Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara received a cordial welcome upon their arrival in New Delhi Sunday.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to welcome them in person even though the foreign minister is normally the one greeting dignitaries to the country.
India has been widely lauded for voting at the United Nations last month in favor of a UNGA resolution considering President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as capital of the apartheid state of Israel as null and void. That is what all people of moral conscience had expected India to do. And thankfully India didn’t betray them.
Now however India is giving a red-carpet welcome to a repugnant symbol of fascism and racism that shamelessly enjoys watching his trigger-happy soldiers showering school children and peaceful protesters with bullets.
I do realize that nation-states have political and economic interests that must be promoted and maintained. But India the de facto leader of non-allied nations has moral principles that should be maintained as well even at the risk of losing some economic and other benefits.
Netanyahu is seeking to sell India Israeli weapons and military technology. However Indian leaders especially those still valuing human rights and dignity ought to understand that every dollar paid to Israel means more Palestinian blood will be spilled more Palestinian homes demolished and more Palestinian land stolen by Israel. India a country of a thousand million people should never allow its basic moral stance against racism and apartheid to compromise by a cold-blooded criminal who carries on his hands the blood of thousands of children and other innocent people. We have their names and pictures so let no one assume me I am making a hyperbole.
True Modi is no Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru or even Indira Gandhi who would internalize and act upon a moral appeal. However India is not Modi and Modi is not India. This is why the ultimate target of my appeal is by no means the current Prime Minister of India who is very much part of the problem than part of the solution but the collective conscience of all Indians irrespective of their religions and sects.
Netanyahu is the Prime Minister of an insidious apartheid regime that torments persecutes and discriminates against millions of people because of their different ethnicity and religion. Don’t allow him to defile your country’s moral integrity.
– Khalid Amayreh is a veteran journalist and writer living in the West Bank under the Israeli occupation
