India and Israel name AI weapon after town built on Palestine village ethnically cleansed in 1949

India hosts country's flagship arms expo in city named after Gandhi.

Hello all,

Earlier this week, thousands of delegates assembled in Gandhinagar, a city in Gujarat, for the country’s flagship defence expo.

According to Defexpo, around 1,2 million people were expected to visit the expo between October 18-22.

Several products were on show at the expo including India's first AI based firing system 'ARBEL’ produced by Indian company Adani Defence and Aerospace and Israel Weapon Industries (IWI).

ARBEL is said to be a “weapon-embedded Intelligent Fire Control System (IFCS) based on motion sensors.”

ARBEL appears to be named after a town in Israel built on the Palestinian village Hittin which was ethnically cleansed in 1949.

Hittin also has special significance for Arabs and the larger Muslim world, for being the area in which several prominent figures in the early Islamic period were born or buried. Hittin is also known for being the site of the famous battle of Hittin (1187), in which Salah aI-Din al-Ayyubi (Saladin) defeated the Crusaders.

In other words, as Israeli forces continued their devastating assault on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (killing at least six Palestinians since Tuesday) the two companies were not merely showcasing a new weapon, they were selling a philosophy.

That all of this happened in a city in India named after Gandhi (praised the world over for his principles of non-violence) makes it all the more stunning.

In other developments, Israeli arms manufacturer, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) announced last week that it had opened a new subsidiary in New Delhi called Aerospace Services India (ASI).

According to press reports, ASI will establish “state of the art facilities to provide product life cycle support services for the air-defense systems in India.”

Israel Aerospace Industries @ILAerospaceIAI

1st announcement from #DEFEXPO2022: IAI opens a new subsidiary located in New Delhi India, Aerospace Services India (ASI). IAI’s investment in ASI is a strong demonstration of IAI's support for the Indian government’s 'Atmanirbhar Bharat'- MAKE IN INDIA vision. 🇮🇳🤝🇮🇱

ASI will provide “advanced and timely support” to Indian Air Force, Navy and Army, the reports said.

“Aerospace Services India is leveraging top technology, innovation, and talent to deliver customer satisfaction so that they can focus on their mission. IAI has a well-established operation in India, working with various partners and customers in the Indian market. Through the years, IAI has pursued a flexible and adaptive business policy to comply and respond to PM Modi’s ‘Self-Reliance’ vision,” Boaz Levy, IAI’s President and CEO, said.

Naturally, IAI’s investment in India has also been framed as the Israeli company’s commitment to India's Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) in “developing and supporting advanced systems for the Indian armed forces.”

In another deal arranged over the past week or so, Indian company Garuda Aerospace reportedly signed an agreement with Israel’s Elbit Systems to produce Skylark 3 drones for land mapping and other services.

“We have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Elbit Systems to initially develop two Skylark 3 drones to be deployed of large-scale surveying and mapping of villages under the Indian Government’s Swamitva Scheme,” Agnishwar Jayaprakash, founder, CEO of Garuda Aerospace told IANS.

The developments aren’t in any way surprising.

India’s arms trade with Israel is worth $1bn and is likely to expand with the formation of the I2U2 (India, Israel, UAE, USA) bloc also known as the West Asia Quad.

Updates on Pegasus in India

A new report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) says the Intelligence Bureau (IB), India’s domestic intelligence agency, bought hardware that matches the equipment needed to use Pegasus.

Pegasus, created by Israeli company NSO, is a military grade software only sold to governments approved by the Israeli government. The software allows clients to hack into mobile phones. It has been deployed in several countries against journalists, activists and politicians. “The shipment, delivered by air, was marked “for Defence and Military Use” and cost $315,000. That description — and the timing of the shipment — appeared to match the account given in January by the New York Times, which reported that Pegasus and a missile system had been “centerpieces” of a major 2017 arms deal between Israel and India,” the report said.

After meeting with Indian PM Narendra Modi on Monday, 'Garuda Aerospace' CEO Agnishwar Jayaprakash said that India is enroute to becoming the drone capital of the world.

Spinning facts

In other news, Naor Gilon, Israel’s ambassador to India described India as a major partner, a very close friend and ally. It’s the kind of talk we have become used to but the interview was interesting because in it, Gilon looked to equate Israel with India - describing Israel as a kind of cosmopolitan, democratic and inclusive society - in which all religions and groups are able to operate freely.

“I think the main similarity between India and Israel in the political system is that we are both very heterogeneous societies. 20% or more of the voters are Muslim Israelis or Arab Israelis you can call, they vote, some of them vote for general parties, they have their own party. We have ministers from the minority group, and the last coalition, on the party was a Muslim party. You have Muslims, Christians, orthodox, no orthodox, newcomers, immigrants, so it's very heterogeneous group, very much like India,” Gilon says.

On the political instability in Israel, in which Israel hasn’t had a stable government in several years, Gilon chose to describe Israel’s democracy as “so vibrant that we have voted 5 times in the last 3 years already.”

Other notable developments/news:

• In late August, Professor Ather Zia from the Department of Anthropology and Gender Studies at the University of Northern Colorado, delivered a lecture during a panel organized by the Institute of Palestine Studies. In her address, she explained how India “has maintained a unique neocolonial attitude toward Kashmir since the 1947 partition of British India.”

• Some days ago, the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) published an article that looked at the ties between India-UAE-Israel. Authors Navdeep Suri and and Hargun Sethi, examined how the Abraham Accords (the normalisation deals between Israel and the UAE and others) had given rise to several new opportunities for India, including closer ties with the UAE and Israel. “Recently, the Indian Ambassador to Israel also remarked that “Israel’s strengths in niche technology; India’s huge economy and human resource base; and UAE’s capabilities in logistics and investments have complementary benefits not only for the three economies but also the region at large,” the duo wrote.

• Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine released a report earlier this month calling for a dismantling of Israeli settler colonialism and occupation in Palestine.

  “Realizing the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination requires dismantling once and for all the Israeli settler-colonial occupation and its apartheid practices,” Albanese wrote.
  You can read about her report here.

Other stories I have worked on lately:

Over the past month, I worked with colleagues Umar Farooq and Zainab Iqbal on a story about an Afghan girl who was abducted by a US marine after her family was killed in military raid in 2019. It is a shocking story. You can read the story here.

I also worked on a story about the appointment of a leader of a diaspora Hindu nationalist group, called the HSS, to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) faith based religious security council. The HSS is considered the international wing of the RSS, the Hindu nationalist and supremacist paramilitary organisation in India. The faith-based security council was set up to provide advice to the secretary on matters "related to protecting houses of worship, preparedness and enhanced coordination with the faith community". Clearly there is a problem with the appointment. You can read the story here.

Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Azad

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