Jaipur: From India’s side, there was no sympathy for Hamas after its attack on Israel on 7 October, 2023, but after more and more exposure to the civilian loss of life in Gaza, the public sentiment turned, and the proposition that 7 October was perhaps the result of what had happened in Gaza over the years was put forward with considerable conviction, former Indian diplomat Navtej Sarna said at the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) Friday.
In a panel discussion called ‘The World After Gaza’, named after essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra’s new book, Sarna, who has been India’s ambassador to the US and Israel, also discussed India’s evolving relationship with Tel Aviv.
Mishra, who was also at JLF, talked about the moral implications of global inaction in Gaza. British-Palestinian writer and lawyer Selma Dabbagh represented the Palestinian voice in the panel.
“India now has a strong diplomatic and strategic relationship with Israel. In recent years, there has been a very close government-to-government connect between India and Israel, and Israel is today, arguably, one of India’s largest suppliers of defence equipment,” said Sarna.
India has largely been careful to balance this with its support for the Palestinian cause, in terms of aid and statements in the United Nations, he added. However, “it is inevitable that you cannot maintain this balance”, he said, referring to the polarising nature of the Gaza conflict.
India, which was partitioned, had historically not been in favour of the partition of Palestine (into Jewish and Arab sectors), but faced with the realities, recognised Israel in 1950 after an intensive two-year debate, said Sarna. For the next 42 years, India did not have diplomatic relations with Israel, limiting ties to informal contacts, he added.
Israel, however, emerged as an important military partner for India in the 1965 and 1971 wars, Sarna pointed out.
“In 1992, at the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, India felt that the world was changing, and given that India’s relationship with the US was moving ahead, India set up diplomatic relations with Israel, and the two countries have grown closer and closer,” he added.
Commenting on India’s subdued reaction to the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza conflict compared to the rest of the “Global South”, Sarna said that initially, India saw 7 October as a terror attack in the background of having suffered the same terror in Mumbai in 2008. Then, India started “nuancing” its position but was not as strongly critical of Israel as the rest of the “Global South”, he said.
Giving an overall context, Sarna explained: “The Global South is a very amorphous entity, and each country has its personal or individual relationships (with others). India has different relationships with Israel, with the US and with the Arab partners, than many other countries in the Global South.”
Mishra, recalling the past support for Palestinians among politicians and in popular culture in India, said the position of moral solidarity with the Palestinians, successfully maintained by (first prime minister) Jawaharlal Nehru and others, gave India a kind of moral leadership in the world, which has been squandered away. “Today, India is out of step,” he asserted.
Commenting on Israel’s actions in Gaza, he added: “It’s only a tiny minority of people that is supporting and enabling what Israel is doing today. Public sentiment around the world is of overwhelming disgust. India, it seems like, lost an opportunity to reassert itself as a moral force in international politics.”
Dabbagh said the destruction in Gaza has been comprehensive, multi-layered and blacked out. “The impossibility for international journalists to get in has never been so strong.”
“News coming out from the official channels-that which does come out-is often skewed. It’s biased. It uses a passive language. It refuses to name Israel as a perpetrator,” she argued.
According to the Palestinian health authorities, Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 46,000 people, mostly civilians. It is estimated, however, that the toll could be 41 percent higher.
Israel says Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 253 into captivity in Gaza in October 2023.
Also Read: India should be more explicit in support of Israel, take Tel Aviv’s side, says Israeli minister
‘Loss of trust in legacy institutions’
The panel, hosted by Channel 4 News‘ international editor Lindsey Hilsum, also saw discussions on the media blackout of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“It’s difficult to know what’s going on in Gaza,” said Hilsum at the start, reminding the audience that no outside journalists are allowed in the conflict zone and that “159 Gazan journalists have been killed compared to 69 journalists killed during World War II and 63 during the Vietnam War”.
Mishra spoke of the “catastrophic loss of faith and trust in established legacy institutions,” which either misrepresented the conflict or did not cover “a livestream genocide”.
“I think for many people, it has come as an extremely rude reminder that many of these institutions had been misrepresenting various political issues, economic issues for an extremely long time,” he said.
“And for many people, I think the response is to turn very unsatisfactorily to social media or, you know, various alternative media institutions. So this is by no means, you know, the kind of resolution outcome we want,” he added.
Arguing that, from the crisis in Congo to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, no disaster can be compared to Gaza, Mishra said: “Gaza, or what has happened in Gaza, the extermination of a whole people, is something in which we are all to varying degrees, complicit. Complicit because the people we work with, whether it’s journalists, the people we vote for, or politicians, have, in varying degrees, expressed support for it.”
Advocating for a solution that reconciles the demands of two sides in the Gaza conflict, Sarna said: “You cannot ask people to leave their homes. Let us not forget this is the home of the Palestinian people.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also Read: Why are Indians indifferent to Palestinians’ plight? No, it’s not about Jews vs Muslims
Everyone knows the credentials and deeds (or rather misdeeds) of Mr. Pankaj Mishra.
He has been an avowed anti-Hindu crusader. For the record though, he has never been heard saying a word about Islamic fanaticism and fundamentalism. Organizations such as ISIS, Taliban, Al Qaeda and others are never the subject of his tongue lashings. However, he is an expert at excoriating the RSS, VHP and BJP.
By inviting such people, the JLF does itself a disservice.