Modi’s
Israel Visit: Memories Of A Journalist’s Visits To Jewish State
Saeed Naqvi
Dated:
07.07.2017
Israel has been in the news in the context
of the Prime Minister’s visit and I may be forgiven for a touch of nostalgia. I
was the first Indian journalist to visit Israel after an Australian fanatic had
set fire to the pulpit of the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem in August 1969. The
Arab World was ablaze.
Indian passports in those days were not
valid for South Africa, Israel and Southern Rhodesia. Under a special
dispensation you could obtain a separate passport for travel to countries with
which India did not have diplomatic ties. Israelis were more practical: they
pinned a piece of paper for entry and exit which could be pulled out when
travelling to other countries.
The reception I received at Ben Gurion
airport was the stuff of fairytales for a reporter in his 20s. Never will
Jerusalem Municipality have a public relations officer more beautiful than
Bathsheba Herman.
Something that had not touched the
Israelis then was arrogance. They came across as clever, wise, modest people,
working diligently on their Kibbutz, the typically Jewish cooperatives, where
inequalities were not discernable. It was possible to contemplate Fa Giladi,
the exquisite Kibbutz in the shadow of Mt. Hermon, as the dream location for
research on the Palestinian issue.
The simplicity of the people helped tone
down shades of Zionism instilled in us and which was the bane of the
Palestinian people. Ambassadors like John Kenneth Galbraith held Pandit Nehru
in their thrall with their intellect. But during the Indira Gandhi years, changes
were creeping across the diplomatic corps. There were various ways to gauge how
well informed an Ambassador was. A simple test could be this: was the
ambassador a regular fixture at the New Year eve party hosted by Indira Gandhi’s
leftist adviser, editor of Seminar, Romesh Thapar. By this and several other
criteria the trophy belonged to Clovis Maksoud, Arab League’s first ambassador,
articulate, even bombastic, with an unerring eye for New Delhi’s well groomed
ladies. His role in sensitizing the New Delhi elite to the intricacies of the
Palestinian case must never be underestimated.
Nehru as leader of the Non-Aligned and
Afro-Asian bloc obviously had a large constituency among left liberals and
Muslims. His charm offensive even on the Arabs worked such magic that Raees
Amrohvi, an Urdu poet from Pakistan, was moved to write a quatrain:
“Jup raha hai aaj mala ek Hindu ki Arab
Barhman zaa de mein shaane dilbari aisi to
ho!
Hikmat e Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru ki qasam
Mar mitey Islam jispar, kafiri aisi to
ho!”
(What a spell this Brahmin has cast on the
Arabs
Who now chant his name on their beads.
Look at the magic of this kafir
(non-believer);
Believers of the Arab world lie at his
feet)
Until 1990s, it was anti intellectual to cast
positive light on the Israeli case. When Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister in
1984, he was advised by Muslim Congressmen in his vicinity (but totally out
touch with the community) not to upgrade relations with Israel because that
would adversely affect the party’s Muslim support.
When I argued against this line in the
Indian Express, Rajiv had it expanded into an official note. Muslim leaders,
such as they were, and the Mullah had shackled the community with issues like
Shah Bano, Salman Rushdie, Babri Masjid, Muslim character of Aligarh Muslim
University and now relations with Israel. What any backward community needed
was employment, education, entrepreneurial help, I wrote.
After Rajiv was assassinated half way through
the 1991 General Elections. P.V. Narasimha Rao upgraded relations with Israel
in 1992. There was not a whimper from the community.
Initially, relations were more or less
mechanically upgraded. Absence of any real content in the relationship invited
Shimon Peres to quip in an interview with me:
“Indo-Israeli relations are like French
perfume – to be smelt not drunk.”
The Israel Bathsheba Harman introduced me to
soon after the 1967 war, had hardened by the 1993 Oslo accords. But even so one
could salve one’s conscience with the thought that Oslo would atleast lead to a
two-state solution.
An episode firmed up my appraisal of the
Israeli-Palestinian two-state process.
It was a Shabath lunch, at a friend’s
house in Herzilia. Among this very small group happened to a person at one end
of the lawn, wreathed in cigarette smoke, a glass of red wine in one hand,
rapidly replenished, obviously reveling in the company of three well groomed
ladies who had formed an admiring circle around him. It was Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin, lighting one Kent after another, like Belmondo in a Godard film.
He came accross at first a shy man but
once he opened up, he was transparent and obviously trustworthy. His approach
to Oslo was not at a variance from another loveable Israeli, Yossi Beilin, very
much the author of the Oslo accords.
Obsession with survival and security had
injected some iron in the Israeli soul, but the Jewish state became hard as
nails after the 9/11 wars, Islamophobia, and Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime
Minister who visited India on the first anniversary of 9/11, just when the
war-on-terror rhetoric was being amplified here too.
Sensitive defence deals with Israel begun
under Atal Behari Vajpayee were boosted by Manmohan Singh. The Palestinian
issue, which was highest priority upto Indira Gandhi, dipped in saliency.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit,
however, is fired by an atavistic Hindutva adoration for a small country on top
of its mischievous Muslim neighbours. Ramallah has been bypassed, ofcourse. But
it should not be lost on the insiders that during the September non aligned
summit in Venezuela the Indian delegation received instructions from South
Block, to drop the routine reference to the Palestinian issue altogether. It was
a tradition from the earliest days of NAM.
No, Ramallah was not just bypassed;
Palestine has been downgraded to the level of irrelevance.
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