The
Case Against Collaboration Between India And Israel
By Raja Swamy
01 September, 2006
Monthly
Review
After thirty-four days of relentless
aerial bombardment and a ground invasion, Israel's brutal assault on
Lebanon's civilian population has come to a halt, at least temporarily.
As the dust from the rubble of Lebanon's ruined cities, villages, and
infrastructure settles, and as bodies of victims are recovered and buried,
and the human losses mourned by the people of Lebanon, serious questions
are being raised about India's increasingly cozy relationship with Israel.
The Indian government cannot continue to expand military and economic
ties with Israel and still expect to be untarnished by this association
in the eyes of the world. More than a thousand Lebanese were killed
by indiscriminate Israeli bombardment, the vast majority of them civilians.
At the height of the Israeli assaults in early August, at least 45%
of the dead were children. Approximately a million had been forced to
leave their homes from an entire swathe of the country which Israel
unilaterally and illegally declared its zone of operations, a virtual
free-fire zone.
Waging a brutal and unrestrained
war with the aid of U.S.-supplied weapons, Israel rained destruction
upon civilians unable to defend themselves or even flee. Israeli bombs
destroyed 97 roads, 75 bridges, 4 airports, 7 seaports, 8000 residential
dwellings, 5 hospitals, 14 factories, 27 petrol stations, 9 army barracks.1
As each outrage shocked the world, the Israeli government with the overt
and tacit support of its U.S. patrons announced further escalations
and intensified this all-out war targeting the civilian population.
As expected, the U.S. government stalled U.N. efforts towards a ceasefire
and hastened the delivery of advanced munitions to Israel -- the undisguised
goal was to give Israel "time" to "do the job" of
"destroying" Hezbollah, the Lebanese national resistance,
a task that has now come to naught, leaving the movement basking in
the light of unprecedented popularity throughout the Arab world and
beyond. Israel has to date recklessly cultivated a reputation for being
immune to international law or humanitarian norms, and its outrages
continue to be condoned as "self-defense" under an umbrella
of impunity afforded by the protective embrace of the U.S. government.
Image 1, a map made available by Samidoun, a Lebanese grassroots coalition,
provides a glimpse of the extent of destruction carried out by Israel.2
India, the Israeli Arms Industry's
Prized Market
It is commendable that the
Indian government, albeit "under pressure from the Left parties,"
condemned the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon and called for an "immediate
and unconditional ceasefire." However, the recent pattern of collaboration
between the Indian and Israeli military and political establishments
renders such condemnations and calls quite meaningless. Moreover, this
official expression of concern came weeks into the bombardment, specifically
in response to the brutal massacre of about 60 civilians, a majority
of them children and women, in the city of Qana, which only ten years
ago was the site of another horrendously similar Israeli atrocity. Statements
and official pronunciations aside, what deserves greater public scrutiny
is the pattern of relationships developed by India's political elites
with the Israeli state and military over the period of the last decade.
Business Week reported in 2005 that India became Israel's largest importer
of weapons the previous year, accounting for about half of the $3.6
billion worth of weapons exported by that country.3 Not coincidentally,
that year also proved to be the second best recorded year for the Israeli
weapons industry, making Israel the 5th largest weapons exporter in
the world and accounting for about 10 percent of the world's weapons
trade. Obviously, the Israeli armaments industry values India as a major
new market for its weapons and as such has much to gain from maintaining
and deepening the appetite for arms by the Indian state.
Since the 1970s, the Israeli
armaments industry has had to adopt an aggressive export-orientation
since the country's own military only procures about a third of its
output. Israel has a sordid history of supplying weapons and training
to notorious dictatorships, including South Africa's apartheid regime,
Nicaragua's Somoza, Pinochet in Chile, Marcos in the Philippines, Duvalier
in Haiti, Mobutu in Zaire, dictatorships in Guatemala, Argentina, and
scores of other African, Asian and South American countries where unpopular
regimes utilized Israeli weapons, training and advice to ruthlessly
suppress their populations through the 1970s and 80s. Weapons sales
also became the "motor driving Israel's foreign policy" during
this period, as economic crises required bouts of intensified lobbying
by Israeli arms merchants dispatched to dozens of countries to coax
and cajole assorted defense ministries into purchasing Israeli weapons.
Israeli foreign policy thus has a track record of being closely tied
to the interests of its weapons industries, exemplified and facilitated
by the interlocking relationships between elites in the highest echelons
of the political structure, the military establishment, and arms industries,
who together comprise the "security establishment lobby."
The close relationship between Israel's foreign policy and the aggressive
export-orientation of its arms industry is summed up in the following
statement by Aharon Klieman, who wrote: "Arms transfers are a dual-purpose
political-security tool, essential for Israel's security position, and
an unavoidable critical component of foreign policy. Consequently, Israel's
diplomacy of arms exports is a kind of extension of Israel's general
approach to foreign affairs."4
By the late 1980s, Israeli
weapons exports as a proportion of total industrial output rose to between
30 and 40 percent, from 31 percent in 1975 and 14 percent in 1967.5
Today at least 25 percent of Israel's annual exports are armaments.6
It is in the light of this nexus of weapons export orientation and militaristic
foreign policy that the new Indo-Israeli relationship becomes clear
at one level. The new relationship developed since 1992 is not immune
to the same logic driving Israeli foreign policy dominant since the
1970s -- that of aggressively expanding markets abroad for its armaments
industries and maintaining a military-centered approach to international
relations consistent with the goals of the ongoing occupation of Palestine,
as well as expansionist goals and related forays into Lebanon, and other
neighboring countries. On the Indian side, both wings of the ruling
class, tethered as they are to dreams of "great power" status,
support the expansion of this relationship by subscribing to a hawkish
attitude towards resolving international disputes, particularly with
Pakistan, a posture that conveniently demands unrestrained military
spending. Every visit by a delegation of Israeli officials either preceded
or followed the cementing of ties involving the purchase of weapons
or the training and/or expansion of cooperation between Israeli armaments
interests and their Indian counterparts (see Table 1). There were also
reports, in 2003, of the Israeli defense establishment dispatching "scores
of agents" to persuade the Indian armed forces into buying weapons.7
Betraying the Anti-colonial
Legacy = Betraying the Indian People
Such an unhealthy relationship
built on the consumption of Israeli weapons necessitates the alienation
and betrayal of broader friendships and historical ties that the people
of India share with the people of the Arab world, particularly those
in the countries and occupied lands bearing the brunt of aggressive
Israeli militarism and allied U.S. aggression. Just as India stood on
the right side of history in the case of apartheid South Africa, so
should its present leaders take on the historic responsibility of aligning
India with the forces of justice, equality, and peace -- in support
of the human rights and the right to self-determination of the people
of Palestine and Lebanon. In the first three decades after independence,
successive governments sought to project India as a country dedicated
to decolonization. This posture offered the basis for the principled
foreign policy of the Nehruvian state which drew its own legitimacy
from the tumultuous anti-colonial struggle that brought about independence
for the subcontinent in the late 1940s. Israel was reluctantly recognized
as a state only as late as 1950, and no formal ties were established
for almost four decades, in tacit recognition of the rights of Palestinians
brutally dispersed to facilitate Israel's creation. In 1975, India voted
at the United Nations in favor of the resolution equating the ideology
of Zionism with racism. India was also the first non-Arab state to recognize
the PLO, welcoming a Palestinian embassy in New Delhi by 1988. In early
1992, anticipating the rapidly changing situation following the end
of the cold war, and in the context of efforts by some Arab states to
renegotiate relations with Israel (at the behest of the U.S.), another
Congress government decided to establish formal ties with the state
of Israel. In the decade following this normalization of ties, successive
governments of both the centrist Congress and the right-wing BJP, irrespective
of party ideology, have rapidly forged extensive military, economic,
and political relationships.
Significantly, the shift
within the Indian ruling classes from the official position of non-alignment
and state-centered economic development towards the Washington Consensus8
facilitated and encouraged this changed attitude towards Israel. The
Washington Consensus, perhaps best exemplified by India's subscription
to the IMF's structural adjustment program of the early 1990s necessitated
adherence to a U.S.-centered economic (and hence political) agenda emphasizing
privatization of state assets, liberalization of trade, and the globalization
of economic activities. Into this new arena of free-market fundamentalism
entered the political maelstrom of Hindutva -- which launched an assault
on the secular, pluralistic pretensions of the post-independence state
and openly advocated the further disenfranchisement and marginalization
of India's largely working-class Muslim population. Ideologically, the
India's ruling classes' fantasies of "great power," "emerging
superpower," etc. justified their growing servility to U.S. designs
in the region, and opened the floodgates on unrestrained spending on
weapons. Spending on social services and investment in crucial areas
like agriculture and industry plummeted, as per the diktat of the neoliberal
program. It is in this context of neoliberal restructuring and adherence
to the Washington Consensus that the current trends in visibly expanded
Indo-Israeli military and political relations emerged through the 1990s
and into the first decade of the 21st century.
Military Political
1996
* Israeli President Ezer Weizman's visit to India at the head of a 24-member
business delegation.9
1998
* Indian Army Chief-of-Staff Gen V N Malik's visit to Israel.10
1999
* Ordnance and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) supplied to aid India
in the Kargil war with Pakistan
* Suspicions of secret nuclear
cooperation
* Indian Deputy PM and Home
Minister L.K. Advani's visit to Israel
* Indian President Abdul
Kalam visited to Israel 18 months prior to Pokhran nuclear tests.
2000
* Jane's Defense Weekly reported in June that Israeli security officers
regularly visited Kashmir.
* Israeli submarines test-fired
nuclear-capable missiles off the coast of Sri Lanka (see Footnote 5)
* Indian Foreign Minister
Jaswant Singh visited to Israel11
2001
* Joint defense cooperation group established. The JWG meets every year
alternately in New Delhi and Tel Aviv to solidify defense deals, military
ties, and coordination of security and intelligence relationships.
* Deal for purchase of Israeli
Phalcon (Airborne Early Warning and Control Systems) cleared after years
of being stalled.
* Deals to upgrade artillery
with Israeli firm Soltan
* August 14, 2001: "Israeli
intelligence agencies have been intensifying their relations with India
security apparatus and are now understood to be heavily involved in
helping New Delhi combat Islamic militants in the disputed province
of Kashmir." -- Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor, August 14,
2001
* "It was an ironic
coincidence that Brajesh Mishra was closeted in his office in New Delhi
on September 11, 2001 with his Israeli counterpart Major General Uzi
Dayan and engaged in what was dubbed a "joint security strategy
dialogue" when the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
occurred."12
2002
* Israeli Foreign Minister
Shimon Peres's visit to India. Peres had visited India "three times
in the past twelve months."13
* Indian Minister of Communication
& Parliamentary Affairs Pramod Mahajan visited to Israel
2003
* $20 million agreement
with Israeli Military Industries for assault rifles, sniper rifles,
night vision equipment, laser range finding and targeting equipment.
* Israel to train four new
special forces battalions in "irregular warfare" in Kashmir.
* Israeli defense industry
has dispatched "scores of agents" to pursue sales to the Indian
armed forces.
* September: Israeli PM Ariel
Sharon's visit to India, hosted by the BJP led NDA government. At the
height of a brutal Israeli suppression of the Palestinian population,
with Sharon's international reputation as a ruthless enemy of Palestinians,
this cynical display of Indo-Israeli bonhomie by the NDA government
was intended to help rehabilitate him and to settle defense deals.
* Israeli Minister of Science
& Technology Eliezer Sandberg's visit to India, signing of an MoU
with ISRO
2004
* $1.1 billion deal on Phalcon concluded.
* Ehud Olmert (now Israeli
PM)'s visit to India, first as Industry, Trade and Employment Minister,
then as Deputy Prime Minister.14, 15
* Indian Minister of Commerce
& Industry Mr. Arun Jaitly's visit to Israel as head of the Indian
delegation to the Joint Economic Committee.
2005
* 50 Heron Drones (spy UAVs)
to be sold to India by Israel Aircraft Industries
* Visits to Israel by Kumari
Sejla (Minister of State for Rural Development), Kapil Sibal (Minister
of State for Science and Technology), Kamal Nath (Minister of State
for Commerce and Industries), Sharad Pawar (Union Minister for Agriculture).
2006
* National Security Advisor
of Israel, Maj.Gen.(Retd.) Giora Eiland visits India to hold talks with
his counterpart Mr. M.K. Narayanan under the framework of the "Indo-Israel
National Security Council dialogue."16
Congress-BJP: Same Love Affair
with Israel
As opposition party in 2003,
the Congress Party had vociferously protested when the BJP's L.K. Advani
and National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra proclaimed an emerging
"strategic relationship" between the India and Israel. Jaipal
Reddy, spokesperson for the Congress, was reported to have said: "Obsession
with Israel on the part of the coalition government is strange and perverse
. . . when Israel is facing international isolation. It shows the intellectual
insolvency of the government."17 Noting that the relationship between
India and Israel "qualitatively differed" from that between
India and the U.S., Reddy asserted that the two countries were separated
by "ideological dissonance" as the Congress Party position
towards the Palestinians was diametrically opposed to that of the Israelis.
"There has to be a minimum ideological similarity for a strategic
partnership."
Barely a year after assuming
office, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by the
Congress Party agreed to continue expanding collaboration with Israel's
military industries after the third "Joint Working Group"
meetings between defense and security bigwigs from both countries concluded
in 2004.18 On the table were expanded purchases of Israeli armaments
by India, including 50 Heron spy drones (UAVs), and an agreement to
hold joint air-force exercises involving U.S.-built Israeli F 16s and
Russian-built Indian Sukhoi Su-30Mk1s. These deals were signed with
much fanfare by the UPA government led by the very same Congress Party
that once invoked its commitments to Palestinian rights, to Indo-Arab
relations, and to its supposed adherence to principled foreign policy.
If the past NDA government led by the Hindu right BJP ratcheted up relations
with Israel on account of its perceptions of an "anti-terror"
(read anti-Muslim) axis between India, Israel, and the U.S., the Congress-led
UPA government has maintained a steady intensification of ties between
India and Israel while incredibly claiming that its commitment to all
things principled in foreign policy remain untouched.
Notably, Indo-Israeli ties
have expanded under the UPA to include a host of non-military economic
relations as well. By 2002 Israel's non-military trade with India had
grown to more than 6 times what it used to be in 1992 (1.27 billion
as compared to $202 million).19 A host of Indian cabinet ministers visited
Israel in 2004, including the minister for Rural Development, Commerce
& Industry, Agriculture, and Science & Technology. It is noteworthy
that in a country reeling under the impact of a decade of neoliberal
prescriptions, with millions of agricultural producers facing starvation
and thousands taking their own lives, our leaders refuse to recognize
the "intellectual insolvency" of collaboration with an Israeli
state built upon the doctrine of racial exclusion, unending war, and
expansionist aggression. Regardless of how much non-military ties have
expanded between the two countries, Israel is India's second largest
seller of armaments after Russia. It is a disturbing truth today that
India's dominant political elites, with little variance across party-lines,
display an unswerving dedication to developing India as a market for
Israeli armaments industries.
Indo-Israeli Ties as Part
of the Wider Anti-people Policies Pursued by the Indian Ruling Class
Supporters of this relationship
argue that the current Indo-Israeli bonhomie is mutually beneficial
and that ethical questions ought to be subordinate to the demands of
pragmatism in international affairs since India's security needs they
argue, demand reliable sources of advanced armaments. The pragmatism
argument fails the test of reason if subjected to scrutiny: is it pragmatic
to aid and abet the destruction of much of the third world through the
development of close military relations with an expansionist state that
serves as the surrogate of the U.S. imperial power? Is it pragmatic
to alienate the vast majority of humanity in the process of feeding
the arms dealers of a renegade country and sucking up to its imperial
patron? It has been argued that India's emerging relationship with Israel
is intimately tied to its increasingly subservient relationship with
the U.S. Meanwhile, Israel's close relationship to the U.S. imperial
power and its hold on U.S. foreign policy in West Asia has often raised
questions about the tail wagging the dog. Despite the obviously Orwellian
implications of the claim that this relationship between India, Israel,
and the U.S. can be seen as an "alliance of democracies,"
it is not far-fetched to assume that the Indian ruling elites see their
country increasingly as a regional surrogate for a U.S.-led agenda.
In this view, the role of Israel as a "friend" supplying arms
serves the purpose of cementing such an assumed alliance.
Great power illusions aside,
the obvious material interests at play in this process ought to render
all such assumptions nothing more than fantasies of delusional elites.
Or in a perhaps more insidious sense, such assumptions merely represent
the rhetorical language used to justify the diversion of resources away
from the real needs of the Indian people, into the deep pockets of arms-sellers
feeding off fear, insecurity, and increasingly, bouts of high-tech savagery
against populations. And what about security? What are the security-needs
of India's people? Weapons purchases do not even begin to address the
urgent issues of security from hunger, deprivation, disease, disasters,
rampant inequality, oppressive traditions, unemployment, and the like.
And why should India's so-called "security" needs, divorced
as they are from the real needs of India's people, be sought at the
cost of the human rights of Palestinian, Lebanese, or other populations
brutalized and oppressed by our new "friends?" Wrenching the
term "security" from its use in the one-dimensional sense
of military security (and its linear logic of buying more advanced weapons)
can help rescue the issue of real human security from the paranoiac
pronouncements of professional fear-mongers in the elite establishment
and their assorted mouthpieces in the media.
It is incumbent upon all
peace-loving people in the world, particularly Indians and people of
Indian origin, to demand that the Indian state's leaders reassess the
deepening relationship with Israel. India is Israel's second-largest
trading partner in Asia after China. This means Israeli industries are
dependant upon India's markets. India's dependence on Israeli markets,
however, is negligible: exports to Israel from India topped $800 million
in 2002, while Indian exports to the UAE rose to $ 3 billion in the
same year. Leveraging this power to rein in the rampaging policies of
the Israeli state would be a sign of maturity and goodwill by a country
that traces its own heritage to the anti-colonial struggles of the twentieth
century. However, this cannot happen while the projection of India as
an open market for Israeli armaments continues to be the reigning priority
of India's political elites. Defense ties with Israel must be cut immediately
or at the very least curtailed drastically in order to send a strong
signal to the Israeli state that it cannot continue massacres of Lebanese
and Palestinian civilians without costs to its long-term economic well-being.
Moreover, it is about time
the Indian state re-evaluated its priorities: there is much more of
a need for state spending on dealing with the dangerously underestimated
agrarian crisis, related rural investment, urban and rural healthcare,
primary and secondary education, disaster preparedness and management,
among a host of other pressing needs that cannot be met so long as huge
portions of the state coffer is funneled to international weapons dealers.
Every rupee spent on Phalcons, Herons, and Baraks will not only increase
the militarization of the subcontinent, thereby endangering the entire
population, but also continue to be siphoned away from generating jobs,
providing food, medicines, schools, and sustaining livelihoods for millions
of India's people. What is happening under the present dispensation
is that farmers are being told they have to fend for themselves as subsidies
are cut and cheap imports flood the markets rendering producers vulnerable
enough to increasingly resort to suicide in the face of deprivation,
while Israeli arms merchants are being told that they have free access
to the largesse of the Indian state since presumably billions of dollars
spent on bombs and guns are more important for the Indian people! The
choice really is between Israeli weapons and Indian livelihoods as much
as it is between Israeli bombs and Arab lives.
Additionally, the collaboration
with Israel on the so-called issue of "terrorism" ought to
be carefully scrutinized. What Israel is doing in occupied Palestine
and currently in Lebanon is collective punishment, proscribed by the
Geneva Convention and grossly in violation against international laws
governing the inter-state system after 1945. Israel's leaders perceive
every Palestinian man, woman, and child as a legitimate target for physical
liquidation, if not subjugation, through the force of arms. In the current
aggression against Lebanon, Israeli leaders have repeatedly referred
to Lebanese civilians as indistinguishable from Hezbollah and have carried
out indiscriminate attacks against civilians under the pretext of fighting
"terrorists." Why should India continue participation in any
"Joint Working Group" with Israel on the issue of "terrorism"
when this term is used openly by the leadership of that country as a
code word to refer to every Palestinian and Lebanese individual? There
are already historical and contemporary precedents for such official
attitudes in the bloody excesses by the armed state, including paramilitaries
and police forces in Kashmir, Punjab, Assam, Manipur, and Andhra Pradesh,
where critics and opponents of the government's policies ended up labeled
as "terrorists" and were frequently targeted for physical
violence. Since the advent of Hindutva's grip on the Indian elite imagination,
Muslims have been frequently targeted and collectively impugned as "terrorists"
even as genocidal state-sponsored violence against Muslims in Gujarat
has not resulted in any punitive actions against responsible Hindutva
organizations. Has the Indian state already begun emulating its new
friend in more ways than it would like to admit? It would be a stretch
to suggest that India has learned all these awful things from Israel,
but it does not inspire much confidence to know that India's leaders
are busy building a regime of collaboration on "terrorism"
with Israel, a state that so blatantly uses the term to justify its
militaristic brutality against civilians in Palestine and Lebanon. Such
collaboration helps expand the reach of undemocratic regimes of impunity
enjoyed by the ruling interests in the Indian state, and works against
the general interests of the people, particularly those already rendered
vulnerable by existing inequalities in access to physical security,
legal rights and protections under the law.
In conclusion, it would be
in India's best interests to sever military ties with Israel immediately
-- on ethical and political grounds, but also pragmatic and security
grounds. India should not have anything to do with an openly expansionist
state that has relegated the very meaning of the term democracy to irrelevance
by its adherence to the ideology and practice of racism, state terrorism,
and unrelenting brute force against the peoples of the lands it covets.
India should not seek to purchase weapons of destruction from such a
state, especially when these purchases are made at the expense of the
needs of its own population, and when the increasing stockpiles of such
weapons increase the collective vulnerability and insecurity of the
entire population. India should cease collaborating with a state that
relegates, with impunity, entire populations to the category of expendable
human beings to be subjugated, their lands and resources stolen from
them and in case of the slightest forms of resistance their bodies destroyed
by advanced weapons. No country calling itself a democracy can continue
to do so if its leaders see it fit to embrace a state like Israel even
while the cries of human beings crushed by that aggressive expansionist
state tear at the collective conscience of our humanity. Alienating
the rest of the world in the pursuit of some sense of power, however
real or illusory that may be, is not pragmatic, if pragmatism is to
be seen as the means by which the best interests of the people of India
are to be served. It is time for India to wrench itself free from Israel's
deadly embrace. Perhaps when Israel abandons its current trajectory,
the issue of friendship can and ought to be revisited in earnest, but
until then the Indian government ought to bid the Israeli government
and its armed establishment a sincere goodbye.
1 July 2006 War on Lebanon
Blog -- figures compiled from Lebanese media. The blog provides daily
updates by volunteers working with refugees and victims of the war.
Updates on the lives of refugee children coming to terms with trauma
and loss are particularly notable and have been featured on the Guardian's
website.
2 Samidoun: "SAMIDOUN
is a grassroots coalition that aims to work in a democratic and participatory
atmosphere. The coalition is multi-confessional and diverse in terms
of nationality. The coalition is also diverse in its composition in
terms of supporting organizations, from student groups, to the gay and
lesbian center, to arts and film production collectives, to small political
parties, to environmental groups. But the bulk of the work is through
young volunteers from all over the country, some of whom are refugees
themselves" (Samidoun, "Who We Are").
3 "A Banner Year for
Israeli Arms Exports," Business Week, 7 March 2005.
4 Aharon Klieman, A Double-Edged
Sword. Israeli Defence Exports in the 1990's, qtd. in Oren Persico,
"Arms unto the Nations," Globes Online (an Israeli business
daily), 5 May 2003.
5 Jane Hunter, "Israeli
Foreign Policy: Weapons Manufacturing Industry," Israeli Foreign
Policy, South End Press, 1987.
6 Persico, op. cit.
7 Rahul Bedi, "Moving
Closer to Israel," Frontline 20.4, 15 - 28 February 2003. See,
also, P.R. Kumaraswamy, "Indo-Israeli Ties: The Post-Arafat Shift,"
Power and Interest News Report, 9 March 2005.
8 The Washington Consensus
refers to the minimum range of economic policies aggressively advocated
by the U.S. through Washington-based institutions like the IMF and the
World Bank. The "consensus" sought to enforce neoliberal prescriptions
on countries of the third world in the aftermath of the collapse of
the Soviet Union and centered on privatization of state assets, liberalization
of trade, deregulation of markets, and the withdrawal of the state from
its social responsibilities manifest most obviously in the enforcement
of drastic budget cuts in social spending advocated by supporters of
this "consensus." The "consensus" essentially sought
to force countries of the third world to reorient and subordinate their
economic activities under the umbrella of U.S. led global capitalist
interests. See "Unraveling the Washington Consensus, An Interview
with Joseph Stiglitz," Multinational Monitor 21.4, April 2000.
9 Subhash Kapila, "India-Israel
Relations: The Imperatives for Enhanced Strategic Cooperation,"
South Asia Analysis Group, Paper No 131, 1 August 2000.
10 Dominic Coldwell, "Still
in the Closet, Barely," Al Ahram Weekly Online 449, 30 September
- 6 October 1999.
11 "Jaswant's Israel
Visit to Focus on Terrorism," The Times of India, 1 November 2000.
12 Ninan Koshy, "US
Plays Matchmaker to India, Israel," Asia Times Online, 10 June
2003.
13 "High-level Visits,"
Frontline 19.2, 19 January - 1 February 2002.
14 "India Congratulates
Olmert As Israel PM," Israel News Agency, 13 May 2006.
15 "Ehud Positive on
Indo-Israel Ties," The Tribune, 28 November 2004.
16 "Bilateral Relations:
Historical Overview," Israel Diplomatic Network, Embassy of Israel,
New Delhi, July 2006.
17 Sultan Shahin, "India's
Startling Change of Axis," Asia Times Online, 13 May 2003.
18 "India and Israel
to Further Strengthen Military Ties: Report," Outlook India, 19
January 2005. See, also, "Israel to Sell 50 Heron UAV's to India,"
India Defence, 11 August 2005.
19 Harsh V. Pant, "India-Israel
Partnership: Convergence and Constraints," The Middle East Review
of International Affairs 8.4, December 2004. See, also, "India-Israel
Economic and Commercial Relations," Federation of Indian Chambers
of Commerce and Industry.
Raja Swamy is in the doctoral program in Anthropology at the University
of Texas at Austin. He is interested in studying the impact of neoliberalism
in India with a focus on the political economy of natural disasters.