#azad essa

[beguines]

Whereas the election of Modi had already demonstrated that this new India was prepared to sacrifice Muslims and others for the purported chance to economically transform the country (read: corporatize it), it was only natural that Palestinians too would be discarded if it meant getting closer to Israel and the boon of global capital. By refusing to allow parliament to pass a resolution against Israeli aggression in Gaza and by abstaining from the resolution endorsing the 2015 UN report that called for accountability for Israeli crimes, India had shown that it was no longer prepared to provide Palestinians even performative support. Moreover, equivocating that both sides had an "equal responsibility" to lower tensions and prevent unnecessary loss of life, Modi's government had already amended the substantive nature of its foreign policy on the question of Palestine.

India had normalized relations with Israel in 1992 without Palestinians achieving statehood or self-determination. In 2014, New Delhi went one step further. It upgraded its public appreciation for Zionism and Israel and reduced its foreign policy to a contorted and performative "sympathy" for the Palestinian cause. It also began to illustrate a respect and intention to emulate Israeli policy at home. In 2014, the Punjab Police traveled to Israel for training on "security and anti-terror operations." A year later, the Indian Police Service (IPS) began an annual program in which recent graduates would spend one week studying "best practices in counterinsurgency, managing low intensity warfare and use of technology in policing and countering terror" with the Israel National Police Academy. In 2015, the Indian government began the implementation of a "smart border" along the Line of Control. These partnerships with Israel did little to deter the Indian foreign ministry from insisting that its commitment to the Palestinians remained unchanged. But the changes had arrived. And it had been a long time coming. India's decision to abstain from holding Israel accountable to the UNHCR resolution in 2015, was the surest sign that India believed in Israel's fundamental right to self-defense, and therefore, its right to exist as a settler-colonial state, unconditionally.

Azad Essa, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel

[indizombie]

Under Modi's leadership, India has grown considerably closer to Israel. New Delhi is the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons, amounting to more than $1bn per year. Between 2015-2019, Indian purchases of Israeli weapons increased by 175 percent. But Indian and Israeli companies have also started producing weapons in factories across India. The bouquet of weapons being co-produced by the two countries includes Tavor X95 assault rifles, the Galil sniper rifles, Negev light machine guns, as well as Hermes 900 medium altitude long endurance drones. Defence analysts say the partnership with India could assist in the mass production of Israeli weapons. Meanwhile, Modi has used his relationship with Israel to modernise India's army as well as bolster his image as a champion of indigenising production and manufacturing, known as his "Make in India" programme.

Azad Essa, ‘War on Gaza: Indian-made Israeli 'killer' drones set to make their way to Gaza’, Middle East Eye

[3025-jasmines]

because I am also Indian, I want to also point this out. freedom for colonized people everywhere also means freedom for Kashmiris that are under a brutal Indian occupation. the right to self-determination for all colonized people everywhere, from Palestine to Kashmir to Ireland

a good book to read to learn more about the relationship between Israel and India is “Hostile Homelands” by Azad Essa. India is looking to Israel treatment of Palestinians as a blueprint for its own crimes against Kashmiris, Muslims and Dalits. India is also complicit in furthering Israeli settler colonialism in Palestine - the Port of Haifa is currently partly owned by Adani Ports & SEZ, the founder of which is one of the wealthiest men in India, Gautam Adani (won’t come as a surprise that Adani is also very close to Modi and the BJP)

[shehzadi]

the relationship between zionism, nazism, and hindutva in ‘hostile homelands’ by azad essa

[wingedalpacacupcake]

Mass arrests at NYC protest against US President Joe Biden's Israel policy

[timetravellingkitty]

hi!! I just found out about tumblr having an anti-hindutva tag and I shall be making myself comfortable here! just found your account like a few mins ago and if it’s ok, i wanted to ask some questions (you absolutely don't have to answer if you don't like any of them or even if you don't feel like answering :) ) (edit added, this ask got way too long lol. feel free to skip it! also, you're kinda super cool lol)

I'm Indian, currently outside India, and I've only started learning about the shitshow going on in my 'mahaan bharat' since November (specifically since finding out that we are Irahell's biggest weapons buyer). and the more I find out the more shocked and heartbroken I feel...

like this week i learnt about the immigration ban in US against Chinese women that existed a few decades ago, and the ongoing discrimination against Palestinians in Canadian immigration services... and both the times I was so disgusted and there was this subconscious feeling that India should never be like that. but then an hour ago I learnt about the 2019 CAA and wtf!?

another example being that currently we're seeing israhell's continuous bombing of heritage sites of great cultural and religious significance, that also held so many centuries old records and histories... and learning about how they are bulldozing over graveyards and exhuming them...

and then today I learnt about Akhonji Masjid and Gyanvapi Masjid and of course have known about Babri Masjid for a few weeks now...

and only learnt about Kashmir in november...

and I feel like my whole worldview has shifted from a previous foundation, except it's so drastic and I still don't have a new foundation...

I try to talk to members of my family about this but they're the Indian equivalent of the U.S. liberals, and every single time they'll tell me "whatever news you're hearing is propaganda written by Pakistan/China/U.S./Russia. trust me I have Muslim friends and they're very happy. you just don't know the situation cause you're not in India" and like it sometimes make me think maybe I'm the one losing my mind...

I even read some places about free Punjab and that confused the fuck out of me cause I'm Punjabi (who does not live in Punjab) and I don't have any clue what it's about... I asked my fam, but they just gave me a weird look and told me to stay away from anyone that mentions Khalistan😭💀

(this got way longer than I expected, so sorry) but would you have any recommendations for any blogs/articles/books/podcast resources or any personal recommendations for news publications that are reliable (finding God would probably be easier than finding such publications lmao) like I thought Al-Jazeera is super credible, but then read that they're super credible when it comes to Palestine, not when it's global...

like where tf do I go from here lol

hello nonnie! some news sites I'd recommend are newslaundry (they have a youtube channel too), the wire, scroll.in and newsclick. maktoob media is mostly focused on minority rights in india. hindutvawatch.org is about hindu fascist violence committed against minorities. I still think you should stick to al-jazeera at least when it comes to palestine (they have journalists on the ground there, shireen abu akleh was one of them)

this is a good introduction to anyone wanting to learn about hindutva, this and this are about how india is becoming increasingly unsafe for minorites and is undergoing a democratic backsliding. this and this are about the rss link to nazism

hostile homelands by azad essa is about india's historical relationship with israel and the parallels between hindutva and zionism. the brown history podcast has an episode about how india went from the first non-arab state to recognise palestine to its largest buyer of weapons, featuring azad essa (x). you can also read colonising kashmir by hafsa kanjwal about how india came to militarily occupy kashmir. if you want to learn more about kashmir there are the blogs kashmiraction.org and standwithkashmir (which is um. blocked in india. i wonder why)

i have not read khaki shorts and saffron flags yet but this one is about the history of the rss. i also suggest watching the documentaries ram ke naam and jai bhim, comrade which are about the hindutva mobilisation in the 1980s

for me free punjab is very ?? the indian government is beyond evil as they continue to spy on sikhs abroad (and ofc, the 1984 sikh genocide) but i don't think liberation will be achieved through a religious ethnostate. any state formed on the basis of religion will inevitably turn out to be a disaster. i do encourage you to read lost in history: 1984 reconstructed by gunisha kaur, which is about the human rights violations committed against sikhs during this time and why operation bluestar was in fact not about freeing sri harmandir sahib from "terrorists." all i can say is to stand with sikhs unapologetically as our shitass government continues to commit more and more human rights violations against them

in general, i'd tell you to observe the language used by different news outlets and question it (eg. american news referring to israelis below the age of 18 as children but the same courtesy is not extended to palestinians) and check their sources. if it's from whatsapp university don't even bother

[good-old-gossip]

Harvard Silences Pro-Palestinian Voices

Harvard University has suspended the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee after months of administrative repression, harassment and intimidation from right-wing politicians and donors, the group said in a statement sent to Middle East Eye.

"For months, we have been disproportionately targeted by the administration on the grounds of technicalities that we tried to observe vigilantly in the interest of protecting student safety," the statement on Monday read. Harvard PSC said on 6 March that it had been retroactively placed on probation since 1 March, for a February event that it had not officially sponsored. The student group was subsequently suspended this week because it held a rally in solidarity with the Columbia students and in protest against student repression with group that were not official student organisations.

The group said that Harvard University has demonstrated time and again that Palestine remains the exception to free speech.

"After standing idly by as pro-Palestine students faced physical and cyber harassment, death threats and rape threats, and racist doxxing, Harvard has now decided to dismantle the only official student group dedicated to the task of representing the Palestinian cause," the group said.

"As the death toll in Gaza rises with each day of the ongoing genocide, our right to protest this violence only becomes more important. It is shameful - but not surprising - that an institution that is actively invested in Israel’s blatant violence against Palestinians, one that hesitates to even recognize the existence of Palestinians in its official communications, has taken the extra step to erase the only official student group dedicated to solidarity with the people of Palestine."

Since the events of 7 October, when a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel killed 1,150 and over 200 were taken back to Gaza as hostages, the Strip has been under siege and deprived of basic necessities while facing a devastating bombing campaign by Israel.

At least 34,000 Palestinians have been killed and around a million displaced, in what has been described as an unfolding "genocide". Harvard University, like several other educational institutions in the US, has been a key site of struggle for pro-Palestinian protesters since Israel's war on Gaza began. Pro-Israel groups and billionaire donors have repeatedly conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

In December, Harvard president Claudine Gay testified at a Congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus. Her testimony drew widespread criticism and led to her resignation in January. Harvard University did not respond to MEE's request for comment.

✍️ by: Azad Essa

[agentshilonglang]

Palestinian Authors at Bluestockings

Join us next week for two events where we will gather, mourn, witness and raise funds for various Palestinian causes. If you can't make it, please help spread the word on social media, [Link: since Palestinian causes are heavily censored, Instagram.]

Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Reading and Panel Discussion

Panel led by Shourideh C. Molavi, Paulo Tavares, Azad Essa, and Michelle Téllez.

Tuesday, April 23rd, 6pm-7:300pm

Bluestockings Cooperative Bookstore 116 Suffolk Street New York, NY 10002

Since 2014, the bulldozing of Palestinian lands by Israeli occupation forces has been complemented by the unannounced aerial spraying of military herbicides, extending the reach of Israeli colonial violence into the realm of chemical warfare. The spraying has destroyed entire swaths of arable land in Gaza, contributing to decades-long practices that have forcibly changed a once-lush Palestinian landscape. This book is an urgent accounting of the violence against the land itself as well as the people if Palestine. Join us Tuesday April 23rd for the launch and to raise funds for Ain Media Gaza. [Link: Bluestockings Collective, Instagram.]

Suggested donations of $10-$20.

Sliding scale starts at $1 if this is too high, however no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Masks required when not eating or drinking. The event space has a HEPA HVAC.

Event is on the first floor with no stairs into the building.

[Link: Tickets to register available from Eventbrite.]

Bluestockings Collective will also be hosting an event on Friday, April 25th 2024, [Link: "Blood Orange: Queer Palestinian Poetry of Rage and Resistance," Tumblr]

[b0ringasfuck]

Yet it was not a sentiment restricted only to the upper echelons of Indian government. As Azad Essa, a journalist and author of Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, said: “This messaging gave a clear signal to the whole rightwing internet cell in India.” In the aftermath, the Indian internet factcheckers AltNews and Boom began to observe a flood of disinformation targeting Palestine pushed out by Indian social media accounts, which included fake stories about atrocities committed by Palestinians and Hamas that were shared sometimes millions of times, and often using the conflict to push the same Islamophobic narrative that has been used regularly to demonise India’s Muslim population since the BJP came to power.

A turning point came in 1999 when India went to war with Pakistan and Israel proved willing to provide arms and ammunition. It was the beginning of a defence relationship that has grown exponentially. India buys about $2bn-worth of arms from Israel every year – its largest arms supplier after Russia – and accounts for 46% of Israel’s overall weapons exports.

[tieflingkisser]

Protesters in New York demand ceasefire and end to Israeli occupation

In New York, US, a protest captured by MEE's Azad Essa on Monday brought together several hundred demonstrators marching in solidarity with Gaza. The protesters called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Israeli occupation in Palestinian territories.

[beguines]

The Indian state has already begun to evict indigenous communities from their homes. In late 2020, tribal communities received notice that labeled their homes as illegally occupying forest land. Their homes were demolished. This bears an eerie resemblance to Israel's targeting of Bedouin communities of Naqab, where Israel gave the lands of these communities to Jewish settlers and the military. The logic of Bedouin dispossession was premised on the fact that as nomads, they had no right to the land.

In Kashmir, these communities were living on lands that the Indian state wanted to use for the development of tourist infrastructure. Part of the plan is to transfer agricultural land to Indian state and private corporations. Kashmir has already lost 78,700 hectares of agricultural land to non-agricultural purposes between 2015–19. This decline in agricultural land—which a majority of Kashmiris still rely upon as the foundation of their economy—will disempower farmers, result in a loss of essential crops, make Kashmir less agriculturally self-sufficient, and create grounds for economic collapse in the near future. It is of course, only when Kashmiris are economically devastated that India's job in securing their land will be made even easier.

Alongside the destruction of agricultural land, the Indian government has also been charged with "ecocide" in Kashmir, which, "masked under the development rhetoric . . . destroys the environment without care, extracting resources and expanding illegal infrastructure as a way of contesting the indigenous peoples' right of belonging and using the territory for their own gain." During the lockdown in late 2019, the valley saw unprecedented forest clearances. In June 2020, the Jammu & Kashmir Forest Department became a government-owned corporation, allowing it to sell public forest land to private entities, including to Indian corporations. The rush to secure and extract Kashmir's resources has typically come at an immense cost to the region's vulnerable ecology, prompting local activists' fears that a lack of accountability will almost certainly exacerbate the climate crisis in South Asia. Just as Israel has secured control over Palestinian resources, India's stranglehold of Kashmir's natural resources and interference with the environment will ultimately make Kashmiris dependent on the Indian state for their livelihoods.

All of these shifts in land use reflect the "Srinagar Master Plan 2035," which "proposes creating formal and informal housing colonies through town planning schemes as well as in Special Investment Corridors," primarily for the use of Indian settlers and outside investors. Indeed, the Indian government has signed a series of MOU's with outside investors to alter the nature of the state by building multiplexes, educational institutions, film production centers, tourist infrastructure, Hindu religious sites, and medical industries. Kashmiri investors are no competition for massive Indian and external corporations and have a fundamental disadvantage in investing in land banks that the government has apportioned toward these purposes. Back to back lockdowns have resulted in massive economic losses for Kashmir's industries, including tourism, handicrafts, horticulture, IT, and e-commerce. Furthermore, "as with other colonial powers, Indian officials are participating in international investment summits parroting Kashmir as a 'Land of Opportunity', setting off a scramble for Kashmir's resources, which will cause further environmental destruction." India has always kept a close eye on Kashmir's water resources and its capabilities to generate electricity, while intentionally depriving Kashmir of the electricity it produces.

As more economic and employment opportunities are opened up to Indian domiciles, Kashmiris will also be deprived of what little job security they had. In sum, "neoliberal policies come together with settler colonial ambitions under continued reference to private players, industrialization and development, with the 'steady flow of wealth outwards.'"

Azad Essa, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel

[indizombie]

Activists said that while the Indian foreign ministry has tried to portray its foreign policy towards Israel and Palestine as unchanged, its actions suggested it fully supported Israel's plans for Gaza. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first leaders to unequivocally condemn the Hamas-led 7 October attack on southern Israel, and his administration was subsequently slow to join the global call for a ceasefire. New Delhi abstained from the first vote at the UN General Assembly and signed the resolution only in December. Following an application by the South African government to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the charge of genocide against Israel, the Indian government steered clear from supporting the case.

Azad Essa, ‘War on Gaza: Indian-made Israeli 'killer' drones set to make their way to Gaza’, Middle East Eye

[heavenlyyshecomes]

2 & 3 for the reading asks <3

What are 2-5 already published nonfiction books you think you want to read in 2023?

pure wit—francesca peacock, hostile homelands—azad essa, art monsters—lauren elkin, thunderclap—laura cumming

Any poetry on your TBR?

I've realised there isn't any that I planned to read specifically this year actually so I looked at my general tbr I think I'd like to read the poetry of forugh farrokhzad & ann margolin !

[shehzadi]

discussion about the israeli spyware ‘pegasus’ being used in india from ‘hostile homelands’ by azad essa

funnily enough, an article from maktoob media from literally a day ago (28.12.23) reports that pegasus has been found on two more journalists’ phones.

[xtruss]

How Two Terrorists, Modi and Bibi, Built a Military Alliance

India and Israel have strengthened their defense ties in recent years—but a new book makes the relationship sound more sinister than it is.

— March 18, 2023 | Foreign Policy | Sumit Ganguly

A Likud Party election banner hanging from a building shows Israeli Terrorist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shaking hands with Indian Terrorist Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a caption above reading in Hebrew "Netanyahu, in another league", in Tel Aviv on July 28, 2019. Jack Guez/AFP Via Getty Images

Today, the Indian-Israeli relationship is genuinely multifaceted. It extends from an annual influx of young Israeli tourists who come to India’s west coast beaches to unwind after their required military service to collaborations in drip agriculture to the sale of sophisticated weaponry. In the past several decades the relationship has significantly deepened and broadened, especially under the two right-of-center prime ministers, Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu.

This close partnership has significant ramifications for regional and global politics. The close bilateral relationship enables both parties to play a wider role in the Middle East, especially in the Persian Gulf. This is increasingly evident from their participation in the new quadrilateral arrangement, the I2U2, designed to limit China’s influence in the region and also to reassure allies of the enduring U.S. commitment to the region.

Historically, the Indian-Israeli relationship was far from close. The Indian nationalist movement was leery of supporting a state established on the basis of a particular religion—wary that it could provide legitimacy to rival Pakistan’s moral foundations. Furthermore, parts of India’s foreign-policy establishment had sympathies for the Arab world borne out of shared anti-colonial sentiments. The political leadership in New Delhi was also sensitive to India’s largest religious minority, Muslims, who were mostly ill-disposed toward Israel.

As a result, during much of the Cold War, following India’s independence in 1947, its relations with Israel were low-key, even clandestine. In 1947, India voted against the U.N. partition plan for the British Mandate of Palestine. After Israel declared independence in 1948, India again voted no on admitting the state of Israel to the United Nations General Assembly, and it only recognized the country in 1950. During the bulk of the Cold War, India, quite deliberately, maintained a studious public distance from Israel. It was only after the Cold War’s end and the Madrid Peace Conference that India normalized its relationship with Israel.

Journalist Azad Essa’s new book, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, argues that India’s growing partnership with Israel is based upon a convergence of ethnonational ideological perspectives. It covers much of what is already known about the evolution of the relationship, and those familiar with the partnership may not find much that is especially novel. Essa nevertheless scours a range of academic and popular sources to construct his key arguments.

Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, Azad Essa, Pluto Press, 240 pp., $22.95, February 2023.

“The strengthening of Indian-Israeli ties started before the rise of powerful ethnonationalist governments in the two countries.”

Essa wants to demonstrate in this book that the burgeoning strategic partnership between India and Israel involves the jettisoning of all moral scruples and is increasingly based upon a convergence of ideological proclivities as well as mutually beneficial material ties across a range of areas, from commerce to defense. His argument is only partially accurate, because the strengthening of Indian-Israeli ties had started before the rise of powerful ethnonationalist governments in the two countries.

Despite its reservations toward Israel, India allowed it to open a consulate in Mumbai (then known as Bombay) in 1953; it still showed no interest in having full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. However, it did rely on Israel for military assistance, albeit in a covert fashion. Eager to break free from its diplomatic isolation in the Middle East, Israel provided critical military supplies to India, starting with the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, aiming to soften India’s diplomatic stance. Israel also came to India’s aid during its wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971, although it was kept secret.

While carrying out these surreptitious contacts, India mostly rebuffed closer ties with Israel in public. It was only after the Cold War came to an end—and after the 1991 Madrid Conference, designed to promote political rapprochement between Israel and key Arab states—that India and Israel established full diplomatic relations. Since then, the relationship has been on a steady upward trajectory, regardless of the government in power in New Delhi. But starting in the late 1990s, under right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-dominated governments, relations improved dramatically. Israel, of course, was keen on helping as India was a potentially lucrative market.

This transformation took place under the BJP because, unlike the Congress Party, it did not have the same ideological commitment to the Palestinian cause and the Arab world. Furthermore, it did not have the same concerns about the Muslim electorate in India.

Today, India enjoys a multifaceted relationship with Israel, from extensive tourism exchange to robust arms acquisitions. Since Modi came to power in 2014, India has become far less substantially supportive of the Palestinian cause, even while remaining publicly committed to it. For example, in 2015 and 2016, India abstained from voting on a United Nations resolution that would have referred Israel to the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes committed during the 2014 Gaza crisis.

Essa’s central argument is that the security partnership between India and Israel has really crystallized in the past decade, especially under Modi—and that it has become more salient because of the emergence of powerful ethnonationalist forces in both countries.

“What the Indian and Israeli governments have in common is their professed hostility toward minority populations.”

This argument, without question, is quite sound. In India, this trend is exemplified by the formation of the Hindutva (literally, “Hinduness”) phalanx under Modi and his coterie. A similar process has taken place in Israel, most recently with the willingness of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party to share power with far-right parties, including the ultranationalist and anti-Arab Religious Zionism party.

What the Indian and Israeli governments have in common is their professed hostility toward minority populations: Muslims in India and predominantly Muslim Arabs in Israel. Essa correctly argues that despite making cursory nods toward the preservation of minority rights, both Modi and Netanyahu wish to transform their countries into ethnic democracies that privilege the majority community. This line of reasoning, as far as it goes, cannot really be questioned. As far as the two governments go, this commonality has certainly helped bolster the relationship.

However, there are a host of other claims in Essa’s book—historical and contemporary, large and small—that mar the quality of his analysis and turn the book into a polemic. These claims are not limited to either country, though his assertions about India are especially flawed.

One of the most blatant examples is Essa’s one-sided account of the accession of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir to India in 1947. He does not mention Pakistan’s blatant complicity in supporting a rebellion against the last ruler of the state, Maharaja Hari Singh.

Instead, Essa trots out the tired Pakistani narrative that the state should have acceded to Pakistan because of its Muslim-majority population. This undermines his argument about the relationship with Israel because India had a fairly robust commitment to secularism in its early days as an independent state. Essa, however, suggests that despite its professed commitment to secularism during the Nehru era, already India had scant regard for the rights of Muslims.

Unfortunately, this is not Essa’s only misleading discussion. In November 2008, members of the Pakistan-based—and Pakistan-supported—Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group launched terrorist attacks against several targets in Mumbai, killing more than 100 people. Yet Essa avoids referring to the members of the LeT as terrorists, preferring to use the term “attackers.”

Nor, for that matter, does he discuss Pakistan’s long-standing policy of using terrorist proxies with deadly effect against India. Essa highlights the 2008 Mumbai attacks to critique India’s decision to turn to Israel for counterterrorism assistance in the wake of its own botched response to the terrorist attack.

Finally, Essa’s book is laden with insinuations and innuendos that do not stand up under closer scrutiny. Rather than acknowledging that countries routinely acquire advanced weapons from any supplier that is willing to provide them at a reasonable cost, he suggests that the booming Indian-Israeli arms-transfer relationship has some sinister design.

Specifically, he focuses on the transfer of electronic sensors that can be deployed along a border to detect infiltrators. Given Israel’s considerable expertise in this area and India’s two-front border problems with Pakistan and China, New Delhi’s decision to acquire these technologies is hardly shocking. When both pragmatic considerations of national security and ideological affinity align, such arms deals become commonplace.

On the other hand, India’s purchase and deployment of domestic surveillance equipment from a private Israeli firm, Pegasus, which came to light in July 2021, does raise serious questions about the Modi government’s commitment to protect the privacy and civil liberties of dissidents and the political opposition in India. Essa briefly discusses this issue and underscores how the acquisition of this technology amounts to yet another example of the scant regard of both governments to civil liberties. Nevertheless, this was a commercial transaction and not a government-to-government technology transfer.

Essa also dwells at some length on pro-Hindutva groups in the United States and their ties to staunch pro-Israeli organizations. These links, no doubt, exist. However, it is far from clear that they are as influential in shaping and bolstering the Indian-Israeli strategic partnership as he suggests. Specifically, he contends that they have developed a cozy relationship of mutual convenience, with each group bolstering ties between right-wing governments in India and Israel.

There is little question that the arc of the Indian-Israeli partnership has undergone a significant transformation under the leadership of Modi and alongside the rise of Netanyahu. The two leaders’ common ethnonational projects have no doubt boosted the growing closeness between the states. It is a pity that Essa’s accurate core argument is diminished by factual elisions and polemical claims.

Books are independently selected by FP editors. FP earns an affiliate commission on anything purchased through links to Amazon.com on this page.

— Sumit Ganguly is a columnist at Foreign Policy and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is a distinguished professor of political science and the Rabindranath Tagore chair in Indian cultures and civilizations at Indiana University Bloomington.

[balkanin]

Muftija Menk, cionistički rabin i politika ispiranja vjere u Dubaiju

Muftija Menk, cionistički rabin i politika ispiranja vjere u Dubaiju

Azad Essa Dana 10. aprila, Ismail ibn Musa Menk, svjetski poznati islamski učenjak, popularno poznat kao muftija Menk, sjeo je za iftar na otvorenom u hotelu Maydaan u Dubaiju. Prekinuo je post datulom, čašom vode i malo jogurta. Nakon ranih večernjih molitvi, pozirao je za grupnu fotografiju ili dvije, a zatim se ispričao. Sljedećeg dana, lokalni zaljevski mediji i  nalozi izraelske vlade na…