THE SECRET BROTHERHOOD OF AND 

For 40 years, India did not have relations with Israel. Yet, India and Israel share so much in common and both can learn a lot from each other ! Hindus and Jews, far from being the persecutors of minorities, that the Marxist, Arab and INC lobby like to portray, have been persecuted for nearly two thousand years and have been the victims of the two worst genocides in the sad history of humanity : Hitler, in his monstrous quest for a “pure” Aryan race, murdered six millions Jews in his gas chambers during the Second World War; and Belgium historian Koenraad Elst estimates that between the year 1000 and 1525, eighty million Hindus died at the hands of Muslim invaders, probably the biggest holocaust in the whole history of our planet.

Indians and Israelis of today also share in common an awesome problem with Muslim fundamentalists : look how now Palestinians have started a wave of terror against innocent Jews – and are ironically getting the international Media sympathy when they are the aggressors – the same way those who have launched in the last six months a lying, vicious slander campaign against the Government of Mr are getting support from the Indian and International Media.

India should learn a lesson of two from the way Israel handles this problem, however much it is criticized by the western medias. Unlike India, which since Independence has chosen to deal with this problem in the Gandhian spirit, that is by compromising most of the time with Islamic intransigence – if not giving in – Israel showed that toughness first, accompanied later by negotiations pays much more. Basically, the “land for money” concept is something that India should borrow from : in 1967, Israel was threatened to be engulfed by its fanatic neighbors, so it stole the initiative by crushing them in a lightning six days war and kept some land which it used later as bargaining chips with Egypt and Syria. India is also surrounded by hostile Muslim countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal soon, as it is going to be ruled by Maoists, and more and more Bangladesh. So far, India has followed the Nehruvian policy of Good Neighborhood : you give first, expecting that your neighborhood will reciprocate the gesture later. It’s only for the first time that the Narendra Modi Government has shown some muscle by indirectly blockading Nepal, which is turning to be a puppet in the hands of the Chinese. That is good, because history has shown that India mostly gets stabbed in the back for its generosity by small insignificant nations such as Bangladesh, which owes its freedom to the sacrifices of India’s soldiers and is more and more lending its territory to the ISI. If during the 1965 Indo-Pak war, India would have kept a chunk of the Pakistani territory it has conquered, or if during the Kargil war, it had carried on with its victorious momentum by seizing some of the Pakistan-held Kashmir, which could be used as a buffer zone, there would be probably today less cross-border terrorism.

There is another area where India has a lot to learn from Israel, it is the VIP security. I know that things have improved since Mr Narendra Modi came to power and he seems to take some precautions not to inconvenience to much his fellow citizens, though he must be one of the most targeted leaders in the world by Islamic terrorists. But the same is not true of his ministers and MLA’s. We all know how it has become here a status symbol, a constant hassle for the ordinary Indian, who has to wait endlessly in his car for the VIP motorcade to pass by, or in his plane for the Prime Minister of India to land. Sonia Gandhi must have been the most protected leader in the world – and she was not even the Prime Minister of India. And it is a very heavy-handed, unfriendly and ultimately inefficient protection. But look at the Israelis: their Prime Minister moves around with only a few boyish looking men, in sneakers and civil dress and they don’t rough up onlookers or hassle innocent citizens. Their airline, EL Al, is the safest in the world, in spite of being the most threatened. But for them, no rude cops who hardly talk any English frisking you at airports, but civil and educated EL Al employees, who ask polite but pointed questions and unobtrusive security in the airports and aboard their aircrafts. Israelis have also shown that you should NEVER give in to terrorist demands and also that its commandos are the best. 30 years ago, when an Air France airplane, carrying mostly Israelis, was hijacked by Arab terrorists and forced to land in far away Uganda, which like the Taliban, were actually protecting the terrorists while pretending to help in the release of the passengers, Israel in one of the most daring rescue operation ever, sent its commandos flying in the dead of the night over half of the world, killed the terrorists, freed the passengers and brought them back to Israel with very little casualties. Unfortunately, India adopted a total opposite attitude during the hijack of IC 814, with the catastrophic result that we know : the terrorists released are today openly preaching in Pakistan a jihad unto death towards India.

One more aspect from which India can learn a great deal from Israel and it is its language. In 1948, Israel regained part of it Holy land and Israelis, who had been scattered all over the world, came back to live in Israel. There was one problem though: they all spoke different languages and no tongue unified them except Yiddish, a bastard language spoken by the Jews of Eastern Europe. So the state of Israel set its scholars to revive Hebrew, Israel’s ancient language, which had fallen in decrepitude, so that today everybody speaks Hebrew and it has unified Israel like nothing else. India should invite some of these linguists and they should sit down with scholars and devise a way of simplifying and modernizing Sanskrit, which is the mother of all European tongues, a language so subtle and rich that it will energize and revitalize the whole Indian culture.

And finally, Like Indians, Israel is one of those ‘elected people of God’, of whom Sri Aurobindo speaks in his book the “Hour of God”, who have managed to keep their spirituality alive in spite of oppressions, invasions and genocides. And both, in their own ways, are becoming again powerful nations, vibrant with spirituality and vigor.

FRANCOIS GAUTIER