Quick Reads
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India advised to adopt Israel’s approach to combat terrorism.
PM Modi echoes Golda Meir’s commitment to pursue and eliminate terrorist.
Historical context provided on Israel’s 1972 Munich massacre response to terror.
New Delhi:
Amid Pakistan’s major escalation over India’s precision strikes on its terrorist infrastructure and terror camps, top global security analyst Michael Rubin told NDTV that India should take a leaf from Israel’s book in its “war against terror”.
While agreeing that India must continue its military operation – Operation Sindoor – to respond to each of Pakistan’s escalations and misadventures along the Line of Control and International Border, Mr Rubin said that in the long-run, Prime Minister Narendra Modi should consider what Israel’s former PM Golda Meir had done after the 1972 Munich Olympic Games massacre.
Israel, he said, “quietly, over subsequent years, went out anywhere in the world to eliminate the terrorists who were responsible for that massacre. It took them over seven years”, but they were relentless in their pursuit and pledge to hunt down the terrorists and kill them. “I do think that Prime Minister Modi needs to take a playbook out of the late Golda Meir of Israel’s hands,” he said
The 1972 Munich massacre was a terrorist attack during the Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany. The terror attack was religiously-motivated one against Jews. On September 5, 1972, eight members of the Palestinian terror group Black September invaded the Munich Olympic Village, taking eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage. After a failed rescue attempt the following day left all eleven Israeli athletes, five terrorists, and one German policeman dead. Israel vowed to eliminate the terrorists, no matter where they were in the world. Mossad covert operations followed. Operation Bayonet, also known as Operation Wrath of God took more than seven years of worldwide covert operations to kill the terrorists and their backers.
In his warning to terrorists, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks echoed those of Israel’s Golda Meir. “Let me tell the world that India will go to the ends of the Earth to hunt down terrorists and their backers and punish them beyond their imagination,” PM Modi had said shortly after the terror attack in Kashmir’s Pahalgam, in which 26 civilians, all tourists, were killed by Pakistan-linked terrorists.
The Pahalgam terror attack was religiously-motivated as tourists of other faiths were asked to prove their allegiance to Islam and killed them accordingly. The terror attack came days after an inflammatory and communal speech by Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir. The terror attack was claimed by The Resistance Front, a terror group which is the shadow arm of the UN-banned Lashkar-e-Taiba. Pakistan’s military establishment and its spy agency ISI, has for decades, fostered terrorists and provided them with a safe-haven in Pakistan and areas under its illegal occupation – using them to carry out cross-border terrorism in India.
Combating terrorism is a long-term mission, suggested the global defence expert, as he cautioned that beyond a certain level of military escalation, global diplomacy kicks in, but what must be kept in mind is that, “while diplomats scramble for quiet, the terrorists regroup to strategise – and then we have another cycle in this terrorism. That’s the cycle that led to the disaster in Israel on October 7, 2023,” he said. India has also seen a similar, cyclical nature of terror for decades. “I strongly believe that we can’t simply have a pattern in which Pakistan strikes out with its proxy terrorists,” he added.
Praising India for showing restraint and responding to Pakistan’s escalations in a measured and calibrated manner, Mr Rubin said, “Look, it seems that India is playing a very careful game. And while I’ve been critical of the time which elapsed between the terrorist attacks and Operation Sindor, the fact of the matter is India is acting very deliberately, very precisely. Pakistan seems to be flailing.”
He went on to say that “This shows that India is prepared carefully, both in the wake of the terrorist attack, but more importantly, in terms of its military doctrine over the past few months and years of relative quiet. There have been two rounds where Pakistan has attempted to attack several military bases in North and West India. Most of these attacks, in fact, all of them have been foiled one way or the other.”
“Pakistan can’t say that they are ignorant of these terrorists, that these terrorists are operating independently of them, and then try to avenge those terrorist deaths. If Pakistan truly wants to maintain the fiction that it is not a terror sponsor, it needs to stand down right now. It needs to close the terror camps, and it needs to extradite every terrorist that exists inside Pakistan, even if they wear a military uniform,” he said.
