India urged to cease military ties with Israel amid Gaza genocide

A human rights group has urged India to cease its military ties with Israel amid the occupying regime’s “ongoing genocide” in the Gaza Strip.

In a statement released on Friday, the Human Rights Forum (HRF) lamented India’s deepening economic and military ties with Israel, drawing attention to India’s sexagenarian multi-billionaire Gautam Adani’s recent sale of Hermes-900 killer drones to Israel.

The Indian government should cease all ties with Israel that implicate it in the “ongoing genocide” in Gaza, the group said, referring to a recent report of the sale of more than 20 Hermes-900 medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) UAVs by Adani’s defense company.

“The Human Rights Forum strongly condemns Adani’s recent agreements with Israel that include the sending of advanced drones with the clear potential to be deployed in aid of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” the group said.

A report published on February 12 by The Wire found out that the Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India Ltd, in which the Adani Group has a controlling stake, manufactured and made the delivery of the UAVs to Israel, alleging that it would potentially be used in Gaza.

“Israeli drone and surveillance technology targets populated areas, schools, hospitals, and even individual homes,” the report by HRF alleged.

Located in Hyderabad, the Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India Ltd is a joint venture between Adani Defense and Aerospace and Israel’s Elbit Systems, and is India’s first private UAV manufacturing complex and the only Hermes-900 production facility outside Israel.

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A new report reveals that an Indian conglomerate has exported Hermes drones to Israel, very similar to those extensively used in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which have resulted in the death of over 28,300 people, including at least 12,300 children.

The HRF described the partnership with the Israeli military as “Adani’s greed amidst the genocide in Gaza.”

“While several countries have withdrawn support to Israel in the face of its inhuman carnage of Palestinians, Adani continues to profit from it, lining its pocket with blood money,” the statement read.

Adani also operates the Haifa Port situated in the northern area, which was occupied by Israel after Zionist settlements started pouring in after the British Mandate of Palestine, along with a local company after it completed its purchase last year in January for $1.03 billion.

In December 2023, the Indian government endorsed a plea for a ceasefire, yet declined to support South Africa’s argument at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), saying Israel had been committing genocide.

“Such performative political signaling by India is repulsive,” the statement added.

Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in India in 2014, New Delhi has seen unprecedented record highs in the strengthening of relationships with Israel, while experts have described the relationship between Modi and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu as “deep” and “intimate”.

Modi also shares a close relationship with Adani, which dates back to 2002, when he was Gujarat’s chief minister and Adani was a businessman situated in the state, and their rise has appeared to happen in tandem since.

Adani has long been accused by business analysts of benefiting from his powerful political connections, especially through Modi.

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New Delhi is Israel’s largest defense buyer in the world and has imported military hardware worth $2.9 billion from Israel over the last decade.

“Israel is one of the biggest suppliers of military hardware to India which has borrowed this ‘drone tactic’ from Israel to thwart the recent farmers’ protests,” the statement said.

“We demand that the Indian government cancel, with immediate effect, all such deals with Israel. We are daily witness to the deliberate slaughter of Palestinians, many of them women and children,” it read.

“Shamefully, India has till date not rescinded existing business deals with Israel nor has it outrightly and clearly condemned Israel for its inhumanity against the Palestinians.”

Indian companies are renowned for engaging in the joint production of various Israeli arms in facilities located throughout India, along with others exporting various technologies from the apartheid Israeli regime.

The Indian government has additionally consented to dispatch numerous Indian laborers to Israel to help alleviate a labor shortage the regime has been facing, after it revoked work permits of tens of thousands of Palestinian workers following the October 7 Al-Aqsa Storm operation on Israel.

“We are opposed to India’s fast-tracking of Israeli recruitment of Indian migrant workers to replace outlawed Palestinian labor,” HRF said.

“Apart from being complicit with Israel, this also reneges on its own responsibility to provide safe, secure and decently paid jobs to our own underemployed and unemployed poor,” the statement added.

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Arundhati Roy, an Indian novelist and activist, stated on Thursday that while the US persists in supplying weapons and financial assistance to support Israel’s genocide, India is exporting its abundant surplus of unemployed poor to replace the Palestinian workers who are no longer granted work permits to enter Israel.

“US money and Indian poverty combine to oil Israel’s genocidal war machine. What a terrible, unthinkable, shame,” Roy said at the meeting of Working People Against Apartheid and Genocide in Gaza, at the Press Club in New Delhi, India, on March 7.

Human rights monitors have also observed that the Israeli military genocide in Gaza has been exploited by extremist Hindutva factions in India to fuel an increase in hate speech and crimes targeting Muslims.

According to a study published in February, the India Hate Lab based in Washington DC revealed that one-fifth of hate speech directed at Indian Muslims from October 7 to December 31, 2023, made mention of the conflict in Israel and Palestine.

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