"As the West recoils from the horrors Hamas has inflicted on Israel, India's left-of-center opposition Congress Party offers a valuable lesson in how not to respond to Islamist terrorism. The party's de facto leader, Rahul Gandhi, apparently hopes to win Muslim votes by ignoring Hamas atrocities, but this transparent identity politics will likely backfire by alienating moderates who expect their government to take terrorism seriously. For the West, where public discourse has grown more tolerant of reflexive Israel-bashing over the past two decades, it's a cautionary tale.
On Saturday, as news of the attacks became known, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party took to Twitter with an unambiguous response: "Deeply shocked by the news of terrorist attacks in Israel. Our thoughts and prayers are with the innocent victims and their families. We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour."
In contrast, it took Congress more than 24 hours to respond to the crisis. Jairam Ramesh, a member of Parliament in charge of party communications, tweeted that Congress "condemns the brutal attacks on the people of Israel," and that it had "always believed that the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for a life of self-respect, equality and dignity must be fulfilled only through a process of dialogue and negotiations while ensuring the legitimate national security interests of the Israeli people."
A day later, the party appeared to backtrack. A statement from Congress Monday didn't mention Israel at all. Instead, the party reiterated "its long-standing support for the rights of the Palestinian people to land, self-government and to live with dignity and respect." As of Wednesday morning, Mr. Gandhi hadn't said a word about the conflict.
Chalk up some of Congress's equivocating to its stubborn tendency to view Israel through a postcolonial ideological prism in which Palestinians are always the oppressed indigenous people and Israelis forever settler colonists.
This dogmatic position dates back to Mr. Gandhi's ancestors -- great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv Gandhi -- who between them ruled India for almost four decades after independence in 1947. India established full diplomatic relations with Israel only in 1992, during an interregnum when the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty had lost control of Congress.
An anachronistic postcolonial prism ignores one of the most significant political developments of the past 50 years: the rise of Islamism, a totalitarian ideology based on Shariah. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's most influential Islamist group. But in its worldview and its actions Hamas most closely resembles another bloodthirsty Islamist militia -- Islamic State. Fashionable leftist activists may not get this, but ordinary people can see it plainly in the images of casually machine-gunned civilians and captured Israeli women paraded like chattel in the streets of Gaza.
Mr. Gandhi may also think that giving Hamas's atrocities a pass could help Congress in next year's national elections. Indian Muslims constitute roughly 14% of the country's population. Without their support, Congress can't dislodge Mr. Modi's BJP, which has held power since 2014. Mr. Gandhi himself represents a parliamentary constituency in the southern state of Kerala with a large Muslim population.
But even viewed in crude electoral terms, Congress's response was self-defeating. Most Indians have no sympathy for Islamic terrorism, which has claimed thousands of lives in India over the past three decades. The Hamas operation was also eerily similar to the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which remain fresh in Indian minds. In both cases, terrorists used a neighboring land to launch a surprise assault on civilians going about their daily lives. In both cases, the dead and wounded included people of many nationalities. In both, the terrorists caught security forces by surprise, and the carnage played out on television screens over days.
Nor will Congress's stance help Indian Muslims. After leading his party to two consecutive drubbings in national elections, Mr. Gandhi is trying to reinvent himself as a mass politician who seeks to open "a shop of love," in contrast to the BJP's sometimes hateful rhetoric toward Indian Muslims and Christians. Pandering to violent extremists undercuts Mr. Gandhi's otherwise laudable defense of religious minorities and insults moderate Indian Muslims who have no sympathy for Hamas or other Islamists.
The West should take heed, too. Since 9/11, Western governments have successfully limited mass-casualty terrorist attacks, but apologists for Islamism have developed an expanding presence in Western legislatures, universities, media and city streets. Twenty years ago, it would have been hard to imagine a crowd outside the Sydney Opera House chanting "gas the Jews" or more than 30 Harvard student groups holding Israel "entirely responsible" for Hamas atrocities. Nowadays, Western voters regularly elect Israel-baiting politicians like Britain's Jeremy Corbyn or America's Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
The Congress Party's weakness offers a simple lesson: The fight for liberal democracy can't be led effectively by those who lack a moral compass." [1]
1. East Is East: India's Left Equivocates About Hamas's Atrocities. Dhume, Sadanand. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 12 Oct 2023: A.17.
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