sarsanghchalak (supreme leader) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh who wrote in his book, “We or Our Nationhood Defined”
“The foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen’s rights. There is, at least, should be, no other course for them to adopt. We are an old nation; let us deal, as old nations ought to and do deal, with the foreign races, who have chosen to live in our country.”
So Modi is visiting a land where the RSS dream has come to fruition. It is not surprising that both Modi and Netanyahu are calling each other brothers and embracing each other repeatedly.
Zionism is a Jewish supremacist ideology. It came into existence through the existential anxiety of the Jews living in Europe. A secular Austrian-Jewish journalist, Theodor Herzl, was the first to turn rumblings of Jewish nationalism into an international movement around 1896. Aided by the prevailing political climate in Europe, the Zionist movement encouraged Jews to migrate to the British domain of Palestine and used their money power, political power and military power to establish a nation called Israel in Palestine, ethnic cleansing 700,000 original dwellers of the land. This project continued with the 1967 Six Day War and still continues with the settlement of hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews in the occupied land in clear violation of international laws and U.N resolutions. Israel is a colonial, rogue, apartheid state. It is this rogue nation that India is embracing. Modi not visiting Ramallah, the headquarters of Palestine Authority is a clear message to the Muslims of the world and to Muslims back home in India.
In the same way, RSS was launched by some Nagpur Brahmans due to the existential anxiety created by the growing freedom movement and to ensure the hegemony of the upper castes when India got freedom from the British. The collusion of RSS with the British and Savarkar’s mercy petitions are legends that RSS wants the nation to forget. Some history will come back to haunt them forever. RSS agenda was to make India a Hindu Rashtra with Manusmriti (Manu’s Code) as the underlying principle when the British left India. When they found that Mahatma Gandhi stood in their way, their henchman Nathuram Godse pointed his gun at him and gunned him down. When Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, as RSS claimed, after 1000 years of foreign domination, they found it an opportune moment to make their dream a reality. The mob violence, lynchings, violation of food rights, human rights, livelihood rights are part of this larger plan.
In Israel RSS has found a natural ally and a role model who put their grand vision to fruition. In Modi’s embrace of Netanyahu we see the marriage of two evil ideologies, Hindutva and Zionism. Israel with its tried and tested military technologies and tactics to subdue the freedom strugglers of Palestine, will be ever ready to pass on their know how to Modi. Muslims, dalits and other minority groups in India, beware of this deadly embrace.
Binu Mathew is the editor of www.countercurrents.org. He can be reached at editor@countercurrents.org
Added to the shared racist/fascist ideologies of Hindutva and Zionism well stated above, is the shared lust for weaponry..India recently signed arms deals with israel worth billions and a shared strategic enemy- Iran, http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/an-iranian-role-in-indo-israel-defense-ties/
Thank you PS SAHNI for affirming solidarity with the people of Palestine.
Soon after assumption of office, the Modi government has made rapid strides towards establishing ‘ zionist’ rule in India ( Hinduism equals to Zionism) . Hence, the present ‘ embrace’ is a step towards perfection of the agenda. People of India must awake immediately to stop this growing manace which may take mammoth proportion if unchecked and unopposed
Why is the PM sending contradictory signals by visiting countries that are poised against each other? Beyond sound rationale?
As far as I’m concerned, this is probably the best evaluation that you’ve ever written, Binu. This reason is that the parallels are unmistakable, clear, concise, perceptive, even prescient and easy to see in their identical natures. They are like two almost identical hands — like the left and right ones that a singular person possesses — wrapped in the same set of matching gloves while embracing each other in a clasp.
Yet we have many other hands wrapping around this twosome of hands of India and Israel, such as the USA’s government and even more beyond our threesome so as to form a cluster of hands. … I assume that you know that the USA government, running up a $20 trillion USD debt, gives Israel billions of dollars in aid each year while our own streets and many US slum communities are crumbling. … I assume that you know about Rachael Corrie and ever so many others like her, who tried to block Palestinians having their lands, homes and resources seized.
The action of harming Palestinians reminds of events that happened to many Jews in Europe during WWII while they, too, were placed in open-air prison/concentration camps as have now been done to Palestinians. (How well people can learn to oppress when it has been done to themselves and how well they can learn fear, such as the changes that Israel would endure politically, economically and otherwise for Jews were Arabs be allowed to have full voting rights and become a part of Israel. Why, it would no longer be a Jewish state … reminds of the USA not giving full voting rights to people of African decent after the Civil War since a group in power wants to stay in power and it takes massive, and I mean massive, demonstrations and other sorts of work to stop their ways.) … Are we up to it?
Most people like their own privilege and don’t want to be cut back from experiencing it as a condition in their lives. (As you’re aware, I wrote of this topic in my latest essay. … Mea culpa, let’s just look in the mirror and not just malign the “other,” such as Israel’s or our own governments since we brought them into place, OURSELVES, one way or another.)
Yet we have to always support justice, which sometimes means that some people have to learn to share better with others, as well as do with less for themselves to be accommodating to others. It means acceptance and not just an iron fist of a gloved hand coming down onto the heads of others.
Of course, this sort of social and ideological redirection equally applies to Israel, your country, mine and ever so many others. If we can’t accommodate the change, then watch when the maligned masses are harmed to such a degree that they rise in full force against the status quo. (It won’t be pretty since people can only take so much abuse without becoming like a pack of pitbulls.)
Rachel Corrie – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_CorrieRachel
Aliene Corrie (April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003) from Olympia,
Washington, was an American activist and diarist. She was a member of a
pro-Palestinian …
Cause of death: Killed while trying to block … .She was killed by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) armored bulldozer in a combat zone in Rafah
Home town: Olympia, Washington, United Stat…
Parent(s): Craig Corrie; Cindy Corrie
Nationality: American
Thank you for your encouraging comments. Countercurrents always stood for Palestinian justice. I was heart broken when Rachel Corrie was killed. CC covered her murder in detail. There is a load of articles on Rachel Corrie in CC. Rachel Corrie in fact symbolises the spirit of human oneness and the quest for justice. Moreover, she is a symbol of courage. https://www.google.co.in/search?q=rachel+corrie&domains=http://www.countercurrents.org&sitesearch=http://www.countercurrents.org&btnG=Search&gws_rd=cr&ei=cyReWZi6LsfevASTx5DwDQ
Well said Mr. Mathew
Israeli prime minister, the Butcher of Gaza Strip hugged several times Indian prime minister, the Butcher of Gujarat, calling him mere dost (my dear friend) at the Ben-Gurion Airport. Their friendship is based on the murder of thousands of innocent Muslim men, women and children.