[Reader-list] Gaza War - Analysis from The Pathetic Indian Middle

[Sanjay Kak]

India's Israel envy
By Shashi Tharoor

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1057981.html

NEW DELHI - As Israeli planes and tanks were exacting a heavy toll on Gaza,
India's leaders and strategic thinkers were watching with an unusual degree
of interest - and some empathy.

India's government, no surprise, joined the rest of the world in calling for
an end to the military action, but its criticism of Israel was muted. For,
as Israel demonstrated anew its determination to end attacks on its
civilians by militants based in Hamas-controlled territory, many in India,
still smarting from the horrors of the Mumbai attacks in November, have been
asking: Why can't we do the same?

For many Indians, the temptation to identify with Israel was strengthened by
the terrorists' seizure of the Chabad House, and the painful awareness that
India and Israel share many of the same enemies. India, with its 150 million
Muslims, has long been a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, and
remains strongly committed to an independent Palestinian state. But the
Mumbai attacks confirmed what has become apparent in recent years: The
forces of global Islamist terror have added Indians to their target list of
reviled "Jews and crusaders."

Just as Israel has frequently been attacked by rockets fired from across its
border, India has suffered repeated assaults by killers trained, equipped,
financed and directed by elements based next door, in Pakistan. When
president George W. Bush's press secretary equated members of Hamas with the
Mumbai killers, her comments were widely circulated in India.

Yet there the parallels end. Israel is a small country living in a permanent
state of siege, highly security-conscious and surrounded by forces hostile
to it; India is a giant country whose borders are notoriously permeable, an
open society known for its lax and easygoing ways.

Whereas many regard Israel's toughness as its principal characteristic,
India's own citizens view their country as a soft state, its underbelly
easily penetrated by determined terrorists. Whereas Israel notoriously
exacts grim retribution for every attack on its soil, India has endured with
numbing stoicism an endless series of bomb blasts, including at least six
major assaults in different locations in 2008 alone. Terrorism has taken
more lives in India than in any country in the world after Iraq, and yet,
unlike Israel, India has seemed unable to do anything about it.

Moreover, whereas Israel's principal adversary is currently Hamas, India
faces a slew of terrorist organizations - Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad,
Jamaat-ud-Dawa and more. But, whereas Hamas operates from Gaza without
international recognition, India's tormentors function from Pakistan, a
sovereign member of the United Nations. And that makes all the difference.

Hamas is in no position to repay Israel's air and ground attacks in kind,
whereas an Indian attack on Pakistani territory, even one targeting
terrorist bases and training camps, would invite swift retaliation from the
Pakistani army. And, at the end of the day, one chilling fact would prevent
India from thinking that it could use Israel's playbook: The country that
condones, if not foments, the terror attacks on India is a nuclear power.

So India has gone to the world community with evidence that the Mumbai
attacks were planned in Pakistan and conducted by Pakistanis who maintained
contact with handlers there during the operation. While India had briefly
hoped that the proof might enable Pakistan's weak civilian government to
rein in the malign elements in its society, the Pakistani authorities'
reaction has been one of denial.

Yet no one doubts that Pakistan's all-powerful military intelligence has,
over the last two decades, created and supported terror organizations as
instruments of Pakistani policy in Afghanistan and India. When India's
embassy in Kabul was hit by a suicide bomber last July, American
intelligence sources revealed that not only was Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence behind the attack, but that it made little effort to cover its
tracks. The ISI knew perfectly well that India would not go to war with
Pakistan to avenge the killing of its diplomatic personnel.

The fact is that India knows that war will accomplish nothing. Indeed, it is
just what the terrorists want - a cause that would rally all Pakistanis to
the flag and provide Pakistan's army an excuse to abandon the unpopular
fight against the Taliban and Al-Qaida in the west for the more familiar
terrain of the Indian border in the east. India's government sees no reason
to play into the hands of those who seek that outcome.

Yet, when Indians watch Israel take the fight to the enemy, killing those
who launched rockets against it and dismantling many of the sites from which
the rockets flew, some cannot resist wishing that they could do something
similar in Pakistan. India understands, though, that the collateral damage
would be too high, the price in civilian lives unacceptable, and the risks
of the conflict spiraling out of control too acute to contemplate such an
option. So Indians place their trust in international diplomacy and watch,
with ill-disguised wistfulness, as Israel does what they could never permit
themselves to do.

Shashi Tharoor is an Indian novelist and commentator, and a former
under-secretary-general of the United Nations.

Copyright: Project Syndicate.