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Benjamin Netanyahu and Narendra Modi shared a conspicuously warm embrace as the Indian prime minister stepped off Air India One at Israel\u2019s Ben Gurion airport on Wednesday, a moment that captured the political intimacy between the two leaders. Over the course of his two-day visit, the two sides are expected to sign several agreements, further consolidating an already deepening partnership between Israel and India.<\/p>\n
Modi has long been a driving force behind this closeness. His 2017 trip marked the first visit to Israel by an Indian prime minister and signalled a decisive shift in bilateral relations. In an Instagram post on Wednesday, he called this trip a \u201chistoric visit\u201d, later receiving a standing ovation at a reception at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, where Netanyahu declared, \u201cThis is true friendship, between two leaders, between two countries, and between two ancient nations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, this friendship does not just hinge on the deals and agreements the two leaders are set to sign. While welcoming Modi on the tarmac at Ben Gurion airport, Sara Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister\u2019s wife, wore orange\/saffron, the colour of Hindutva. The Israeli prime minister also pointed out that her outfit matched the orange pocket square Modi was wearing.<\/p>\n
The prominence of Hindutva\u2019s signature colour was difficult to ignore and suggested a clear ease with, and affirmation of, the ideological framework underpinning Modi\u2019s politics. The ideological partnership between Netanyahu and Modi rests on a belief that both leaders stand as a bulwark against what they consider an existential civilisational struggle against Islam and Islamism. Bibi\u2019s Israel is meant to serve as a haven for all Jews, while Modi\u2019s India is meant to keep Hindus safe.<\/p>\n
But it is worth asking, whose safety is really guaranteed in Israel and India?<\/p>\n
The genocide in Gaza and the ongoing settler violence and annexation of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank are only the latest reminders that Palestinians cannot expect to be safe in the Holy Land. Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 19 percent of the population, face various forms of institutionalised discrimination and are, in fact, as Amnesty International put it, \u201clesser citizens\u201d of Israel.<\/p>\n
But not all Jewish citizens of Israel are \u201csafe\u201d either. Racial discrimination against Mizrahi Jews has been a matter of official policy, written into the very foundations of the state of Israel.<\/p>\n
A distinct antagonism towards Mizrahi Jews\u2019 Middle East roots was evident when Ze\u2019ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism and the Zionist paramilitary group Irgun, said, \u201cWe Jews have nothing in common with what is called the Orient, thank God. To the extent that our uneducated masses [i.e. Middle Eastern Jews] have ancient spiritual traditions and laws that call the Orient, they must be weaned away from them, and this is in fact what we are doing in every decent school, what life itself is doing with great success. We are going in Palestine, first for our national convenience, to sweep out thoroughly all traces of the Oriental soul.\u201d<\/p>\n
Declassified state documents show that thousands of babies from Arab Jewish families arriving in Israel after its creation were stolen by hospitals and clinics and handed over \u201cto wealthy Jewish families in Israel and abroad\u201d. Yemeni families suffered the \u201clargest proportion of disappearances\u201d. It is estimated that \u201cone in eight children [from Yemeni families] under the age of four\u201d had gone missing by the time the State of Israel turned six.<\/p>\n
Racial discrimination is not a matter of the past, and this white supremacy is ever more evident in the structural and everyday racism faced by Ethiopian Jews. Though accounting for only 2 percent of the population, more than half of Ethiopian Jewish citizens live below the poverty line. Their neighbourhoods are chronically under-resourced, and Ethiopian Jewish children and youth face substance abuse, violence, high school dropout rates, as well as an alarming increase in cases of depression and suicide.<\/p>\n