by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Benjamin Netanyahu
New Delhi : Stressing upon the value of democracy in an increasingly multipolar world, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said today’s quest for modernity and innovation is being challenged by radical Islam and its terrorists.
“India is the world’s most populous democracy. It is a place which shows that humanity can be governed with freedom, that we can secure the rights of people,” Netanyahu said while delivering the inaugural address of this year’s Raisina Dialogue, India’s flagship conference on geopolitics and geo-economics.
“Those things that make life worthwhile. The ability to think as we want, speak as we want, believe what we want and a society that is pluralistic, diverse and free. This is what India is about, this is what Israel is about.”
Stating that the world is moving from being unipolar to multipolar, Netanyahu said: “The reason I mentioned the importance of democracies is because even though we have relationships with most of the countries of the world, if we are to live in a world that protects international norms, something that you Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi talk about all the time, we must have of course the ability to protect those norms.”
He described the India-Israel relationship as “a natural friendship and a natural partnership of democratic and free people” but said that “our way of life is being challenged”.
“Most notably, the quest for modernity and the quest for innovation is being challenged by radical Islam and its terrorists, offshoots from a variety of corners and this can upset the international system,” the Israel Prime Minister said.
“I think that one of the ways to overcome such challenges is to strengthen the relationship between our two great democracies. The alliance of democracies I think is important to secure our common future.”
Speaking about the secret behind the success of a small country like Israel, Netanyahu referred to the fact that 75 years ago, the people of his country “were like wind-tossed leaves”.
“The weak don’t survive, the strong survive. You have to make tryst with the strong,” he said.
He said that the source of strength lies in military power for which F-35s to submarines are needed.
“Defence costs a lot of money. Where does this money come from? It comes from the second power – economic power,” he stated.
Netanyahu said that after establishing military power and economic, Israel built the third power, that is political power.
But he said that there is a fourth power which is the power of values and the most important of these is democracy.
Organised by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Observer Research Foundation, the three-day Raisina Dialogue this year is being held on the theme “Managing Disruptive Transitions: Ideas, Institutions and Idioms”.
Over 500 leaders from 90 countries are attending this annual conference.
Netanyahu arrived here on Sunday on a six-day visit to India in what is the second Prime Ministerial visit from Israel to India in 15 years after that of Ariel Sharon in 2003.
On Monday, he held a bilateral summit with Prime Minister Modi following which nine agreements were signed between India and Israel across multiple sectors.
After having visited Taj Mahal in Agra earlier on Tuesday, Netanyahu will move to Ahmedabad on Wednesday and from there to Mumbai before departing from India on Friday.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By C. Uday Bhaskar,
The visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to India (January 14-19) commemorates the 25th anniversary of the opening of an Indian embassy in Tel Aviv in 1992 and will further consolidate an important and strategically distinctive bilateral relationship for both nations. It has had a chequered past since the post-World War II birth of both countries but is poised for a pragmatic future trajectory based on shared interests.
With a population below nine million and a GDP of $350 billion, Israel is relatively small compared to the Indian behemoth with a population of 1.25 billion and a GDP of $2.5 trillion. Yet Israel occupies a very special niche in India’s security framework and has been a supplier of critical military technology. This was illustrated during the 1999 Kargil War, when precision-guided ordnance was obtained from Tel Aviv.
That India is among the world’s largest importers of military inventory and that Israel is a major arms exporter also provides a natural complementarity to the bilateral relationship. Over the last two decades, the quantum of military-related imports from Israel has steadily increased. It is estimated that India, which buys almost $1 billion worth annually, accounts for over 40 percent of Israeli defence exports.
The Netanyahu visit reciprocates that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July 2017, the first by an Indian Prime Minister to Israel. The Modi-Netanyahu personal chemistry was on display during that visit which was reciprocated as Modi personally received the Israeli leader at the airport when he arrived Sunday afternoon. The two leaders share many characteristics, including a visible political resolve in relation to Islamic radicalism and terrorism. Netanyahu will also get the Gujarat-special status, a detour to Ahmedabad, which Modi accords to certain leaders.
During the July visit, Modi said, “Israel and India live in complex geographies. We are aware of strategic threats to regional peace and stability. Prime Minister Netanyahu and I agreed to do much more together to protect our strategic interests.” The joint statement also added: “There can be no justification of acts of terror on any grounds whatsoever.”
While the bilateral with Israel has been described as a “strategic partnership”, India’s relations with Israel cannot be divorced from the larger West Asian geopolitical canvas where Palestine is a major factor.
The Jewish quest for a permanent homeland goes back a long way. Mahatma Gandhi had opined in 1931: “I can understand the longing of a Jew to return to Palestine, and he can do so if he can without the help of bayonets, whether his own or those of Britain… in perfect friendliness with the Arabs.” This sentiment shapes the Indian approach to the complex and tangled Palestine issue.
India has traditionally supported the Palestine cause on the international stage and has sought to maintain a fine balance regarding its bilateral with Israel in the competing regional politics of West Asia. It appeared that the Modi dispensation government had taken a bold decision to remove the hyphenation between Israel and Palestine, but it would be misleading to infer that the government has uncritically cast its weight totally with Israel and the US.
The recent vote at the UN over the Trump declaration about Jerusalem saw Delhi voting with the larger global consensus that censured the US over its announcement. Netanyahu, on the eve of his India visit, said this vote would not materially affect the bilateral. India and Israel are keen to expand the current bandwidth of the trade and economic relations to move beyond military sales and include energy, cyber security and innovation in desert/arid land agriculture, among other sectors.
The last leg of the Netanyahu visit will take him to Mumbai. The enormity of the November 2008 terror attack that targeted Chabad House will be recalled, though justice for the innocent victims — Indian, Israeli and other nationalities, remains elusive.
(C. Uday Bhaskar is Director, Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi. The article is in special arrangement with South Asia Monitor. He can be contacted at cudayb@gmail.com)
—IANS
