by Chetan Prabhudesai

A symposium between Indian and Israeli diplomats took place at the Wang Center on March 6, at 7:00 PM. It discussed the economic, technological, and cultural relationship that India, Israel, and the United States currently enjoy. With this in mind, I thought about ways in which the two countries have interacted over the years.

The United States, India, and Israel are all nuclear powers (though Israel has not yet admitted as such). This presents an important concern for many other nations, yet an important link between these three. (With regard to more conventional weapons, Israel is India’s second biggest arms supplier, after Russia). They all have nuclear weapons for supposedly defensive purposes, yet the nature of their enemies has changed dramatically over the past few decades.

No discussion of the three countries would be complete without mentioning terrorism, as it is arguably the most important thread between the nations. All three countries are fighting off radical Islamists who wish to destroy the three nations, while the governments of each struggle to protect the other Muslims in their countries, the vast majority of whom have no such leanings.

India and Israel both struggle with disputed territories that Muslims claim as their own state, while the United States is fighting to keep Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan from fighting each other. The topic of Muslim rights is a big issue in India, Israel, and the United States.  Interestingly, the majority religions in each of the three countries (Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity, respectively) are different, yet the complaints are largely the same – Muslims and other minority groups often complain of discrimination, separation, and persecution by the government - a fairly common problem when a government is not truly secular as is the case in all three countries.

It is indeed fitting that the flyer distributed to announce this symposium shows a triangle joining the flags of the three countries. In this day and age, the US, India, and Israel are invariably interlinked, for better or worse.

http://www.stonybrook.edu/sb/wang/India-Israel%20postcard.pdf