8 hours ago
10
Benjamin Netanyahu and Narendra Modi shared a conspicuously warm embrace as the Indian prime minister stepped off Air India One at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Wednesday, a moment that captured the political intimacy between the two leaders. Over the course of his two-day visit, the two sides are expected to sign several agreements, further consolidating an already deepening partnership between Israel and India.
Modi has long been a driving force behind this closeness. His 2017 trip marked the first visit to Israel by an Indian prime minister and signalled a decisive shift in bilateral relations. In an Instagram post on Wednesday, he called this trip a “historic visit”, later receiving a standing ovation at a reception at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, where Netanyahu declared, “This is true friendship, between two leaders, between two countries, and between two ancient nations.”
Of course, this friendship does not just hinge on the deals and agreements the two leaders are set to sign. While welcoming Modi on the tarmac at Ben Gurion airport, Sara Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister’s wife, wore orange/saffron, the colour of Hindutva. The Israeli prime minister also pointed out that her outfit matched the orange pocket square Modi was wearing.
The prominence of Hindutva’s signature colour was difficult to ignore and suggested a clear ease with, and affirmation of, the ideological framework underpinning Modi’s politics. The ideological partnership between Netanyahu and Modi rests on a belief that both leaders stand as a bulwark against what they consider an existential civilisational struggle against Islam and Islamism. Bibi’s Israel is meant to serve as a haven for all Jews, while Modi’s India is meant to keep Hindus safe.
But it is worth asking, whose safety is really guaranteed in Israel and India?
The genocide in Gaza and the ongoing settler violence and annexation of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank are only the latest reminders that Palestinians cannot expect to be safe in the Holy Land. Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 19 percent of the population, face various forms of institutionalised discrimination and are, in fact, as Amnesty International put it, “lesser citizens” of Israel.
But not all Jewish citizens of Israel are “safe” either. Racial discrimination against Mizrahi Jews has been a matter of official policy, written into the very foundations of the state of Israel.
A distinct antagonism towards Mizrahi Jews’ Middle East roots was evident when Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism and the Zionist paramilitary group Irgun, said, “We Jews have nothing in common with what is called the Orient, thank God. To the extent that our uneducated masses [i.e. Middle Eastern Jews] have ancient spiritual traditions and laws that call the Orient, they must be weaned away from them, and this is in fact what we are doing in every decent school, what life itself is doing with great success. We are going in Palestine, first for our national convenience, to sweep out thoroughly all traces of the Oriental soul.”
Declassified state documents show that thousands of babies from Arab Jewish families arriving in Israel after its creation were stolen by hospitals and clinics and handed over “to wealthy Jewish families in Israel and abroad”. Yemeni families suffered the “largest proportion of disappearances”. It is estimated that “one in eight children [from Yemeni families] under the age of four” had gone missing by the time the State of Israel turned six.
Racial discrimination is not a matter of the past, and this white supremacy is ever more evident in the structural and everyday racism faced by Ethiopian Jews. Though accounting for only 2 percent of the population, more than half of Ethiopian Jewish citizens live below the poverty line. Their neighbourhoods are chronically under-resourced, and Ethiopian Jewish children and youth face substance abuse, violence, high school dropout rates, as well as an alarming increase in cases of depression and suicide.
Reflecting this experience, one participant in a study published by the Association for Jewish Studies said, “No matter what we do, this is what we get. ‘These Ethiopians, these barbarians, they infiltrate Israel.’ Take police racism, for instance, they treat us like invaders, criminals, even though this is our home. And the strangest thing is, who knows the feeling of exclusion better than the Jewish people? We weren’t accepted in Europe because we were Jewish, and now you don’t accept us because we’re Black?! You were discriminated and now you discriminate us. You’re not accepting yourself! We are PART of you, can’t you SEE?”.
These realities show that Israel is not a place of safety for all Jews.
India is no different. Structural and everyday discrimination faced by the country’s minority Muslim population is well documented across legal, political and social spheres. Critics and oppositional voices remain under threat. But are all Hindus safe under a Hindu nationalist leadership?
Caste-based discrimination, while not an invention of this government, remains a central feature of Indian society and has intensified under Modi’s rule.
In January, the University Grants Commission (UGC) introduced the Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations. The move followed Supreme Court pressure to address harassment and discrimination faced by Dalit students. The regulations “make heads of institutions directly responsible for preventing and responding to discrimination on the basis of caste, religion, gender or disability by students, teachers or non-teaching staff”. The measures faced immediate backlash, and the court has since “stayed the new regulations”.
Behind these regulations lies a tragic record of suicides among Dalit students. This includes the highly publicised case of Dalit PhD candidate Rohith Vemula at the University of Hyderabad in 2016. Vemula was active on campus, raising the issue of caste discrimination, prompting complaints from the student wing of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The matter reached Smriti Irani, the then-human resource development minister in the Modi government, who asked university leadership to investigate. Vemula’s fellowship was suspended, and he was forced to vacate his dormitory.
He died by suicide on January 16, 2016, writing in his suicide note that his “birth was his fatal accident”.
A 2021 Pew study reveals that a majority of Indians “do not see widespread discrimination against Scheduled Castes and Tribes”. Yet UGC data from 2025 shows caste-related complaints have risen sharply. Employment patterns also reproduce caste hierarchies, with 77 percent of sewer and septic workers coming from Dalit communities. Research suggests that caste hierarchies are increasingly reproduced in artificial intelligence systems. The anti-affirmative action activism of the Hindu nationalist diaspora also demonstrates that caste hierarchies extend beyond national boundaries.
What is the point of dredging up this record of exclusion, discrimination and hierarchy in light of Modi’s bromance with Netanyahu? It certainly does not mean that if racism in Israeli society did not exist, or if casteism were eliminated in India, their ideologies and political actions would be any more acceptable. Rather, it is to highlight the expansive and multifaceted nature of the hierarchies and structures of exclusion propagated by the two leaders. The main targets of their discourse and policies are Palestinians across Palestine and Israel, and Muslims in India. Yet the proponents of their politics are equally keen to weaponise this discourse and brand of statecraft to target those who do not fit their hegemonic conception of life and politics.
That is to say, truly, no one is safe in Israel and India.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
