At the 2009 Aero India trade show held in Bangalore, the Israeli arms company Rafael screened a Bollywood-themed music video. It features an Israeli man in a leather jacket pirouetting with a woman dressed in gauzy Indian clothes. “I promise to defend you,” he sings, “fulfill your expectations. Shield you and support you, meet my obligations.” Instead of Bollywood’s more typical trees, the couple dances around missiles garlanded with flowers. Pictures of Hindu deities look on from the walls. The woman representing India leans into the man with her hands pressed against her chest. “Together, forever,” she croons, “I will hold you in my heart.” At its end, the video cuts to black with the message: “Rafael, your partner for indigenous air systems.” The tongue-in-cheek video underscored serious business. Rafael won a $1 billion contract that year to provide India with surface-to-air missile systems, and along with other Israeli companies it has supplied New Delhi with an estimated $10 billion in military gear over the last decade, according to The Economic Times . Israel now ranks second only to Russia as the biggest supplier of military equipment to India. In keeping with the metaphor of the Rafael video, outgoing Israeli ambassador Alon Ushpiz last June hailed his country’s relationship with India as one in which “two intimate partners who trust each other start thinking of challenges together and solutions together and what follows together.” Inspired by Zionism, Savarkar believed that Hindus and Jews shared a history of oppression at the hands of Muslims, and that both deserved redress. Under Modi’s leadership, India looks set to build an even closer friendship with Israel, no matter what degree of devastation is unleashed in Gaza this summer.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 12:57:36 +0000
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