Israeli diplomats proactively cultivated deep ties with the Hindu-Brahmanical Right wing in India since the early 1960s, and who allegedly collaborated to organise anti-government rallies and protests across the country, as per unclassified documents from the Israeli foreign ministry, reported Haaretz and the Wire on Monday.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a detailed report by human rights and freedom of information activist Eitay Mack based on Israeli foreign ministry documents released to the national archives in last two years chronicling Israel’s deep relationship with the Hindu-Brahmanical far right in India, particularly the BJP and its predecessor Jan Sangh.
Common Concerns: Fear & Hatred of Muslims
The diplomatic telegrams show that while Israeli diplomats explicitly referred to the Brahmanical right wing groups as “fascist” [and racist] noting that their ideology was based on extreme hatred of Muslims, the relations with them were carefully maintained and nurtured.
One must note that both Israeli and Hindu-Brahmin right wings are allegedly elitist ethnocultural ideologies centred on social hierarchy and glorification, preservation and continuation of their age-old racial and ethnocultural dominance in the world (evident from concepts like Caste System, Varna System, Chosen ones, etc).
Further, both have been accused of racism, casteism, apartheid and nurturing deep hatred against religions, ideologies and groups they deem hostile to their cause.
Noted constitutional law scholar Rajeev Bhargava has excellently defined Brahmanism in the following manner-
“It [Brahmanism] is sociopolitical ideology that encodes a memory of an ideal past and a vision of society in the future, one in which Brahmins occupy the highest place not only as exclusive guardians of a higher, spiritual realm but also as sole providers of wisdom on virtually every practical issue of this world. They possess superior knowledge of what a well-ordered society is and how a good state must be run. More importantly, their superior position in society and their superior knowledge stems from birth. This makes them naturally, intrinsically superior to all other humans, so superior that they form a separate species ( jati ) altogether. Nothing can challenge or alter this fact. No one becomes a Brahmin, but is born so. This sociopolitical ideology makes hierarchy necessary, rigid and irreversible. Brahmanism then is the most perfect form of conservatism, a status-quoist ideology par excellence, entirely suitable to elites who wish to perpetuate their social status, power and privilege. Paradoxically, this is the also the reason why it [Brahmanism] spread everywhere in India and beyond and why it endures: regardless of your religio-philosophical world view, if you are a privileged elite, you would find this ideology irresistible.”
In a telegram in July 1981, Israeli consul Yosef Hassin observed that “most of the supporters and friends of Israel in India come from [Hindu-Brahmin] ranks – on the basis of hatred of Haman more than love of Mordecai”.
He was referring to the story of the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible in which Haman, the grand vizier of the Achaemenid King, plots to have all Jews in Persia killed after Mordecai, a Jewish man, refuses to prostrate before him.
In an overview of Israel’s relations with India, a report written by the Isreali foreign ministry’s Asia department in June 1982 observed that the “factors working in our favour” included “the existence of the Hindu-Muslim conflict which was a deep and sharp rift, and the formation of the anti-Muslim right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party”.
Also Read| Bahujan, Mandal, and Kamandal Politics in India: Here is all you need to Know
In the same month, Hassin was forced to leave the country after the Indian government declared him persona non grata after he attacked the Indian government for its pro-Arab policy in a news interview.
Who assisted who?
Though India had recognised Israel on September 17, 1950, full-scale diplomatic ties, with the opening of embassies in capitals, only took place in 1992. During those 40-odd years, Israel was represented in India with a consulate in Mumbai.
In the 1970s, records indicate that an unexpected guest at the Israeli consulate in Mumbai was Gopal Godse, seeking assistance in printing and disseminating his speech in defence of his brother, Nathuram Godse, who had killed Mahatma Gandhi. Gopal Godse had also been convicted with a life sentence, but released in 1965.
In his report, Israeli diplomat Gideon Ben Ami said that he hadn’t known in advance of Godse’s visit, but since “it was already too late for its cancellation, I politely listened to his words…”. Godse apparently spoke “passionately about his hatred of Muslims”. He also inquired whether the consulate would “lend its help in printing the defense speech of his brother who was executed [in 1949] and spread it in Israel”.
“Ben Ami wrote that he had firmly rejected the proposal and avoided entering into an ideological polemic with Gopal Godse. His embarrassment was due to the fact that the brother of Gandhi’s murderer had visited the consulate, not the consulate’s connection with the far right,” said the Haaretz article.
How ties Progressed?
The Haaretz report cites telegrams dating back to June 1965, when then-consul in Bombay, Peretz Gordon, wrote back to the Israeli foreign ministry that “to this day and in the future, they [Hindu-Brahmancal groups] fear and hate the Muslim the same”. He further claimed that the opposition BJP and in the right-wing circles of the Indian National Congress, “this finds expression in various forms and even openly”.
Less than a year later, Gordon wrote on April 26, 1966 about recommendations for strengthening ties with India, which included “secret communications with oppositional elements for the purpose of organizing demonstrations hostile to the government”.
Two months later in June 1966, he observed that [Hindu-Brahmins] could observe that the existence of Israel “constitutes a wedge between the Arab [Muslim] states that prevents the establishment of a Arab [Muslim] empire”. “India is not interested in establishing such an empire, neither led by [Egyptian President] Nasser nor by anyone else,” he added.
On the day of India’s independence anniversary on August 15, 1966, the head of the Political-Economic Planning Department, Ilan Aryeh, suggested at a meeting of the foreign ministry that there should be “cautious contact with the Jan Sangh party (perhaps through the Mossad)”.
During the meeting, another foreign ministry official said that the Israel consul was already in contact with the Jan Sangh party, but doubted that there was “any room for tightening ties with an extreme nationalist party that has no chance of coming to power or a coalition”.
On March 14, 1967, the Israeli consul wrote in a telegram that the Jan Sangh had included a demand for full diplomatic relations with Israel in its manifesto. Two months later, the Israeli ambassador to Nepal, Moshe Arel reported to Tel Aviv on May 22, 1967 that he had met with a Jan Sangh lawmaker, ML Sondhi, in Kathmandu.
As Sondhi was the MP from New Delhi, he said that “local government in the Delhi region had passed onto the hands of Jan Sangh”. Sondhi explained, as per the Israeli diplomatic telegram quoted in Haaretz, that “It is now possible to put the Indian government to various tests in the Israeli context, the result of which will be the undermining of the existing anti-Israel policy.”
A few months later in January 1968, Sondhi was in Phnom Penh, where he met with the Israeli ambassador to Cambodia, Raphael Ben Shalom, who wrote that the Indian lawmaker told him that he was ready to organise a “protest of hundreds of thousands” in support of full diplomatic ties with Israel.
In addition, through the same middleman, the consulate “coordinated queries with lawmakers from Jan Sangh designed to criticize and embarrass the New Delhi government on the issue of its abnormal relations with Israel”.
In his advice to Israeli diplomats, Sondhi also reportedly suggested that Israel should replace its “fixer in India as he was also a middleman for Taiwan”.
However, Israel seems to have continued with the same middleman to arrange local contacts for several years. In 1973, the head of the Asia department in the Israeli foreign ministry wrote to the consulate that their middleman is “strongly identified with the far right”.
“He also serves as a middleman for Taiwan and is very active in all kinds of anti-communist organizations and activities that smell of the right and the CIA,” added deputy director Yaacov Shimoni in his telegram.
Haaretz wrote that during the ’70s, the consulate, through the same middleman, “coordinated queries with lawmakers from Jan Sangh designed to criticize and embarrass the New Delhi government on the issue of its abnormal relations with Israel”.
Over a decade later, another telegram from the Israeli consulate to the foreign ministry on October 30, 1985 refers to a middleman who organised meeting with the far-right parties “who used to receive large payments from us”.
Besides Jan Sangh, the Israeli consul in Mumbai, Reuven Dafni, also kept contact with the Shiv Sena party. A 1968 telegram by Dafni, who had been active underground in Hungary to save Jews during the Holocaust, described the Shiv Sena as “obviously demagogic fascist” and said that it held demonstrations in “the style of the Nazis in the ’30s in Germany and Austria: breaking windows of mainly foreign shops, removing foreign workers from various workplaces, etc”.
He repeated the parallels in another telegram in February 1969, where he said that Bombay riots was instigated by the Shiv Sena, which had “clear fascist foundations”.
During the October 1973 Yom Kippur, a rally was held in Bombay in support of Israel with participation from the Shiv Sena and Jan Sangh “in coordination with the Israeli consulate”. The Israeli consul, Joshua Trigor, wrote back that Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray and a Jan Sangh MP gave speeches in support of Israel.
Referring to a meeting with the president and vice president of Hindu Mahasabha, Trigor wrote in November 1973 that the leadership gave him a detailed report on how they had made pro-Israeli speeches and demonstrations during the Yom Kippur war.
While the Hindu Mahasabha’s political power may have waned, Trigor felt that “it’s good that they also sympathize with us – even if one of the reasons for this is their hatred of Muslims”.
In the continuing saga of Israeli diplomats meeting with the Jan Sangh leadership over the decades to hear about their sympathy for Tel Aviv and disapproval of the Union government’s position, Israeli consul Trigor wrote that he “personally heard this from party president LK Advani at our meeting in Delhi in 1973”.
During the Emergency years, Israeli diplomats had difficulty in maintaining contacts with the Jan Sangh and other right-wing parties, as their leaders had gone underground or been arrested.
But when the Janta coalition swept to power in 1977, the Jan Sangh came to the centre.
A senior US diplomat, National Security Council’s Thomas Thornton, informed the Israeli ambassador in Washington David Turgeman that “those who pursue a less hostile line to Israel are organized within the framework of Janata”.
Turgeman wrote in his telegram dated March 25, 1977 that Thornton told him that the “right-wing Jan Sangh, because of its anti-Muslim Hindu nature, is a supporter of Israel”.
A profile of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the new foreign minister in the Janta government, mentioned that he had once led a demonstration against the PLO representatives landing in Mumbai, which led to their plane being diverted to Delhi, an internal Israeli diplomatic telegram noted in April 1977.
Also Read| Atal Bihari Vajpayee: Untold Facts about his Life and Mission from Subaltern Perspective
As per another telegram, a US official in the State Department also explained to his Israeli interlocutor that the success of the Jan Sangh was due to “its close ties with the Hindu religious militia movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh”. He also noted that the electoral success was due to the RSS doing “wonders in recruiting voters in the elections for Janata”.
This was also being reported back by Israeli diplomats from India, with consul Haim Divon writing in 1979 that the Jan Sangh’s main strength was the “exemplarily organized extremist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh”, adding that its members were “fascists”.
Following the breakout of communal violence, a July 1977 telegram from Bombay consulate noted that “since the sectarian riots – that is, the attacks on the Muslim minority in various parts of northern India – increased in the last year, accusations have been made against Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, against its Jan Sangh patron and, indirectly, against Prime Minister Desai for not demanding that some members of Janata sever their ties with the group and for not coming out firmly against them”.
After the Bharatiya Janta Party was formed in April 1980, then Israeli consul Haim Divon wrote in a telegram that the new party “is actually (despite its denials) Jan Sangh in disguise”.
After the fall of the Janta government, it came to light that Israeli foreign minister had made a secret visit to India and met with Prime Minister Moraji Desai in 1977.
In July 1981, Israeli consul Yosef Hassin reported back that he had asked Ram Jethmalani, lawyer and then vice president of the BJP, to write an internal party paper on relations with Israel.
“Hassin reported that Jethmalani asked if he could prepare a working paper and arguments for him for a “balanced and fair position toward Israel” to be presented at the party’s conference. Hassin noted that he willingly complied with the request.
Jethmalani was also one of the organizers of the above mentioned rally in support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War, in coordination with the consulate,” the article stated.
Antisemitism around the World
Global politics is also represented by all kinds of extreme and moderate elements with some forgiving and assimilative towards Jews and others proactively hostile towards Israel calling for its destruction.
Palestine and Hamas
Several Palestinian leaders have often clarified that their struggle is against Israel’s oppressive policies and not against Jews in general.
In an interview, probably recorded in the 1990s, Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas stated his view on Jews:
“I want to proclaim loudly to the world that we are not fighting Jews because they are Jews! We are fighting them because they assaulted us, they killed us, they took our land, our homes, our children, our women, they scattered us, we became scattered everywhere, a people without a homeland. We want our rights. We don’t want more. We love peace, but they hate the peace, because people who take away the rights of others don’t believe in peace. Why should we not fight? We have our right to defend ourselves.“
Yassin was killed by Israel in an attack on 22 March 2004. While he was being wheeled out of an early morning prayer session in Gaza City, an Israeli AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship fired Hellfire missiles at Yassin and both of his bodyguards.
Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, condemned the killing and so did UN Commission on Human Rights supported by votes from 31 countries including the People’s Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa.
In an interview with Al-Aqsa TV on September 12, 2012, Marwan Abu Ras, a Hamas MP, who is also a member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, stated (as translated by MEMRI): The Jews are behind each and every catastrophe on the face of the Earth. This is not open to debate. This is not a temporal thing, but goes back to days of yore. They concocted so many conspiracies and betrayed rulers and nations so many times that the people harbor hatred towards them. Throughout history—from Nebuchadnezzar until modern times. They slayed the prophets, and so on. Any catastrophe on the face of this Earth—the Jews must be behind it.
Hamas Charter 1988 draws heavily on quotations from the hadith and Qur’an and builds an argument that Jews deserve God’s enmity and wrath because they received the Scriptures but violated its sacred texts, rejected the signs of Allah, and persecuted and killed their own prophets.
Article 22 of the Hamas Charter makes sweeping claims about Jewish influence and power. It specifically claims that the Jews were responsible for instigating multiple revolutions and wars, including the French Revolution, World War I, and the Russian Revolution. It also claims that Jews control the United Nations, and that they are supported by “the imperialistic forces in the Capitalist West and Communist East“.
”With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money, they formed secret societies, such as Freemason, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.” – Article 22 Hamas Charter
Article 28 of Hamas Charter claims that “Zionist organizations” aim to destroy society through moral corruption and eliminating Islam, and are responsible for drug trafficking and alcoholism.
During a meeting of the Palestinian National Council in 2018, President Mahmoud Abbas stated that Jews in Europe were massacred for centuries because of their “[oppressive] social role related to usury and banks.”
Malaysia
On 16 October 2003, the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed drew a standing ovation at the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference for his speech, in which he said: “today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them … They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong so that they can enjoy equal rights with others. With these, they have gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power.“
In his treatise on Malay identity, “The Malay Dilemma”, published in 1970, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad wrote: “The Jews are not only hooked-nosed… but understand money instinctively…. Jewish stinginess and financial wizardry gained them the economic control of Europe and provoked antisemitism which waxed and waned throughout Europe through the ages.”
The Malay-language Utusan Malaysia daily stated in an editorial that Malaysians “cannot allow anyone, especially the Jews, to interfere secretly in this country’s business… When the drums are pounded hard in the name of human rights, the pro-Jewish people will have their best opportunity to interfere in any Islamic country,” the newspaper said. “We might not realize that the enthusiasm to support actions such as demonstrations will cause us to help foreign groups succeed in their mission of controlling this country.”
Australia
In December 2023, at a Palestine Justice Movement forum in Bankstown, New South Wales, Australian politician Jenny Leong echoed Mahathir Mohammed’s 2003 speech with her accusation that “the Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby are infiltrating into every single aspect of what is ethnic community groups … they rock up to every community event because their tentacles reach into the areas that try and influence power“. She later apologized.
Arabia
Saudi Arabian government officials and state religious leaders often promote the idea that Jews are conspiring to take over the entire world; as proof of their claims they publish and frequently cite The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as factual.
United States
Two-time heavyweight world champion Tyson Fury has spoken of his belief in a Jewish/Zionist plot to brainwash people and lower moral standards by utilising influence held in the media and financial industries.
Efraim Karsh notes that “Jews have traditionally been accused of seeking to embroil their non-Jewish compatriots in endless conflicts and wars on behalf of such cosmopolitan movements and ideals as ‘world imperialism’, ‘international bolshevism’, or ‘world Zionism'”.
According to Karsh, in the United States Jews were blamed for allegedly dragging the country into World War II and the Iraq War. He sees this as being related to exaggerated claims about the influence of the “Israel lobby“.
Conclusion
Overall, countries should generally refrain from interfering into sovereign and internal affairs of each other as is mandated by international law.
Further, inclusive education system and inter-community dialogues can play an important role in addressing and overcoming all forms of prejudices, antisemitism, islamophobia, etc and in countering social discrimination.
However, according to UNESCO, education is not only about challenging the conditions of intolerance and ignorance in which both antisemitism manifests itself, it is also about building a sense of global citizenship and solidarity, respect for, and enjoyment of diversity and the ability to live peacefully together as active, democratic citizens.
Education equips learners with the knowledge to identify evils like antisemitism, islamophobia, and biased or prejudiced messages and raises awareness about their various forms, manifestations, and impact all over the world.
