India’s sinister alliance with Israel

Mohammad Asif Khan The Electronic Intifada 7 June 2025

India’s Narendra Modi is a staunch ally of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

Lalit Kumar ZUMA Press

In Gurez Valley, a remote corner of Indian-administered Kashmir, 26-year-old Ejaz Dar often sits on a weathered bench outside his mud-and-timber home, his eyes fixed on the rugged peaks 12 kilometers away.

Those peaks mark the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border dividing the disputed territory of Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

Dar’s home lies dangerously close to this volatile line, but his thoughts drift elsewhere, to the day in 2019 when his aunt left the family’s bunker to fetch food for her child during a round of intense shelling.

A mortar blast tore through the silence, leaving nothing behind.

“There was nothing left of her,” Dar says quietly. “When I hear talk of war on the radio, her memory hits hard.”

In Kashmir, grief isn’t new. But the recent flare-ups between the two nuclear-armed states have revived fears, especially for those living near the border.

The recent escalation followed a deadly attack on 22 April, in Pahalgam, a town in Indian-administered Kashmir. Twenty-six tourists, mostly Hindus, were killed.

The Resistance Front, an insurgent militia, initially claimed responsibility, then retracted the statement, saying that its account on a digital platform had been hacked.

India blamed Pakistan and promised retribution. Pakistan denied involvement in the attack and called for an international investigation.

Days later, India launched Operation Sindoor, a wave of air strikes, describing them as “non-escalatory” in nature.

Many of the drones used in the operation were Israeli-made.

Among the systems deployed was the Harop, a “suicide drone” developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). Designed to hover above a target area before diving for impact, the Harop carries a 10-kilogram warhead and can remain airborne for nearly six hours.

Since acquiring the Harop, India has increasingly relied on it.

Oshrit Birvadker, a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told The Times of Israel that India’s use of Harop drones reflects “Israel’s growing footprint in Indian defense.”

Pakistan claimed that it intercepted numerous Harop drones during the recent exchange. Photographs of charred wreckage circulated online, though it’s unclear if they were destroyed before or after impact.

One fragment reportedly bore markings linked to Enercon Technologies, an Israeli defense contractor based in the Barkan settlement industrial zone in the occupied West Bank. Enercon is now owned by US-based firm Bel Fuse.

Pakistan also claimed to have shot down a Heron drone – another Israeli product India has used for high-altitude surveillance.

India insisted the targets were “terrorist infrastructure.” However, Pakistan has contested this narrative, labeling the strikes an “act of war” and reporting 31 civilian deaths, including at least two children, across six locations, with attacks hitting civilian areas like mosques in Punjab and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Israel has used similar “justifications” in Gaza while bombing hospitals, schools and encampments of displaced people.

As Azad Essa, author of Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, notes, “The nonstop drone noise reminds Kashmiris they’re being watched constantly. One wrong move, and they could be killed.”

For India’s right-wing government, Israel is more than a supplier; it’s a model: a state that has institutionalized occupation and normalized apartheid.

Israel’s exported surveillance and military systems now serve as tools of control for India.

In addition to Harop drones, India used the Israeli-made Barak 8 missile defense system to intercept potential retaliatory strikes from across the border.

Developed jointly by Israel Aerospace Industries and India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the Barak 8 played a significant role in neutralizing aerial threats during the recent flare-up, according to reports.

The recent showdown illustrates that Israeli weapons are woven deeply into the Indian military’s operations.

Sinister alliance

India and Ukraine are the world’s two largest arms importers.

Over recent years, India has become Israel’s most dependable buyer. Between 2001 and 2021, India imported $4.2 billion worth of Israeli arms.

India’s support for Israel has also grown during the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

In May 2024, Spain denied docking rights to the Marianne Danica ship carrying 27 tonnes of explosives bound for Haifa, a port city in Israel. The cargo had originated in Chennai, India.

The incident underlined India’s role not just as a buyer but also as a supplier of arms.

Companies such as Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India (a joint Israeli-Indian venture), Premier Explosives and the state-owned Munitions India have emerged as key actors in this trade. During Israel’s genocide in Gaza, fragments of a missile marked “Made in India” were found in the ruins of a bombed UN shelter in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

This arms flow has become crucial for Israel. With some European countries facing growing public pressure to suspend military support to Israel, India has emerged as a stable, less scrutinized partner.

Israel, in turn, has maintained a steady supply of arms exports to India during this period. This is noteworthy, as arms shipments to other parties have faced delays.

From covert ties to public embrace

The India-Israel military relationship wasn’t always this open.

For decades, India avoided formal ties with Israel out of solidarity with Palestine. India opposed the UN’s 1947 partition plan of Palestine and was among the first countries to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In 1975, India supported a UN General Assembly resolution equating Zionism – Israel’s state ideology – with racism.

As a former British colony like Palestine, India suffered under British rule. Following its independence, India was seen as a leader of the post-colonial world and played a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement (a collective of nations that advocated for neutrality during the Cold War).

Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, central figures in India’s freedom struggle, viewed Zionism through the lens of anti-colonial politics. Gandhi once stated, “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.”

But even during decades of diplomatic distance, arms flowed quietly. In 1962, during India’s war with China, Israel supplied weapons on the condition that its flag be visible on the delivery ships.

In 1999, during the Kargil War with Pakistan, Israel rushed in drone systems and laser-guided bombs that played a pivotal role in India’s response.

India formally established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, following the end of the Cold War, and sought closer ties to the United States. Indian leaders soon realized that “the road to Washington passes through Tel Aviv.”

Ideological bond

Under Narendra Modi, the India-Israel relationship has taken on a distinct ideological tone. Modi was the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel in 2017.

His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) finds resonance in Israel’s ethno-nationalist politics. Zionism’s vision of a Jewish “homeland” in historic Palestine has become a model for Hindu nationalist ideology, Hindutva, which advocates for the establishment of a Hindu-supremacist nation in India.

The ideological overlap is more than symbolic.

In 2019, Indian diplomat Sandeep Chakravorty suggested that Hindu settlers in Kashmir could emulate Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Indian scientist Anand Ranganathan last year called for an “Israel-like” solution to the Kashmir conflict.

In 2019 India revoked Kashmir’s limited autonomy. Since 2022, the authorities have issued residency permits to more than 80,000 non-local settlers, a policy reminiscent of Israel’s settlement expansion in Palestinian territories.

As Apoorvanand, a Hindi professor at Delhi University puts it, “Hindutva admires Israel’s methods in Palestine as a guide for how to deal with Muslims in Kashmir.”

After the Pahalgam attack, Indian forces detained more than 2,000 people and demolished homes said to belong to militants’ families.

At the heart of this arms-for-ideology relationship stands the Adani Group, owned by billionaire Gautam Adani, the second richest person in India, with close ties to Narendra Modi.

In 2018, Adani partnered with Israel’s Elbit Systems to build drones in Hyderabad. By early 2024, this joint venture had reportedly delivered more than 20 Hermes 900 drones to Israel.

Adani has also acquired most of Haifa Port.

Adani’s ventures have benefited from favorable policy changes under the Modi government. Adani’s drones have reportedly been used in fueling the genocide against Palestinians.

A US-brokered ceasefire on 10 May halted the India-Pakistan crisis.

Despite the truce, the situation between India and Pakistan remains volatile. Modi maintains that Operation Sindoor against Pakistan has not ended, with mock drills still taking place.

Pakistan, for its part, has chosen to honor the truce, expressing a desire to avoid additional bloodshed and loss of life.

But for Gaza, where Israel’s genocide continues unabated, there is no respite.

Mohammad Asif Khan is an independent journalist based in New Delhi.

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