India and Israel: Shared Security Vulnerabilities

The State of Israel was created as a homeland for the Jews on 14 May 1948 under the UN mandate and India de jure recognized it on 17 September 1950, as one of the early Asian countries to do so. However, the successive Indian governments avoided establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel for more than four decades, largely for their sustained support for the Palestinian cause, domestic political considerations, India’s close relations with the Arab world as also to a certain extent because of Cold War alignments. Till early 1990s, India maintained only limited consular contacts with Israel while strongly backing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In 1980, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi even conferred the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding on PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, head of an organization indulged in umpteen terrorist activities against Jews, reflecting India’s policy orientation of that era. An important shift came under Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, when full diplomatic relations were established on 29 January 1992, with embassies formally opened in New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

The relationship began warming thereafter, particularly in defence, agriculture, water management, science, and intelligence cooperation. The partnership deepened after the 1999 Kargil conflict and expanded significantly during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government (March 1998 – May 2004). During the successive ten years of the Manmohan Singh government, more or less retained status quo but under a policy of “tightrope diplomacy” owing to the party’s traditional support for Palestine. The bilateral relations reached to an unprecedented strategic level under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, marked by his historic 2017 visit to Israel, the first ever by an Indian Prime Minister, and commensurate reciprocal high-level exchanges. Today, India and Israel are regarded as close strategic partners, with robust cooperation in defence technology, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, innovation besides the areas of agriculture and trade. While India endorses a negotiated two state solution for Israel and Palestine, its bilateral relationship with Israel has become one of the cornerstones of Indian diplomacy in strongest and most multifaceted landscape.

As most countries design their foreign relations primarily keeping in view their voter base to stay in power, protect the home land and boost their economy, it is not surprising that the successive Congress and Congress supported governments were overly conscious for decades about their relations with the Arab world giving extra weightage to the Palestine cause. The bitter truth of UN mandate was that Jewish state received almost 60% of the proposed land comprised of Negev Desert, unsuitable for agriculture; while the Arab state received most of the fertile agriculture lands of the West Bank, the Galilee’s and the Gaza coastal strip. Notwithstanding, while Jews had agreed to this plan, the Arab states out-rightly rejected it as they were not willing to concede an independent Jewish state. The world knows how the Israel and Arabs have fared thereafter in the respective lands. India and Israel are among the oldest surviving civilizations today with deep cultural links, historically sharing some common existential threats, and both are forward looking states pioneering and adopting modern science and technology innovations for the common good of the mankind. Author propose to analyze and discuss how the two nations share similar prospects and challenges in respective regions of the globe.

Shared Civilizational Threads

While the world’s Christian and Islamic history spans approximately 2,000 and 1,400 years from their origin, the Hindu Sanatana and Jewish people represent the oldest surviving civilizations on date. According to the traditional Indian historians and scholar’s reckoning, based on historical accounts as recorded in the Vedic corpus, Epics and Puranas (Itihasa texts), Buddhist and Jain literature and inscriptions, Sanskrit and Prakrit poetic literature, regional accounts, inscriptions, monastic chronicles, Vamsavalis, etc., the Hindu civilization dates back to over 10,000 BCE starting with Vedic age. The Western historians, however, link its earliest roots with Indus Valley Civilization, a theory fraught with many serious flaws. Even if the Western concepts are endorsed, the Hindu Sanatana civilizations is over 4,500 years old. The same Western historians have reckoned the Jewish civilization as being roughly 3,700 to 4,000 years old, tracing its roots to the patriarch Abraham. As the oldest surviving civilizations, Hinduism and Judaism share several common threads.

(1) Monotheism and Monism (Oneness of Divinity)

​To many onlookers, Judaism’s foundational declaration of absolute monotheism viz. the Shema (“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one”) would appear in stark contrast to the vibrant and vast pantheon of Hinduism giving impressions of polytheism. However, when examined to its oldest philosophical roots in the Vedas and Upanishads, Hindu philosophy reveals a profound convergence toward the ultimate unity of existence. For instance, the oldest scripture the Rig Veda famously declares, “Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti” i. e. Truth (God) is one, though the sages know it by many names. While Judaism typically approaches the divine through a singular, transcendent personal Creator who stands apart from the universe, the Vedic framework of Sanatana Dharma expands monotheism into Monism (Advaita Vedanta). In Hindu view, the various deities are not separate gods but a personified manifestations of the same supreme, formless cosmic reality known as Brahman. While Judaism practices an uncompromising, exclusive monotheism to profess the oneness of God, Hinduism considers a comprehensive, inclusive monism that visualizes the divine in everything and everything as the divine, and the natural forces as diverse windows into the same ultimate reality.

​(2) The Traditions of Debate and Inquiry

​This has remained as a deeply rooted cultural commonality between both ancient civilizations in allowing an open intellectual inquiry, dynamic debate, and the preservation of massive textual traditions. Neither Hinduism nor Judaism demands blind, unquestioning dogma; instead, both view inquisition and inquiry as a sacred duty to unlock and learn deep philosophical and spiritual truths. In Judaism, it is embodied in Talmud which is a monumental compendium of rabbinic discussions, legal arguments and varying interpretations, allowing even dissenting minority opinions to be meticulously preserved alongside majority rulings. In Hinduism, the tradition and exact spirit evolved with Upanishads, which are structured as profound dialogue-driven inquiries between teachers and seekers (Samvada), along with a classical tradition of Shastrartha (formal philosophical disputation). For millennia, both the Jewish Yeshiva and the Hindu Gurukul have fostered ecosystems where spiritual growth is achieved not through passive adherence, but through vigorous, meaningful and respectful debate.

​(3) Geography, Rituals and Civilizational Resilience

​Both Judaism and Hinduism are distinct from proselytizing global faiths and are deeply tied to a specific sacred geography, an intricate code of daily ritual purity, and a profound sense of cosmic order as expressed as Halakha in the Jewish tradition and Dharma in the Hindu worldview. As a culture and religion, they do not attempt to persuade anyone through inducement/entice or coercion to change their religious, social or ideological beliefs. For both of them, the religion is not just a subject of abstract beliefs, but an entire way of living sanctifying ordinary life, regulating everything including dietary laws, life-cycle rituals and communal hygiene. It is the inner strength of their spiritual faith and value system that both civilizations managed to survive centuries of brutal foreign conquests, persecution and massacre, community displacements, and systematic attempts at elimination. Be it a case of dispersal of Jews in the global Diaspora or Hindus facing centuries of subcontinental subjugation, the underlying rhythms of Halakha and Dharma allowed both peoples to survive, preserve their unique ancient roots and value system, and successfully emerge into the modern age as sovereign nation-states.

Existential Threat to India and Israel

India faces a complex, multi-dimensional array of existential threats that directly impinge upon its territorial sovereignty, demographic balance and internal stability. Geopolitically, the country grapples with a permanent “two-front” challenge along its western and north-eastern borders, hemmed in by nuclear-armed adversaries, Pakistan and China, which coordinate among themselves to stress India’s strategic border defenses and internal security. The external friction is exacerbated by the legacy of partition, which fragmented the historical geography of the subcontinent, leaving a persistent vulnerability to a sponsored cross-border terrorism. Internally, too, India confronts an asymmetric warfare designed to trigger divide along religious, ethnic and regional lines. These covert operations include state-sponsored subversion, radicalization networks, conversion and jihad mafia, and illegal migration pipelines that has significantly altered demographics in many sensitive border areas. Managed by hostile intelligence setups and trans-national Islamist groups, and through regular calls of Gazwa-e-Hind these forces seek to weaken India’s social-political and religious tissue, threaten its secular democratic framework, theeby compromising its territorial integrity from within.

​Israel faces a distinct yet parallel existential crisis characterized by acute geographical vulnerability and a relentless struggle for its very survival. Confined to a narrow, high-density strip of small land, the state lacks strategic depths, making it perpetually vulnerable to missile strikes, drone attacks and multi-directional invasions. Its primary existential threat stems from a network of hostile regional actors with their ideological movements, now chiefly spearheaded by Iran and executed via proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. Some of the Islamic states and these proxies explicitly deny the right of a Jewish state to exist. This threat is compound by periodical conventional warfare, state-sponsored missile barrages and non-state guerrilla networks utilizing terror tactics to destabilize daily civil life. Besides, Israel also faces a sophisticated, global soft-war campaign aimed at its diplomatic isolation and economic delegitimization. For Israel, the convergence of ideological hostility, advanced asymmetric weaponry and its tiny geographic footprint means that even a single strategic operational failure could jeopardize the very existence of the nation.

1.  External Threat

Israel’s Multi-Front Threat Matrix: Although with the passage of time, the chances of direct war with the neighbouring Arab states have minimized for Israel but contemporary external threats have evolved into a highly coordinated “ring of fire” mainly orchestrated by Iran, targeting the nation’s vulnerable strategic depth. To the immediate south and north, non-state actors like Hamas and Hezbollah perennially present an open-ended asymmetric conflict, forcing Israel to establish heavily militarized physical buffer zones to protect life and assets of frontier communities. Beyond these proxy groups too, the threat expands to a broader regional escalation with Iran utilizing its proxy networks across Syria, Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen to continue a multi-directional war of attrition. This is further compounded by a deep-rooted geopolitical reality where many regional powers and Palestinian factions entirely reject Israeli statehood, turning what could be standard border disputes into an ongoing struggle against existential erasure. 

India’s Geopolitical Encircling: India faces a multi-theater security challenge characterized by a volatile mixture of nuclear threat and changing regional dynamics along its long land borders. While Pakistan continues to remain a persistent source of state-sponsored proxy warfare and cross-border terrorism, backed by its regular and overt nuclear posturing. To the northeastern front, an aggressive militarily strong and resource-dominant China aggressively challenges disputing the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Over the ears, it has undergone through a rapid military infrastructure build-up and off and on territorial incursions. The geopolitical matrix has grown even more complex to the east after the recent political upheavals in Bangladesh, India confronts in it a more fragile and potentially hostile neighbour, more so with the Chinese hold constantly growing in Bangladesh and Lanka. The recent developments have made 4,096-kilometer shared border more volatile and challenging with issues like illegal migration, border security, and vulnerabilities around the narrow Siliguri Corridor (the “Chicken’s Neck”), serving as acute flashpoints that threaten India’s internal stability and territorial integrity. 

​The Common Denominator of Survival: From the foregoing, it is clear that both Israel and India face the basic threat of structural encirclement by the hostile forces intent on squeezing their sovereign space. Both nations are compelled to secure “active frontiers” rather than peaceful borders, meaning thereby that a one major intelligence or tactical failure or a coordinated multi-front breach could instantly escalate into a threat to the nation’s existence. A possible holocaust could be visualized in two nations with Iran’s radical regime pursuing a nuclear weapons programme with Israel as a potential target and Pakistan so often threatening to use their nuclear weapons against India. In addition, both India and Israel are perennially dealing with the reality of proxy warfare, where powerful adversaries use smaller actors or cross-border instability to drain their economic resources and fracture their internal pluralistic coherence. For both the small Middle Eastern state (Israel) and the sprawling South Asian giant (India), national security cannot merely rely on regional goodwill or international guarantees; instead, their survival depends on constant vigilance, absolute military readiness, and demonstration of uncompromising hard power.

2.  Internal Threat

Demographic Erasures in India: India’s domestic landscape and consequent internal security is heavily impacted by significant regional demographic shifts, particularly along its highly sensitive eastern border corridors and southern states. In states like West Bengal and Assam, decades of unchecked cross-border migration have fundamentally not only altered the local demographic (electoral as well) and cultural landscape but also its impact is visible in many larger northern cities. Many frontier districts in Bengal and Assam have gradually turned into domestic security vulnerabilities where law enforcement frequently clashes with transnational networks. This issue has started bothering even more northward in certain border districts of the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Concurrently, the proliferation of rigid religious movement such as conversion rackets and localized radicalization creates persistent flashpoints, highlighted by the occasional activation of extreme narratives like Ghazwa-e-Hind (the ideological call for the conquest of India) by fundamentalist factions. In states like Kerala, administration and local authorities face the double whammy of monitoring overseas remittance-fueled radicalization besides managing the friction generated by changing community ratios, turning cultural diversity into competitive communal politics.

Non-Jewish Dilemma of Israel’s Democracy: Within its sovereign borders, Israel’s primary internal challenge is the complex integration and rapid growth of its non-Jewish population, primarily Israeli Arabs, who constitute a little over 21% of the total population. Officially, Israel is a democratic country and this fraction of demographic reality poses various challenges; hence remains at the core of a deep ideological debate. Israel has to continuously cop with a continuous dilemma and balancing act between maintaining its basic identity as a Jewish homeland and upholding its democratic commitments to all citizens. Over the years, structural socioeconomic disparities, rapid population growth of non-Jewish population, gaps in civic amenities funding, and their under-representation in national frameworks have created deep alienation within the Arab community. This alienation risks manifesting into severe internal friction and occasional serious internal problems particularly at the times of external war or heightened regional tensions. For a tiny nation like Israel, these factors are additional strain often testing their domestic security apparatus and social cohesion.

​In view of their geographical and demographical complexities and vulnerabilities, the internal security and stability is further compounded posing the following common multilateral and institutional threat in their pluralistic society.A. (a)

​(A) The Fragmented Institutional Will: Both India and Israel face a fragmented political landscape heavily influenced by dynastic, regional and pseudo-secular political entities (more particularly in India) who constantly prefer to prioritize short-term vote-bank consolidation over the long-term the strategic integrity of nation. By catering to rigid, community-specific agendas in their election manifestoes for electoral gains, these factions suo moto create a permissive environment where radical groups and their narratives are endorsed rather than dismantled, diluting the state’s law-enforcement and judicial capabilities. The permanent administrative apparatus frequently finds itself deadlocked and helpless before the political authority, unable to enforce uniform civil policies or execute decisive counter-extremism measures due to the fear of engineered civic turmoil and political backlash. This compromise of institutional will for petty political ambitions leaves critical border zones, central tribal belts, and hyper-sensitive urban pockets vulnerable to asymmetric internal polarization, effectively opening domestic fronts from time to time that drains the state’s focus and resources away from its external adversarial threats.

​(B) Pluralistic Nation-States’ Predicament: The internal problematic issues India and Israel vindicate the systemic vulnerability that open and democratic societies often face when sieged with hostile ideological elements operating within their socio-legal frameworks. Both nations are forced to defend themselves against adversaries who take advantage of standard democratic privileges, such as freedom of speech and expression, judicial reviews and electoral participation to bypass and actively undermine the civilizational character of the state from within. The fundamental challenge for both India and Israel is that their internal demographics are not merely columns in a census, they have a direct bearing on national security, where localized or regional imbalances can instantly compromise critical infrastructure, border stability and political resilience. For both nations, surviving the current onslaughts to see next century will depend not only on procuring advanced weapons systems to secure their external frontiers, but also on their internal political stability and willpower to enforce the rule of law uniformly and maintain the core identity of their respective nations.

3.  Threats from Non-State Actors

Asymmetric Vulnerabilities: As against Israel, India faces a significantly greater risk from “deep state” actors, covert institutional funding, and foreign-backed disruptive activities mainly because the nation’s vast geography and diverse demography rendering a massive landscape for exploitation. Unlike Israel that operates as a highly centralized, surveillance-heavy security state with more or less unified cultural cohesion, India’s sheer size makes airtight monitoring impossible and ideological political dichotomy further complicates it. Subverted global foundations, biased think tanks and foreign intelligence networks exploit India’s internal fault lines by pumping covert resources into environmental protests that stall key developmental infrastructure, conversion mafia, regional separatist movements and localized communal networks…many of them camouflaged as NGOs. The geographic sprawl means a hostile foreign actor can easily fund a destabilization campaign in a remote border district or capitalize on regional tribal and linguistic sensitivities to engineer mass unrest, effectively tying down the Indian state’s resources without ever firing a shot. 

For illustration, to deal with these asymmetric vulnerabilities, the present government has made several apt changes in the regulatory landscape for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society institutions in India. The primary mechanism used by the government was to regulate foreign funding through the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA). Consequently, the Ministry of Home Affairs has cancelled or deemed expired as many as 37,704 registrations over the last decade for the violations such as chronic failure to file annual returns, non-renewal of licenses, and more prominently for activities detrimental to national interest, either engaging in activities harmful to public order or national economic security. Of this the explicit cancellations include 22,498 NGOs on account of misusing foreign funds into unapproved sector or activities, and indulging in activities detrimental to national interest or public order while deemed cancellations of 15,206 numbers most of which either lacked administrative acumen to comply the stricter renewal process in the new regime or voluntarily opted out after their licenses lapsed. Thus currently, about 14,500 organizations hold a valid FCRA license in India, still a considerably large number. 

​Playground for Information Warfare: Once again Israel is largely free from this malaise, but India owing to its demography and consequent massive and hyper-connected population of over 1.4 billion people acts as a double-edged weapon, presenting a soft target for foreign-funded psychological operations and community subversion. The complexities of religious, caste, regional and socio-economic divisions provide endless leverage points for external institutions to weaponize narratives under the guise of “civil rights advocacy” or “academic research”. Several hostile entities utilize sophisticated digital propaganda and legal loopholes in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to inflame internal grievances, turn communities against the state, and engineer targeted campaign against government. While Israel is compact enough to quickly identify and neutralize foreign interference within its small domain and population, India’s decentralized federal structure and complex democratic processes mean that covertly funded subversion can fester inside local socio-political ecosystems long before the central government can even legally or administratively intervene, and ultimately all this leads to weakening the federal structure.

Social Fault Lines

Democratic systems naturally institutionalize a majoritarian competition that pushes parties to cultivate distinct, reliable voter bases to secure power. Consequently, the quest for the state’s evolution toward modern, secular laws, including universal rights, progressive education and secular civic demands implicitly threaten traditionalist populations, fostering an orthodox reactive identity rooted in cultural preservation. Vested political groups and ideological factions actively exploit this widening fault line to their benefit in turning elections as existential, zero-sum cultural battles, thereby transforming social differences into deep divides and animosities with a view to consolidate their own institutional influence, continued funding and political power. Both India and Israel being democracies are not free from this malaise and the position is very briefly summarized here.

(1) The Social Ideological Fractures in India: India has a vast geography and complex demography with inter-playing factors like religion, caste and region. Accordingly, its primary social fault lines are characterized by a dangerous mix of deep-seated identity politics on religion, caste factors, structural regional disparities, and purportedly targeted radicalization across its vast landscape. Therefore, the domestic security architecture is constantly strained essentially by two contrasting phenomena: hyper-localized religious polarization and sub-national linguistic or ethnic friction. In strategic border zones and states like West Bengal, Kerala and parts of the Northeast, the external forces capitalize on porous borders through illegal migration to tilt the local demographic balance, leading to communal ghettos and occasional calls for radical agendas like Ghazwa-e-Hind. Simultaneously, the caste rivalries and socioeconomic alienation in the central tribal belts has continued for long to provide a fertile ground for the Left-Wing Extremism, though committed counter-insurgency operations have controlled it to a large extent now. Cumulatively, all this creates a complex network of domestic vulnerabilities where localized friction can easily be culminated into a wider law-and-order crisis.

(2) The Secular-Orthodox Schism in Israel: Although fast-growing non-Jewish population in this tiny nation is a cause of concern but Israel’s yet another very volatile internal fault line lies within its own Jewish majority community, especially the deepening chasm between the secular/traditional population and the rapidly expanding Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) community. The Haredi community in Israel (often regarded as ultra-Orthodox Judaism), about 13-14% as of now, is more strictly religious traditional sect within contemporary Judaism. They have exceptionally high birth rates, exempted from mandatory military service, segregate themselves from modern secular culture with own independent synagogues, schools and social welfare programmes. With their demographic weight increasing, it is becoming an unsustainable domestic friction because a section of secular society largely finances the state’s high-tech economy and bears the physical burden of front-line military defense, while another growing demographic block possesses significant political leverage but remains largely insulated from these foundational civic duties. Thus, apart from the Arab population, this widening divide within the Jews community is also threatening the long-term economic viability and social cohesion of the nation, as a critical internal vulnerability more burdensome during any national crisis.

​Threat to Democracy by Exploiting Institutions

​The common denominator responsible for internal vulnerabilities of both nations is how their open, democratic institutional frameworks are compromised and/or systematically turned against them by political opportunism and information warfare. In India, a sharply divided political landscape driven by the dynastic and vote-bank-centric parties frequently coddle or overlook radical elements to secure particular minority community blocks, often effectively paralyzing the law enforcement and damaging national security policies. To secure their political objectives, they are not averse to compromise even statutory institutions like the Supreme Court, Election Commission, C&AG, and so on. Similarly, Israel has a highly polarized, multi-party coalition system, wherein even the fringe ideological groups are capable to hold the central government hostage, preventing the long-term and cohesive policy decisions on integration and civil equality. In fact, the ultimate threat for both India and Israel is their internal social fault lines which are no longer just governance issues, rather they have become active asymmetrical fronts often collaborating with external deep states and hostile covert actors utilizing digital propaganda to weaponize internal grievances, aiming to trigger institutional paralysis.

Global Hostility – Lawfare and Narrative Battle

​Israel has at times faced an unprecedented international lawfare onslaught, where global institutions are leveraged to challenge its very right to self-defense and sovereign legitimacy. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on 21 November 2024 following a request made by the ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan for the alleged war crimes during the Gaza war. Such an arbitrary action was possible by systematically reframing conventional counter-terrorism operations in subverted legal terms like genocide, domicide and apartheid. The larger objective of this kind of institutional warfare is apparently designed to isolate Israel diplomatically, provoke international arms embargoes and paralyze its military operations fearing global prosecution, much beyond accountability. This kind of subversion transforms the rule of law into a strategic trap for a tiny nation like Israel, which fights for its physical existence.

​While Israel faces extreme international courtroom battles, India’s threat manifest primarily as a widespread and decentralized narrative war purportedly designed to obstruct its geopolitical rise and puncture its internal stability. Hostile foreign deep states, biased global think-tanks, and well-funded foundational networks continuously target India’s vast democratic pluralism against it. Genuine law-enforcement actions against radicalization, national security measures along sensitive borders, or even fundamental demographic accounting exercises are instantly framed by global media as “authoritarianism” and/or the curtailment of minority rights. The aforesaid dynamics appear to work overtime whenever India takes decisive action to curb undue foreign influence, such as enforcement of FCRA to control covert funding pipelines. This information warfare essentially relies on a permanent stream of high-volume digital propaganda, subverting public opinion to engineer domestic unrest, scare away foreign investment and artificial human-rights interventions. The lawfare and narrative battles against Israel and India more or less have the same objective i.e. the asymmetric delegitimization of an ancient, democratic nation-state.

Media Narrative War

​The so-called left-leaning or liberal international media ecosystem very often covers Israel and India through a shared lens of post-colonial theory, intersectional victimhood and structural bias against civilizational democracies. Within this ideological framework, the state is reflexively labeled the “oppressor,” while the hostile forces or radical groups targeting them are granted the sympathetic mantle of the “subjugated” or “marginalized”, more so if the then government pursues a nationalist approach. Accordingly, instead of evaluating security measures of the state on historical facts, self-defence or international law, they frequently rely and give weightage to linguistic engineering and selective narrative. Even the terrorists (their organizations) are regarded as “militants” or “freedom fighters,” and radicalized hate-spewing community leaders as venerable spiritual teachers/leaders while lawful state operations are often framed as disproportionate aggression or arbitrary excesses. While doing so, the state’s lawful defensive measures are subjected to intense hyper-scrutiny, while the severe external threats, violent public disorder, cross-border infiltrations and radical ideologies are systematically downplayed or even ignored. Both India and Israel have a long history of being so targeted by the left-leaning or liberal West and Arab media, briefly explained here with concrete illustrations.

​(1) Israel: The Al-Ahli Hospital Explosion:

​This fateful event represents a stark example of how the aforesaid media reports things in the context of Israel. the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion in Gaza took place on 17 October 2023 wherein reportedly a deliberate Israeli airstrike destroyed hospital killing over 500 civilians as widely publicized immediately following the blast, by the major left-leaning global networks including West and Arab world echoing the Hamas version. As the media amplified this narrative, it sparked worldwide massive criticism, violent regional protests against Israel and Jews, as also wherever significant Muslim population exists including South Asia (India). However, subsequent independent multi-agency forensic reviews, satellite imagery and intercepted audio communications completely disproved the aforesaid initial reporting. Even the independent findings from the Human Rights Watch, Associated Press and intelligence inputs from the countries like the US, France, Canada suggested that a misfired rocket launched from within Gaza by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) had actually crashed into the hospital’s parking lot and caused the localized explosion, leaving the actual hospital building largely intact. Despite the conclusive evidence, the initial false reporting had not only established a global narrative, but also caused enough harm to Israel’s self-defence cause painted as a perpetrator nation ‘s war crime.

​(2) India: The Pahalgam Terror Attack & Operation Sindoor:

​A parallel inversion of reality check is the coverage of the Pahalgam terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir and subsequent retaliatory response of India against the perpetrator terrorist organizations seated in neighbouring Pakistan. The Pahalgam terror attack occurred on 22 April 2025, executed by The Resistance Front (TRF), a designated terrorist organization working as proxy/offshoot of Pakistan based dreaded terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The terrorists targeted and massacred 26 civilians on religious basis, predominantly Hindu tourists from different parts of country. The leading Western and left-leaning outlets manipulated narrative ran headlines such as “Tourists Gunned Down by Militants in Kashmir,” completely omitting of the word “terrorists or terrorism”. As the coverage went on, the further narratives framed “the brutal massacre of innocent civilians identified on religion” twisted as a predictable “retaliation to Indian policies”, effectively shifting the moral culpability from the Pakistan-backed terrorists to the Indian state. When India launched a counter-terrorism campaign namely “Operation Sindoor” with precision strikes on nine terrorist dens with an aim to neutralize the cross-border terror infrastructure, the distorted reporting actually further intensified.

While independent satellite data and tactical intelligence confirmed that the Indian armed forces had accurately destroyed specific terror assets without hitting any Pakistani civilian or military establishment, the legacy international newsrooms framed the incident as “unwarranted Indian aggression” that “ignited an inferno” escalating conventional war. The author is consciously avoided calling names here but such global broadcasts repeatedly indulged in amplifying unverified, official Pakistani military and political leaders’ claims and denials regarding Indian and own losses respectively while ignoring or underplaying India’s legitimate right to defend its citizens from cross-border violence and verified official claims. This media manipulated smear campaign continued, more particularly in the context of hypothetical losses of four to eight, and grounding of France supplied Indian Rafale fighter aircrafts. The ground reality is that following destruction of terror targets by Indian air strikes, Pakistan resorted to a limited conventional war attacking Indian military and civil establishment through a barrage of missiles and drones, most of which were neutralized by the Indian aerial defence systems, and the retaliatory Indian attack on 11 Pakistani airbases rendered them unfit for use while causing significant damages, forcing Pakistan seeking the US intervention and a ceasefire.  More recently, the Indian Air Force issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a service contract of its current fleet of 36 Rafale fighter jets which itself reveals their true status but the point is “misinformation” and “smear campaigns” have its strategic value and a topical harm is done even if the truth is revealed later on.

​The Common Thread of Narrative Subversion

​When aforesaid cases are analyzed together, they expose a highly consistent template not only of media subversion but also of the states and intelligence agencies deployed against both nations. For instance, in this case even the US President and official spokespersons, while initially condemning terror attack, subsequently maintained fluctuating stance and statements about Indian war against terror, including losses during the conflict. In the context of Israel, the majority of Islamic nations are found biased in ideology and action. In both the Middle Eastern and South Asian theaters, the legacy media groups demonstrate reluctance to acknowledge the sophisticated, disciplined and legally justified defence strategies used by two democratic states against asymmetric warfare. In their rush to validate the propaganda of hostile entities, be it an active terror group in Gaza or state-backed terror outfits and their handlers in Pakistan, the particular dominant section of the international media apparatus operates as an ideological echo chamber. For both India and Israel, the primary challenge of modern age is that their success on the physical battlefield can be instantly undermined by an information ecosystem determined to misinterpret their survival efforts.

​Endnote

​To sum it up, both India and Israel are confronted with complex, multi-tiered security threats. Externally, both face hostile regional enemy states and environment marked by deep-rooted border disputes and state-sponsored proxy networks. Internally, both navigate persistent asymmetric warfare, cross-border terrorism, subversion, and cyber threats aimed at their critical infrastructure. This position is further aggravated in the context of India due to its vast geographical spread and demographic numbers and complexities prone to exploitation by the vested interests. These threat vectors require rapidly adaptable defense mechanisms and high-grade intelligence integration. Driven by these compulsive necessities, two countries’ relationship has evolved from a transactional buyer-seller dynamic into a robust Special Strategic Partnership with time. For India, Israel acts as a battle-tested provider of cutting-edge technology, from air defense to precision optics, surveillance, and missile defense. For Israel, India offers vast market scale, diplomatic ballast, manufacturing capabilities for joint venture and a reliable strategic anchor in Asia. 

​Then both India and Israel have to deal with certain diplomatic balancing acts to stay relevant in global perspective. The former cannot alienate the Arab world owning to its fuel supply dependence as also a large sensitive and volatile minority population at home while the latter tiny nation is traditionally dependent on the US and some European allies for constant strategic defence and diplomatic support. This bilateral synergy operates within delicate geopolitical realities. India practices strategic autonomy through the deepening operational security with Israel while maintaining critical economic, energy, and diaspora linkages with the Gulf & Arab nations. This approach is further supported by initiatives like the I2U2 Group (India, Israel, UAE, US) and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), integrating Israel into regional architecture alongside Arab partners. On its part, Israel relies heavily on Western alliances for strategic defense, has improved relations with many Arab States, and values India as a crucial non-Western partner that respects its sovereignty without imposing conditionalities. 

​Both countries have constantly improved their military capabilities, its strategic depth and superiority over their regional adversaries. In view of their common threat perceptions, both nations need to further deepen their partnership in key strategic areas besides constantly improving economic and person-to-person contacts. Arguably, they are probably already expanding their strategic cooperation yet some of the Key areas where both nations need to align and strengthen their futuristic participation for mutual gains are specifically listed here:

• Two countries need to move past usual off-the-shelf procurement toward true joint R&D and co-production under India’s Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) frameworks.
• Both countries should enhance cooperation on institutionalized intelligence and counter terrorism by establishing dedicated multi-agency operational channels focused specifically on non-state actors, urban anti-terror operations and counter-subversion strategies.
• Two together can work on critical and emerging technologies targeting AI, semiconductor supply chains, quantum computing, autonomous systems and space.
• They should together address cyber defence infrastructure, expanding joint exercises, real-time threat intelligence sharing and defensive software integration to protect their energy grids, financial systems and defense networks from cyber threats.

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