Indian Muslim Leaders Urge Govt To Scale Down Ties With Israel

New Delhi, Jan 18, IRNA – Leaders of Indian Muslim organizations Tuesday urged the government to scale down ties with Israel. Expressing resentment on the expansion of ties with Israel they said in one voice: “We, leaders of Indian Muslim organizations representing the large Indian Muslim community, are deeply pained and alarmed at the steadily growing Indo-Israeli relations. The latest episode comes in the shape of the visit of the External Affairs Minister (EAM), S M Krishna to Israel during which he has talked of cooperation against “international terrorism”, raising Indo-Israeli trade to $ 15 billion from the current $ 5 billion, allowing Israel to open a consulate in Bangalore, signing Extradition Treaty and announcing that soon a Free Trade Agreement too will be signed between the two countries. Reports say that a number of other Indian union ministers are in the wings to visit Israel. They noted that while our EAM seeks Israel’s cooperation to fight terrorism, Israel has become the biggest symbol of terrorism in the world. They have continuously executed countless terrorist operations in all parts of the world including killing Iranian, Iraqi and Egyptian scientists. Israel has been responsible for large-scale massacres in Sabra, Shatila, Jenin, Gaza, and many places of occupied Palestine. “We find it difficult to understand how India can ask Israel to cooperate in security while Israel is the fountainhead of terrorism in the Middle East? It is the Zionists who introduced terrorism to the Middle East with acts like blowing up Jerusalem’s King David Hotel which housed the British Government in Palestine (1946), murdering the British minister Lord Moyne in Cairo (1944) and the UN mediator Count Bernadotte in Jerusalem in 1948, or attacking American diplomatic offices in Egypt in 1954 with a view to blame the Egyptians for the same. Today it is the cause of terrorism by occupying Palestinian lands and homes, turning the Palestinians into a nation of refugees and continuously nibbling away even at the small chunks left of Palestine and building illegal settlements there while treating its Palestinian residents as caged animals and keeping the other part (Gaza Strip) under a most cruel siege since June 2007,” they said in a press statement, mailed to IRNA. The statement further said: “Today, Israel is the only illegitimate nuclear power in the Middle East which stockpiles close to a thousand nuclear warheads and continuously refuses to sign NPT. This very entity had earlier destroyed the nuclear facilities of Iraq and Syria and now nags the western countries to destroy for it the Iranian nuclear facilities and military power despite the fact that Iran has signed NPT, allows IAEA inspection of its nuclear facilities and reiterates officially that it will not build a nuclear device. Objecting over the use of Mahatma Gandhi’s name, who was the preacher of Non-Violence, they said: “Israel is even using Mahatma Gandhi’s name to hoodwink us while the fact is that the proposed memorial will be built on occupied and stolen land. This can never be a move to honour a great personality which was totally opposed to the idea of a Jewish homeland on Arab soil. The leaders strongly objected also to the current overtures of the government and say categorically that close ties with Israel are not in India’s best interests. “Our security and vital secrets will not be safe if Israel becomes privy of same. We must shun racist Israel as we did oppose Apartheid South Africa. Israel is the only country in the world which has flouted hundreds of UN resolutions and yet talks of peace,” they added. Leaders urged the government to stop lip service to Palestine and revert to age-old policy of supporting the just Palestinian cause which was so dear to the pioneers of our freedom struggle. The statement jointly signed by Maulana Sayyad Jalaluddin Umari, Ameer-e-Jamaat (President), Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, President, All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat, Maulana Abdul Hameed Nomani, Secretary, Jamiat Ulema-e Hind, Maulana Asghar Ali Imam Mehdi, General Secretary, Jamiat Ahl-e Hadees and Mujtaba Farooq, President, Welfare Party of India./end