The Ebullient ‘Benjaminarendra’ Spirit Reverberates Throughout the Holy Land!

On 15th February, 2026, the redoubtable Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, whilst addressing the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations in Jerusalem, prophetically announced, “Parliament address on the anvil. Who’s coming here next week? Narendra Modi.” And at exactly 10.48 am on 25th February, 2026, our Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi enthusiastically tweeted, “I will be undertaking a State Visit to Israel today and tomorrow.

Our nations share a robust and multifaceted Strategic Partnership. Ties have significantly strengthened in the last few years. I will be holding talks with PM Netanyahu, in which we will discuss ways to strengthen cooperation across diverse fields. I will also meet President Isaac Herzog, President of Israel. This evening, I will be addressing the Israeli Parliament, Knesset. This is a tribute to the strong parliamentary and democratic ties that connect us.

I will also interact with the Indian diaspora, who have made a big contribution in strengthening the India-Israel friendship.” Modi has since landed in the holy city of Jerusalem, the capital of Israel (described in ancient Egyptian execration texts as “Rusalimum”  and famous the world over as the “City of David”!), and the ebullient “Benjaminarendra” spirit reverberates throughout the Holy Land! The genesis of India’s relationship with Israel took place when India formally recognised Israel on 17th September,1950.

Soon thereafter, an immigration office was established in Bombay by the Jewish Agency. This was later converted into a Trade Office in 1953 and thereafter into a Consulate. At the peak of the 1962 India-China war, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion expressed Israel’s “fullest sympathy and understanding”, and supplied weapons to the Indian forces aboard Israeli ships proudly flying the Israeli flag. And Prime Minister Golda Meir, in an unprecedented gesture, diverted arms meant for Iran to India during the 1971 Indo-Pak war.

Reverting to the 1971 war, my very dear friend General Jack Farj Rafael Jacob, the first Jewish General in the Indian army, who is hailed as the “Lion of Juda” in Israel, captured Dhaka after a decisive battle and took 93,000 Pakistani prisoners! Prime Minister Pamulaparti Venkata  Narasimha Rao (whom I affectionately called “Uncle PV”), the  grand architect of our globalised, liberalised economy, established formal Indo-Israeli diplomatic relations on 28th January,1992.

I was a part of Uncle PV’s innermost circle and had striven tirelessly with General Jacob behind the scenes in  making that happen. Since the upgradation of Indo-Israeli relations in 1992, defence and agriculture emerged as the main pillars of our bilateral ties. In recent years, the ties have expanded to areas such as Science and Technology, education and homeland security. Israeli exports to India reached a staggering figure of US$116 million in November, 2025. Israel remains one of India's top three defence suppliers, consistently ranking as the second-largest alongside Russia and France, with annual arms deals reaching approximately US$ 8.6 billion as of February, 2026.

There has been a transformational shift in Indo-Israeli relations under the inspiring stewardship of Modi. The Israeli President Reuven Rivlin visited India for a week-long state visit in November, 2016. And Modi’s Israel visit in July 2017 represented a momentous milestone in Indo-Israeli relations. It was the maiden visit of an Indian Prime Minister to the Holy Land! In January, 2018, Netanyahu visited India to commemorate 25 years of Indo-Israeli relations.

On 7th October, 2023, after Hamas terrorists stealthily waged the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust along Israel’s southern fence with Gaza — slaughtering babies, raping women, burning whole families alive and taking hundreds of innocent civilians hostage and snuffing out the lives of 1,159 innocents, Modi tweeted, “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”.

On 24th April, 2025, Netanyahu called Modi to offer his condolences on the spine chilling 22nd April, 2025 Pahalgam terror attack. On 9th October, 2025, Modi called Netanyahu to congratulate him on the progress made under the monumental American President Donald John Trump’s Gaza peace plan. My association with the Israeli Embassy in Delhi goes back to the heady days of Uncle PV when Ephraim Dowek was the first Israeli envoy to India with whom, I distinctly remember, Uncle PV used to converse fluently in chaste Arabic.

I have had the rare privilege of working closely with Israel’s distinguished former Ambassadors Mark Sofer, Daniel Carmon and Naor Gilon in diverse areas ranging from business and international politics to music and law. The present Israeli Ambassador to India Reuven Azar is a very dear friend and we have a very special relationship! I have actively interacted with a number of important Israeli companies, including the Marathon group headed by my venerable friend Hezi Bezalel.

One of Israel’s top actresses Efrat Oppenheimer, who was also the celebrated Brand Ambassador of the prodigious Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd (IAI), is an old friend. Significantly, I have had the unique privilege of meeting Israel’s honorific former President Shimon Peres on his last and final visit to India in the context of “creating a second green revolution in India”.  

India is the only country in the world where Jews have never been persecuted and the first Jews came to India long before the birth of Jesus Christ. During the Second World War, over a thousand Jewish orphan children from Poland were given refuge by the giant hearted Maharaja of Nawanagar, Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja, who set up a “peaceful haven” for Polish children at Balachadi, a village in Jamnagar in the State of Gujarat. I am a close friend of the Jewish community and have a very close association with Rabbi David Shlomo Rosen (an Englishman who is the Special Advisor to the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi, the former President of the American Jewish Committee and Rabbi of Ireland) and the Elijah Foundation and it’s founder Alon Goshen-Gottstein (a home grown Israeli), based out of Jerusalem. I am very close to the Jewish community in India and the Rabbi of Delhi  Ezekiel Isaac Malekar and the former President of the Mumbai Synagogue Ralphy Jirad are very special friends.

Very often on Fridays,I am invited by the Rabbi of Delhi to read excerpts from the Torah at the Judah Hyam Synagogue in Delhi. The city of my birth Kolkata has some of the most beautiful synagogues in the world, including the iconic Beth-El and Magen David Synagogues whose architectural splendour is breathtaking. More than a century ago, the pews of Kolkata's majestic synagogues were filled with members of a thriving Indian Jewish community.

Significantly, the first Jew to migrate to Kolkata was a Syrian jewel trader named Shalom Cohen way back in 1798. Today, the congregants are missing  and only two dozen Jews reside in Kolkata, according to an article published in the New York Times. And even that number is fast dwindling!  In this connection, I venture to mention proudly that General Jacob was my closest Jewish friend from Kolkata. In Israel, there is a special room dedicated to him in the iconic Latrun Museum (Yad Lashir).

His mother’s wedding dress is housed in one of the museums in Tel Aviv. She was a Cohen!  And the most distinguished Kolkata Barrister Elias Meyer (who was a member of the Bar Library Club of which I am also an active member!) was a dear friend of my guru and senior Asoke Kumar Sen, who was the undisputed leader of the Indian Bar for over 60 years. I have Jewish friends all over the world and many of them are important Rabbis like my most reverend friend Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp, the Rabbi of the Reform Jewish Community of The Hague and the Rabbi of the Union of Dutch Reform Jewish Communities, who has been active in a wide variety of progressive, humanitarian and interfaith organisations like the Anne Frank Foundation, the World Economic Forum, the World Council of Religious Leaders, the Earth Charter and the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders. 

And here I am irresistibly drawn to the timeless words of Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill  “Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.” In conclusion, I am highly emboldened to turn to the fitting and effusive tribute paid by Netanyahu to Modi on 15th January, 2018, “You are a revolutionary leader in the best sense of the word ‘revolution’. You are revolutionising India. You are catapulting this magnificent state into the future and you have revolutionized the relationship between Israel and India… Indians and Israelis know too well the pain of terrorist attacks. We remember the horrific savagery in Mumbai. We grit our teeth, we fight back, we never give in.”

The author is an internationally reputed senior lawyer practising in the Supreme Court of India and various High Courts and Tribunals in India