A few days before the US and Israel launched their attack on Iran this February, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi made an official visit to Tel Aviv. The trip ended with their bilateral relations being elevated to a ‘special strategic partnership for peace, innovation and prosperity’. Back in New Delhi, Modi did not condemn the US and Israeli strikes when they began, instead making do with expressions of ‘deep concern’.

He had shown much less restraint in the aftermath of 7 October 2023. Then, Modi was among the first heads of government to condemn Hamas’s attacks, immediately describing them as ‘terrorism’ and demonstrating support for Tel Aviv on several further occasions. These gestures included sending thousands of Indian construction workers to Israel to offset labour shortages caused by the cancellation of Gazans’ work permits on 10 October.

The supremacist world linked to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) soon took up the cause, organising numerous pro-Israel rallies at which crowds chanted ‘Long live India, long live Israel!’ Social media was flooded with messages of support for Israel: a large majority of posts on X with the hashtags #IsraelUnderAttack and #IStandWithIsrael are believed to have come from India.

Although India voted in May 2024 in favour of admitting the state of Palestine to the UN, it has for several years mostly abstained on resolutions critical of Israel. All the above developments illustrate how Modi has methodically pursued a strategic course that is taking his country ever further from its historically pro-Palestinian stance.

India, a former British colony, was one of the first countries to oppose the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which expressed Great Britain’s support for the creation of a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine, then under Ottoman rule. ‘Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French’, wrote Mahatma Gandhi, (…)

Full article: 1 346 words.

(2) Mahatma Gandhi, ‘The Jews in Palestine’, Harijan, New Delhi, 26 November 1938.

(4) This quotation comes from Modi’s speech at the Knesset on 25 February 2026.

(5) Quoted in Azad Essa, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, Pluto Books, London, 2023.

(6) Except when the flag is raised higher than the Indian one.