Kochi: India’s historic association with Israel is paying rich dividends as its ultra modern Heron drones in Eastern Tibet is a tough deterrence against China.
Heron’s reconnaissance sorties provide India valuable intelligence inputs on the security aspects on the borders, media reports said.
The BJP government in 2020 bought 400 million dollar missile loaded Herons to counter powerful drones used by China.
An expert in the field, China had supplied 48 Wing Hoong II drones to Pakistan forcing India to act fast on the procurement orders that had been gathering dust during the Congress-led UPA rule since 2004, reports said.
The Modi government heavily depended on Israel making India a top procurer in 2017.
Despite Israel supporting India in the 1971 war, the Congress governments kept Israel at a safe distance to please the Arabs and others opposing Israel.
Congress’ repulsion to Israel started when Jawaharlal Nehru dumped Albert Einstein’s letter of June 13, 1947 seeking support for its Jewish homeland cause.
Nehru opposed Israel’s UN membership while Mahatma Gandhi was against the Jews occupying Arab land, albeit he was sympathetic towards Israel, reports said.
India disallowed Israel to open an Embassy in New Delhi but allowed it to set up a consulate in Bombay on September 17, 1950. Nehru did not want to antagonize the Arabs who provided jobs to a large number of Indians and met India’s crude oil demands.
It was the Congress government led by P V Narasimha Rao who shocked all by opening an embassy in Tel Aviv in 1992 despite strong protests from leftist parties and others.
Since then there was no looking back. Israeli President Ezer Weizmann became the first Israel president to visit India at the invitation of Vajpayee government in 1997.
Union minister L K Advani made a trip to Israel in 2000. Ariel Sharon was the first premier to visit India during the BJP led NDA rule in 2003. Narendra Modi visited Israel when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2006.
Unable to ignore the importance of tying up with Israel, Union Ministers Sharad Pawar, Kapil Sibal, Kamal Nath, S M Krishna toured Israel during the rule of the Congress led UPA government.
