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The largest national organization representing farmers in India announced that it has joined the BDS movement.

 Earlier this month, the largest national organization representing farmers and agricultural workers in India, All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), has announced that it has joined the BDS movement. AIKS is is spread across 21 states in India and is over 16 million members strong.

 AIKS has resolved to:
- Endorse the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law, in order to stand for the rights of the Palestinian people and to resist the corporate takeover of Indian agriculture sector by Israeli companies.
- Denounce and document any cases of Israeli corporate takeover in the Indian agro-sector.
- Raise awareness among Indian farmers to prevent Israel and its corporations from reaping profits in India that finance military occupation and apartheid in Palestine.

 Apoorva, the South Asia Coordinator with the Palestinian BDS National Committee said:
Indian solidarity with the Palestinian people is not new, it has a long history. We are very glad to see this solidarity re-emerge with All India Kisan Sabha’s (AIKS) declaration of support for the BDS movement and the Palestinian people.

Grassroots movements in India, Palestine and beyond are working to defeat the violent wave of right-wing politics plaguing our world today. By joining the BDS movement, AIKS is saying no to the hateful politics of Prime Minister Modi, Netanyahu and Trump, and joining us to build a more free, just and equal world.

All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) was formed in 1936, before India's independence from British colonialism. It played a critical role in mobilizing farmers and agricultural workers to end British imperialism.

 More recently, AIKS has actively resisted the corporate takeover of Indian agriculture and thetwo decades of neoliberal policies which have led to massive indebtedness and farmer suicides.

BDS- 23 October 2017

The 22nd Congress of the CPI(M) condemns Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian territories, its use of sniper squads to shoot peaceful protesters at the Gaza border, and attempts to change the demography of Jerusalem.

During the series of 45-day protests, which will culminate in the Nakba day on May 15, the Palestinians in Gaza, who are under a brutal siege, decided to peacefully protest at the border. Israel deployed sniper squads that fired live ammunition, killing dozens of Palestinians, and injuring more than 2,000. In spite of these brutal measures, the protests at the Gaza borders continue, a testimony to the bravery of the Palestinian people and the justness of their cause.

With the support of the US, Israel is also illegally changing the demography of the West Bank. They are attaching 19 illegal Israeli Settlements in the West Bank to East Jerusalem to make it into a  predominately Jewish city. This will also cut West Bank in half, making any future Palestinian state on West Bank unviable. This is what the Trump administration is helping the Israeli regime to do – deny East Jerusalem to Palestinians, and reduce Palestinian territories into unviable, small cantons without any connectivity with each other or the outside world. In essence, they want to create a number of Gazas that will be open-air prisons for the Palestinian population.

The US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s territory, and its decision to its embassy there, has effectively killed whatever illusions that may have still existed about the “peace process” between Palestinians and the Israeli state brokered by the US.

The failure of the peace process has led to the Palestinian people appealing to the global community to support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The BDS movement is now emerging as a major threat to the legitimacy of the Zionist state, and is seen by Israel as its major global opponent.

The Indian people have always supported the Palestinian cause and opposed the illegal occupation of Palestine. India was among the first non-Arab nations to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in 1974, and was the first non-Arab country to recognize Palestine as an independent state in 1988. India has always opposed the continued illegal occupation of West Bank and Gaza.

While this remains the official position of the Government of India, successive NDA and UPA Governments have built close security and military ties with Israel. The Indian arms purchase from Israel is estimated to be more than 1 billion US dollars a year. India is now the largest buyer of arms from Israel, and buys more than even the Israeli armed forces. Under the Modi regime, and given the ideological affinity between the ideologies of contemporary Zionism and Hindutva, the relations between Israel and the Indian government have grown even closer. Indian forces are now participating with Israeli Special Forces to simulate cross border raids, learning “surveillance” and “crowd control” techniques from Israeli security forces. Israeli equipment and software is deeply embedded in India’s intelligence and surveillance apparatus, providing Israel instruments to subvert India’s internal and external policies.

All this makes India complicit in Israel’s occupation of Palestine, in contradiction to its avowed policy of support to the Palestinian cause. It also damages India’s relations with other countries in the region.

The 22nd  Congress demands the following:
- End the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine and all other occupied territories
- Lift the inhuman siege of Gaza immediately
- Ensure the Right of Return for all Palestinians
- Dismantle all illegal settlements on the West Bank.
- Release all Palestinian political prisoners
- Israel must stop its brutal denial of basic democratic rights to its Arab population.

The 22nd Congress calls upon the Indian Government to return to a position of genuine support to the Palestinian cause, and break its military and security ties with Israel. The 22nd Congress calls for building a strong anti-imperialist movement in support of the Palestinian people and in support of the global BDS campaign.

Communist Party Of India - 22 April 2018

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) welcomes the cancellation of a $500 million missile deal between India and Israel as a “major blow” to Israel’s military industry.

November 21, 2017 — Yesterday, media reported that the Indian Ministry of Defense has scrapped the $500M deal with Israeli arms manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems for its missile systems. Years in the making, the deal had been celebrated in international media and was finalized after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Israel in July. In August, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and its Indian partner Kalyani Strategic Systems opened a facility in Hyderabad to manufacture the missile systems.

The deal was cancelled after India’s state-run Defense Research Development Organisation asserted that India should not import this Israeli technology.

Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Palestinian Stop the Wall Campaign and BNC secretariat member said:
India’s decision to scrap this massive arms deal with Israel is a huge blow to the Israeli weapons industry. This $500 million deal would have fueled Israel’s military industry, which is deeply implicated in war crimes against the Palestinian people.
It is also a major setback for Israel’s propaganda hubris that its technology is indispensable for India’s development and modernization. As many Indians are recognizing, Israel is marketing military and agricultural technologies in India and trying to cement Indian dependence on Israel.
Israel seeks a flow of Indian cash for it’s own profit and to help finance its criminal wars and apartheid regime.

India is by far the globe’s biggest importer of Israeli weapons, and Israel is enjoying almost unparalleled influence in the Indian military system. Israel is equipping the Indian army with Israeli guns, the Indian airforce and navy with Israeli airplanes and missiles, and is also providing communication systems and technology in all levels of the Indian military.   

Over the last two decades, Indo-Israeli military relations have continuously increased despite various corruption scandals and technical failures.

Similar patterns have started to surface in other sectors as well. India’s 16 million-strong farmer’s union AIKS has endorsed the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) “in order to stand for the rights of the Palestinian people and to resist the corporate takeover of Indian agriculture sector by Israeli companies.”

Members of Telengana’s state assembly last week denounced state-sponsored trips of Indian farmers to Israel as “a wastage of money.”

Omar Barghouti, co-founder of  the BNC said:
We hope this is the beginning of the end of Indian complicity in Israel’s egregious violation of international law and Palestinian human rights. As Palestinians we ask the Indian people to maintain their proud legacy of commitment to independence,  to growing local knowledge and to respecting other people’s struggles for freedom from colonialism and apartheid.
Israel’s regime of oppression can never be a model for the great Indian nation that once led the non-aligned movement and upheld the right of all nations to self determination. Israel exports to India what it knows best — technology that represses, militarizes and dispossesses people of their land and water rights. India is better off without that.

Last week it was announced that Indian Oil and Natural Gas Corporations are bidding for drilling rights in gas fields claimed by Israel, despite the many controversies linkedto territorial disputes in such fields.  In August, India’s Adventz group signed aMemorandum of Understanding to develop Israel’s Jerusalem Light Rail, which serves Israel’s settlements built illegally in and around occupied East Jerusalem.

Omar Barghouti said:
As large multinationals—like Veolia, Orange and G4S— are abandoning their illegal projects in Israel due to effective BDS pressure, Israel has started dragging India into deals fraught with legal and political risks. Indian companies would be well advised to avoid getting sucked into Israel’s human rights violations as more and more international corporations refuse to get involved in such complicity. It is unethical and bad for business in the longer term.

BDS - 21 November 2017

Four million-strong Indian student federation joins the BDS movement & pledges to boycott HP. 

June 12, 2018 — Hewlett Packard (HP) faces over $120 million in potential losses since India’s largest student federation passed a resolution to support the BDS movement and to boycott Hewlett Packard (HP) companies over their well-documented complicity in Israel’s grave violations of Palestinian human rights.

(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel with the inauguration on Thursday of an Air India route between New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

Activists inside India called Israel's Bollywood event in Mumbai a form of 'cultural propaganda'.

Pro-Palestine activists in India have accused Israel of exploiting Bollywood in a bid to improve its global image after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a "selfie" on stage with legendary movie star Amitabh Bachchan while visiting Mumbai.

Activists made the claims after the Israeli government staged an outreach event titled "Shalom Bollywood" on Thursday in a bid to entice Indian directors and producers to film their movies in Israel. 

Senior figures from India's film industry, including Bachchan and his daughter in law, Aishwarya Rai, attended the event. 

Protests took place outside the event hosted in Mumbai, the home of India's cinema industry. 

Apoorva Gautam, who heads the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Campaign in South Asia, said that Israel's appeal to Bollywood was reflective of a broader "ideological shift" in the country since the election of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. 

"These initiatives are ultimately part of a wider move by the Israelis to improve its image globally, as it continues to perpetrate war crimes against the Palestinians," Gautam told Middle East Eye.

"The Israelis' attention has now shifted to Bollywood, as the BDS movement gains traction in America and Europe.

"For many years Hollywood was used to depict Israel as being a free country that was democratic. But now more and more actors and industry leaders are coming out against Israel and subverting this perception.

"This is ultimately another form of cultural propaganda that must be condemned and stopped from taking place."

India's film industry is the largest in the world and worth billions of dollars.

Israel has run similar film collaborations with other countries in a bid to improve its global image including an initiative with Chinese cinema after its tourist industry suffered following its assault on Gaza. 

The event was part of a six-day state visit by Netanyahu to India, which saw him visiting several cities across the country and meeting with Modi. 

Bachchan claims to have no political affiliation but has been the face of several Indian government campaigns.

Plans to make Bachchan the brand ambassador for "Incredible India", a global marketing campaign run by the Indian government to attract tourists to the country, were delayed after his name appeared in the Panama papers.

Imtiaz Ali, another notable Bollywood figure, was also pictured with Netanyahu on Thursday. He recently visited Israel as part of a Bollywood delegation funded by Israel's ministry of culture and tourism.

A number of Israeli government departments and the Prime Minister's Office, part-funded Drive, a spin on Fast and Furious, and set to be the first Hindi film set in Israel. 

Two major pro-Palestine protests also took place on Monday in New Delhi to oppose Netanyahu's visit to India. The protests were organised and led by a coalition of Indian civil society organisations, including several student groups and trade unions.

Netanyahu is the second Israeli Prime Minister to visit India. His trip comes after Modi was the first Indian leader to visit Israel in 2017.

Middle East Eye- 19/01/2018

Update: 
- Israel's Charm Offensive Has Won Over Bollywood (21/12/2018).
Artists across the world are taking a stand against Israeli oppression. But Bollywood, distant and disconnected from global cultural conversations, is fashioning a new relationship with Israel.

As Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian teenage girl enduring unjust detention in an Israeli prison, begins trial today, major organizations from the Indian women’s movement, representing over 10 million Indian women, demand her release alongside all Palestinian child prisoners. These organizations have also heeded the Palestinian call to endorse the BDS movement as the most effective form of solidarity with Ahed and other child prisoners.

42 civil society organizations from 6 countries in Asia (Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, India & Pakistan) call on the United Nations to publish its database of companies operating in illegal Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land.

We, the undersigned organizations from the Asian region, call on UN Secretary General António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Al Hussein, and member States of the UN to ensure the publication and annual update of the database established under UN Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution 31/36.

Palestinian students & faculty thank students in India for brave stand for Palestinian rights that ultimately won concessions from their university, including no future Israeli gov events. “Your support strengthens our determination.”

PACBI

30 December 2019