How Gaza war sped up India’s shift towards Israel under Modi

New Delhi, India – The United Kingdom, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Norway had already banned the entry of Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, who had advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the annexation of the occupied West Bank.

But in September 2025, as the European Union was planning bloc-wide sanctions against him and his fellow far-right colleague Itamar Ben-Gvir that it would eventually announce late that month, Smotrich was welcomed with garlands and a multi-city trip to India. In New Delhi, he signed a trade deal; in Mumbai, he visited the stock exchange; and in Gujarat – the home state of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – he travelled to a new investment hub.

As Israel was conducting its genocidal war on Gaza, bombing and killing dozens on the very days he was visiting India, New Delhi was ready to expand business with Israel like never before. For decades, India had been one of the world’s staunchest supporters of Palestine, and Europe one of Israel’s closest backers. India’s position has shifted firmly since 2014, when Modi and his Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party came to power. But analysts say the optics of Smotrich’s visit underlined something even more dramatic: At a time when even Europe, traditionally seen as backing Israel, has veered away from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the genocidal war on Gaza appears to have escalated India’s embrace of Israel.

In February this year, Modi visited Israel as Netanyahu – who faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court over war crimes carried out in Gaza – faced growing isolation in the international arena.

“You are a great friend of Israel. You are more than a friend. You are a brother,” Netanyahu told Modi when both leaders addressed the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem.

How October 7 attack changed tones

Three years of Israeli attacks have killed at least 74,000 Palestinians, including at least 21,000 children. That is about one in every 30 people, or 3 percent of the pre-war population.

Historically, India has argued that diplomacy and dialogue are the way forward to resolve conflicts – whether between Russia and Ukraine, the US and Iran, or Israel and Palestine. New Delhi has maintained that war doesn’t solve anything.

But investigations by Al Jazeera and other reporting have revealed that New Delhi exported weapons to Israel during the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza. Meanwhile, under Modi, India has become Israel’s largest weapons buyer.

Just hours after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, India’s Modi unequivocally condemned the “terrorist attack”, adding that he was “deeply shocked”. When he visited Israel in February this year, Modi referred to the Mumbai attacks in 2008, carried out by Pakistani fighters, which New Delhi has blamed on the Pakistani government. “Like you, we have a consistent and uncompromising policy of zero tolerance for terrorism with no double standards,” Modi said.

Analysts believe that the framing of Israel as a country under attack has helped Modi justify pushing India closer to it. For decades, much of the politics of Modi’s BJP “has hovered around Islamist expansionism or Islamic terrorism”, said Rasheed Kidwai, a political analyst in New Delhi.

“So it helps [in relationship with Israel],” Kidwai said, pointing to the link between Modi’s Israel policy and his domestic politics. “Take this relationship as an extension of the domestic narrative that one sees in India.”

The Indian Hindu right has long supported the ideology of Zionism, analysts note. Modi’s BJP has roots in a philosophy, Hindutva, which ultimately seeks to transform India into a Hindu nation and a natural homeland for Hindus anywhere in the world – similar to Israel’s view of itself as a Jewish homeland.

Since the October 7 attacks on Israel, Kidwai noted, “the anti-Muslim sentiments fill in that block in India.” This feeling is, of course, coupled with “pragmatism in New Delhi because Israel is a potent international player”.

Navdeep Suri, a former Indian diplomat who served as ambassador to Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, told Al Jazeera that people-to-people ties are also a central pillar of the India-Israel relationship, “particularly within a section of Indian society that has strong admiration for the muscular policy that Israel adopts”.

Time and again, there have been calls from within Indian right-wing echelons for Modi to adopt more Israel-like policies, from clampdowns in Indian-administered Kashmir to attacking neighbouring Pakistan.

Suri noted that a shift towards Israel predates the ongoing genocidal war in Gaza. “Under PM Modi, a relationship that was largely covert or under the carpet has become a much more open relationship,” the former Indian diplomat said.

“There has been a recognition in Delhi that Israel has been a very strong defence and intelligence partner,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to another pillar of the bilateral relationship. “There’s a genuine convergence when it comes to the perceptions on security.”

India ‘should take principled positions’

Even several of Israel’s closest European allies have moved from criticism of the genocidal war on Gaza and expansive illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank to concrete measures. At least 11 European countries and Canada have imposed trade measures against products from illegal Israeli settlements. Many have imposed sanctions on settlers and networks accused of conducting pogroms against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, as well as on ministers like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir.

India, for its part, has avoided anything more than homilies and mild opposition to war and West Bank attacks.

Diplomatically, New Delhi still backs a two-state solution and has called for aid access and peace in the region. Suri, the former Indian diplomat who served in the Middle East, said New Delhi “should be able to take more principled positions on these things”.

However, from his experience in office, Suri added, “there is such a close alignment at the political levels between the governments in Israel and India that there is a reluctance [in India] to criticise Israel.

“That reluctance manifests in various aspects,” Suri explained to Al Jazeera. “The refusal to criticise the settlers’ attacks; refusal to criticise the brutal use of force in Gaza; refusal to criticise the attack on Iran and point out violation of international norms.”

Unlike Western countries, India’s current leaders “lack that kind of dynamic thinking and are rather far more dogmatic”, said Kidwai, the political analyst.

India’s shift and Modi’s calculus

Netanyahu’s disruptive and fatal assault on Gaza has drawn ire from even the White House in Washington, where Israel enjoys bipartisan support. United States President Donald Trump has previously threatened to cut off support for Israel’s bombing of Lebanon – even while signing off on huge weapons sales to Israel.

However, nothing has moved Modi’s bonhomie with Israel’s Netanyahu.

In fact, Modi’s February visit on the eve of the joint US-Israel attacks on Iran appeared “as almost a personal favour to Netanyahu by boosting his image as an international statesman just as Israeli election campaigning is getting under way”, Max Rodenbeck, Israel/Palestine programme director at the Washington-based International Crisis Group, had told Al Jazeera.

Such an act would have been unthinkable from an Indian leader in previous decades.

In 1948, India opposed the creation of Israel. A relationship with Israel was once frowned upon in New Delhi – a legacy of India’s anti-colonial past – though the two had clandestine ties since at least the 1970s.

India backed the 1975 United Nations General Assembly resolution calling Zionism a form of racism, was the first non-Arab nation to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organization, and was among the first in the world to recognise Palestinian statehood. It only established diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992, and though governments since then slowly built up relations, Modi, in 2016, was the first Indian PM to visit that country.

The Congress party that’s now in opposition, but ruled India for most of its post-independence period before Modi, also viewed its support for Palestine as helpful with Muslim voters – only Indonesia and Pakistan have more Muslims than India – said Kidwai. Modi’s Hindu-first politics, by contrast, thrives on othering Indian Muslims.

“Modi’s party believes it stands to gain nothing from a pro-Palestine posture,” Kidwai told Al Jazeera. “Instead, Modi has sought to link the attack on Israel with the so-called reign of terror and Islamic extremism and make a case against Muslims – and within those realms lies the justification of everything.”