Above photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a helicopter tour of Israel in 2017. Israel Government Press Office.
From Gaza To Kashmir.
India’s May 6 attack on Pakistan shows how the world’s inaction on the Gaza genocide has inspired Narendra Modi to escalate in Kashmir. From New Delhi to Tel Aviv, the ideological affinity between Zionism and Hindutva has never been clearer.
As bombs rain down on Gaza and the world looks away, another settler colonial project is taking notes. From New Delhi to Tel Aviv, the ideological affinity between Israeli Zionism and India’s Hindutva movement has never been more pronounced as India strikes Pakistan.
And with Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza facing little to no meaningful international accountability, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has every reason to believe that he, too, can escalate his ethno-nationalist project with impunity.
When Israel bombs a hospital, the world debates whether Hamas was hiding beneath it. When India bombs a mosque, it shrugs – wasn’t it probably a ‘terror hideout’? The fact that the international community has tolerated Israel dropping US-made bombs on refugee camps has set a chilling precedent for other governments to commit atrocities with the same blank check.
India has been paying attention.
This week, that belief manifested violently. On May 6, India launched missile strikes into Pakistan under the banner of Operation Sindoor, a name that carries deep Hindu cultural connotations. The Indian government claimed these were precision attacks on “terrorist infrastructure”, a response to the April 22 attack in the town of Pahalgam in the Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 Hindu tourists. Yet, no concrete evidence has linked that attack to Pakistan. It hasn’t mattered. The facts don’t need to check out when the purpose is performance, when the goal is to signal dominance.
Nine targets were struck across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. In Bahawalpur, a missile hit a mosque. A child was killed alongside seven others. Thirty-one men and women have been injured so far. Civilians are dead, mourning families are left in ruins, and the Indian government rushed to declare the operation ‘measured’. But we’ve heard that word before. It’s the same sanitized language used every time Israel flattens a school in Rafah or bombs a hospital in Khan Younis. Surgical, precise, justified. The language of colonial warfare, carefully rehearsed.
The solidarity between Zionism and Hindutva is not metaphorical. It is material. India is now one of Israel’s largest arms buyers. Surveillance systems perfected in the West Bank now watch Kashmiri neighborhoods. Israeli drones that terrorize Gaza skies are sold to India to monitor unrest in Muslim majority regions. The exchange isn’t just in weapons, it’s in ideology, strategy, and impunity.
Back in 2019, when Modi revoked Article 370 and stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its limited autonomy, it was an open declaration of settler intent. Tens of thousands of additional troops were deployed. Communication was cut. Journalists were gagged. The region was locked down while India began laying the legal and infrastructural groundwork for demographic change. The model? Israel’s ongoing colonization of the West Bank.
And today, as Gaza is turned into rubble and ash, Kashmir watches. So does the rest of the subcontinent.
Because this isn’t just about Kashmir. It’s about a broader, expanding mandate for Hindu supremacy across India – one that sees Christians, Dalits, Sikhs, and particularly Muslims as obstacles to a pure nationalist identity. And just like Zionism, Hindutva positions itself as ancient, sacred, and fundamentally peaceful, so that any resistance to it can be labelled extremism.
We saw it again this week. The attack in Pahalgam, though tragic, was seized upon instantly as justification for cross-border violence. No thorough investigation. No space for doubt. No accountability for the consequences. This is Modi’s version of the hasbara playbook: flood the media with righteousness, and let the bombs do the rest.
The victims, whether in Gaza, Bahawalpur, or Srinagar, are always cast as threats to the peace being enforced upon them. Their mourning is seen as radical. Their survival, inconvenient. And their death, often deserved.
But it’s not just the governments. It’s the world that enables them.
What has emboldened Netanyahu has also emboldened Modi: the silence of so-called liberal democracies, the performative concern from the UN, and the refusal of the U.S., UK, and Europe to impose sanctions or cut aid. This teaches other authoritarian leaders a lesson: if you’re useful, if you say the right words about terror, you can get away with anything.
Modi is watching Gaza burn. And he’s not just watching: he’s learning, testing, and practising.
Today it was Bahawalpur. Tomorrow it might be Lahore. Or maybe somewhere else entirely. But the message has been sent: the world will not intervene.
So as Palestinians resist a genocidal siege, and Kashmiris struggle under militarized occupation, our solidarity must be sharp, intersectional, and unapologetic. We must name these ideologies for what they are: settler colonialism, fascism, and apartheid. We must stop pretending they are separate fights.
They are not.
They are chapters of the same global story.
And Modi is writing his next one with Israeli ink.