The Narendra Modi government’s continued silence about Israeli “genocidal actions” in Palestine “cannot be explained rationally or morally”, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said in a column in The Indian Express on Saturday.
Gandhi said that two and a half years after Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an “absolutely unacceptable” attack on Israel, it has become clear that Tel Aviv’s retaliation has been “characterised by wanton cruelty and barbarity”.
Israel’s military offensive in Gaza began in October 2023 after Hamas killed 1,200 persons during its incursion into southern Israel and took hostages. Israel has been carrying out unprecedented air and ground strikes on Gaza since then, leaving more than 73,000 persons dead.
On Saturday, Gandhi wrote in The Indian Express that senior Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “called for the ‘complete siege’” of Gaza and described Palestinians as “‘animals’ who have ‘no right to exist’”.
‘India remains a lone voice of silence’
While the Donald Trump administration in the United States had enabled Tel Aviv to “continue its brutal campaign” against Palestinians, the rest of the world “has felt the pricking of its conscience”, the Congress leader said.
Gandhi said that amid the conflict several countries in the West, including the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, had recognised Palestinian statehood “after decades of indifference to the Palestinian cause”.
She noted that South Africa had taken Israel to the International Court of Justice for violating the 1948 Genocide Convention and that several European nations had restricted arms sales to Tel Aviv. The International Criminal Court had issued arrest warrants for the Israeli political leadership, the Congress leader added.
“Amidst the growing public backlash against Israel and the international community’s cognisance of the unjustifiable brutality unleashed on Gaza, India remains a lone voice of silence,” she said.
Gandhi said that India had been “historically exceptional” for its commitment to postcolonial solidarity, sovereignty and international peace.
However, today India was “exceptional in our continued indifference to the flagrant violation of the global rules-based order”, the suffering of the public in the Global South and to the “abasement of human dignity” in Palestine, she added.
India’s longstanding position has been to support a two-state solution for establishing a sovereign, viable and independent state of Palestine within recognised and mutually agreed borders, living alongside Israel in peace.
Gandhi said that the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry had in September said that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. She also noted a report published by the panel on Tuesday that the Israeli military has deliberately targeted and killed Palestinian children.
By targeting the children, Tel Aviv was attacking the capacity of the Palestinian people “to exist and to determine their future”, said the commission headed by retired Indian judge S Muralidhar. Israel’s foreign ministry has rejected both the reports.
Stance ‘inexplicable from national interest perspective’
Gandhi said that the Modi government’s “silence and inaction are not just morally reprehensible, but also inexplicable from a national interest perspective”.
“We are slipping further into Israel’s strategic orbit, at a time when the world is increasingly pivoting away from it,” the Opposition leader said.
Modi’s visit to Israel amid these circumstances and only days before Israel launched its war on Iran and assassinated the top political leadership in Tehran, “will go down in history as a bewildering strategic decision”.
Modi had visited Israel on February 25 and February 26 before the war in West Asia began on February 28. During the visit, Modi told the Israeli Parliament that India stands with Israel “firmly, with full conviction, in this moment and beyond”.
“Our sacrifice of our strategic interest and morality has yielded us nothing but the friendship between [Modi and Netanyahu], who is now under attack all over the world, including in the US,” Gandhi added.
The Congress leader said that India must speak up for Palestinians.
“The calculus of national interest demands that we respond to the global public opinion” against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its “brutal displacement and dispossession of lakhs of Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank”, she added.
Edited by Sara Varghese.
Also read:
- India’s discernible shift away from Palestine
- Opinion: Could India be considered complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza?
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