Omar El Akkad’s words from 2023 ring prescient as countries across the globe move to recognise the genocide of Gazans at the hands of the state of Israel, even if material support to Palestinians remains scarce. Media operations and public deception are abound to create a false impression that these countries oppose genocide and human rights violations. In a stunning contrast, the Indian government does not even aim for plausible deniability in its contribution to the Zionist project’s horrific crimes. India’s diplomatic support to Israeli regime continues, and its material support for human rights violations has in fact increased since 2023.
The bloodstains of India’s complicity in the genocide of Palestinians can never be rubbed away.
A recent report by Amnesty International confirms the terrifying magnitude of India’s complicity in the genocide. The organisation’s analysis of publicly available data finds that Indian companies have supplied hundreds of thousands of parts for military-grade weapons and explosive ordnance to Israel since October 2023. In more than 2,500 shipments since then, parts of pistols, revolvers, missiles, armoured vehicles and artillery rounds flowed from our country to the genocidal regime. These figures are conservative, but beyond doubt prove that Indian companies have supplied arms to the Israeli regime.
One shouldn’t be surprised to know that one of the bigger partnerships in this craven and bloodthirsty trade is a partnership between Elbit Systems, one of the largest Israeli arms suppliers, and Adani Enterprises. Other documentary evidence by the Middle East Eye has already established that AI-enabled technologies like Arbel, described as improving “operator lethality”, was co-produced by the Indian defence sector and is being used against Palestinians.
Under the Genocide Convention, which India has ratified in principle, states have an obligation to prevent genocide. India has failed that by a mile, and has actively contributed to violations of the Genocide Convention and the Geneva Conventions on international humanitarian law. Obligations under these treaties are breached if “support is provided to a Party to a conflict when it is known, or should have been known, that there is a clear risk of the support provided being used to commit or facilitate violations of the Conventions.” The ICJ’s advisory opinion in 2024 had already reiterated that any support to Israel’s occupation is also illegal. In an April interview with Frontline, Francesca Albanese – the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories – also stated that India’s arms dealing with Israel amount to complicity in the crimes under international law.
India is mired in moral and legal crimes, and increasingly stands isolated from the rest of the world.
At the Bogota Summit in July 2025, many countries from the Global South – including Colombia, Cuba, Indonesia, Malaysia, Namibia, Nicaragua, South Africa – had agreed to not just stop shipments of arms, but halt fuel and dual-use transfers and to deny such shipments access to their ports.
Traditionally, the “West” has been the staunchest ally of the United States’ imperialist program. While most governments in the Western world pledged unqualified support to Israel’s mounting military actions in and after October 2023, even their consciences have awoken in the last year. The socialist-led Spanish government announced a total arms embargo against the genocidal state of Israel in September 2025, while others like Belgium, Italy, Slovenia and the United Kingdom have partly curtailed arms supply to the regime.
Perhaps the most shameful juxtaposition is not with other countries, but with India itself.
In the years of the Non-Aligned Movement, a steadfast principle of Indian foreign policy was the support of sovereignty of the Third World, and a vocal opposition to military adventurism by colonial powers. India was also the first country to place a trade embargo against apartheid South Africa. When apartheid was dismantled, India could proudly proclaim its contributions to the just cause.
The India of 2026 stands out in sharp relief: a republic revelling in an abyss of moral depravity that was unimaginable thirty years ago.
The increased extent of India’s partnership with Israel is somewhat explained by the ideological affinity between Zionism and Hindutva. As Azad Essa describes in Hostile Homelands, both always shared the dream of an ethnic nationalism underpinned by a reflexive hatred of Muslims. With the Bharatiya Janata Party’s tenures in Parliament and government, India has now had a steady history of material support for Israel, and vice versa. Hindu nationalism has aped the Zionist blueprint in multiple ways, and India and Israel have become enthusiastic collaborators in repression. Indian arms kill people in Palestine. Israeli technology – marketed for the purpose of crowd management, surveillance and counter-insurgency – is deployed here against the voices of democratic dissent. Both states shield each other diplomatically at the international level.
While the crude Islamophobia of the Hindu right-wing is easier to identify as a contributing cause of this partnership, Indian foreign policy is perhaps afflicted by a deeper malaise: foreign policy “realism” that started taking shape as India turned towards economic “liberalisation” in the 1990s. This amoral approach towards international relations "is not held back because of ideological reservations” (in the words of the Ministry of External Affairs), and abandons international solidarity at the altar of purported “complete self-interest.”
If we want any of India’s progressive legacy on the international stage to survive, we have to muster up a tiny portion of the courage that Palestinians show every single day. We must consistently demand a complete trade embargo with the Zionist settler-colonial project and make material strides towards the end of the Israeli regime’s apartheid and occupation.
