The Pakistani military reportedly intercepted and shot down around 70 Israeli-manufactured Harop drones deployed by the Indian military across the border during the recent conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
The suicide drones manufactured by the MBT Missiles Division of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) flew all over the country, resulting in the death of one civilian and injuries to another.
While Tel Aviv and New Delhi have maintained a discreet military partnership since the 1960s conflicts with Pakistan and China, the scale, sophistication, and intensity of the weaponry deployed in the current conflict reveal the tangible impact of India’s arms imports from Israel, estimated at $2.9 billion over the past decade.
This deepening alliance raises a pressing question: what fuels the growing relationship between two nations separated by thousands of kilometres, distinct in history and culture, yet bound by military occupations they impose respectively on Palestine and Kashmir?
Perhaps the clearest answer lies in the words of Sandeep Chakravorty, India’s Consul General in New York, who was recorded in November 2019 addressing a public gathering.
In his remarks, Chakravorty openly called for implementing an “Israeli model” in Muslim-majority Indian-administered Kashmir to settle Kashmiri Hindus - known as Pandits - in the country’s only Muslim-majority state. “If the Israeli people can do it, we can also do it,” he said, adding that the current Indian leadership is “determined” to do so.
Muzammil Ayub Thakur, the President of the Kashmir Freedom Movement, believes the deepening India-Israel relationship is rooted in a long-standing ideological affinity.
“The India-Israel bonhomie has existed since the inception of both states,” he told The New Arab. “However, India kept the relationship either low-level or covert due to its interests in the Arab world. That changed dramatically after Prime Minister Modi came to power. The alliance is now out in the open, grounded in shared ideological positions that are fundamentally anti-Muslim and Islamophobic.”
A common ideological thread: Islamophobia
Azad Essa, in his book Hostile Homeland: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, notes that this ideological affinity is neither recent nor coincidental.
Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, once positioned Zionism as a meeting point between Christianity and Judaism in their shared stance against Islam and "Oriental barbarism."
Similarly, Hindu nationalist ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar claimed in 1939 that India’s Muslims were more loyal to foreign Muslim interests than to the Indian nation.
Essa argues that for Hindu nationalists, Zionism offers a blueprint - a model of ethno-religious nationalism. Hindutva’s construction of the Hindu as the "insider" and the Muslim as the permanent "outsider" echoes the Zionist framing of Palestinians.
As Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky once wrote, Palestinians would only accept Jewish settlement after being completely disenfranchised: “We can talk as much as we want about our good intentions… but they understand as well as we what is not good for them.”
Israel stands with India, but cautiously
Amid the recent India-Pakistan tensions, unlike other ambassadors, Israeli Ambassador to India Reuven Azar appeared on multiple Indian news channels to express support for India’s "right to self-defence." Yet notably, he has avoided directly condemning Pakistan, despite persistent prodding from Indian media outlets.
“The Indian media’s desperation to equate the Pahalgam attack with 7 October, and the Israeli ambassador’s verbal gymnastics to avoid that comparison, reflect poorly on India,” said Pakistan-based media analyst Uroosa Jadoon. “It shows India’s eagerness to be seen in the same league as Israel - something Israel is conveniently sidestepping.
“The media absurdity isn’t confined to news studios - it reflects a broader reality,” she said. “There is a significant Hindu right-wing constituency in India that fetishises Israel’s far-right state violence against Palestinians and finds ideological comfort in aligning with it.
"For them, Israel not only validates their Islamophobia but also lends it a veneer of legitimacy - amplified by the privilege of white identity and global acceptance.”
Enter Modi
In September 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
It had been just five months since Modi took office - and just weeks since Israel’s brutal military campaign, Operation Protective Edge, devastated the Gaza Strip, leaving 2,251 Palestinians dead over 50 days.
Under normal diplomatic norms, such a high-profile meeting, especially so soon after a massacre, might have been delayed or kept low-profile. But this was a new India, led by a new kind of prime minister. At the meeting, Netanyahu remarked that the two leaders had “decided to break down the remaining walls” between their countries.
Between 2015 and 2019, India’s arms imports from Israel surged by 175%, as noted by Azad Essa in 'Hostile Homeland'. By July 2021, the alliance took a darker turn.
A global media investigation - The Pegasus Project - revealed that Pegasus spyware, sold exclusively to governments by Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group, had been used to target journalists, human rights activists, and politicians worldwide. The software allows full access to a phone’s camera, microphone, and data without the user’s knowledge.
India was one of the countries implicated. Of some 50,000 potential targets globally, around 2,000 phone numbers were linked to India, with at least 300 verified infections, including that of opposition leader Rahul Gandhi.
Given that NSO sells Pegasus only to state actors, the question is not if India acquired it, but when. The Indian government has neither confirmed nor denied the relationship.
However, The New York Times reported in January 2022 that Modi likely purchased Pegasus in 2017 as part of a broader arms deal with Israel.
Delhi’s refusal to allow even a parliamentary debate on the Pegasus revelations speaks volumes. It suggests that India-Israel military relations are far deeper than publicly acknowledged - and that the Modi government does not feel obliged to disclose anything it deems a matter of "national interest."
Zionism enters the fray
For Muzammil Ayub Thakur, Israel’s backing of India signals a dangerous new phase - one where repression in Kashmir and aggression toward Pakistan will become more overt and unchecked.
He argues that, unlike Zionism, which regularly faces global condemnation, Hindutva extremism has largely escaped serious scrutiny from the international community, even as it now gains support from Zionist entities.
“They’ve never cared about legitimacy; what they seek is raw power - just like Israel,” Thakur told TNA. “The Muslim identity of Kashmiris stands as a direct challenge to the Hindutva vision, and the aim is to erase anything perceived as non-Hindu. Kashmir is on the front lines of that fight.”
However, he believes that while the Kashmiri people continue to resist Indian occupation, their struggle has largely failed to attract meaningful attention from the international community.
Yet, with the state of Israel increasingly becoming a party to the conflict, a new opportunity may be emerging.
Kashmiri activists could now begin to connect their cause with global justice movements, such as the pro-Palestine solidarity network and Black Lives Matter, framing Kashmir within the broader narrative of anti-colonial resistance and systemic oppression.
Ebad Ahmed is a freelance journalist, human rights activist, and graduate student based in Prague, Czech Republic
Follow him on X: @ebadahmed