CPM wants India to sever ties with Israel

NEW DELHI: The 'snap ties with Israel' demand was again raised by the Left following the killing of 19 Palestinians in an Israeli attack. The CPM, which is upset with the Manmohan Singh government for brushing aside its demand to brand Israel an ‘outlawed state’, said sanctions should be imposed on the Zionist state.

Though the Left has made repeated pleas to the government to cut off military ties with Israel, which is the second-largest supplier of arms to India after Russia, New Delhi has turned a deaf ear to the demand. The campaign against Israel gained momentum earlier this year during the Israel-Hezbollah war with Left MPs carrying out a signature campaign against the Israeli action.

“The UPA government has so far refused to face to the fact that Israel is an outlaw state which is illegally occupying and oppressing the Palestinian people,” the CPM polit bureau said in a statement here.

It said the least the UPA government can do at this juncture was to “sever military and security co-operation ties” with Israel, which has become immune to criticism about the atrocities committed on Palestinians.

The CPM wants the UN Security Council to immediately meet to impose sanctions on Israel after the pre-dawn strike in a residential area in northern Gaza Strip, which killed several Palestinians including children, many of the dead were from the same family.

Keeping up the pressure on the UPA to stop buying arms from Israel, the CPM sees New Delhi’s strategy on Israel to be in line with the government’s ‘getting closer’ to the US. The CPM had alleged there was a hidden US agenda in the attack on Lebanon and said Israeli aggression was threatening peace in West Asia.

The CPM has also alleged that the US may use Israel as a proxy to mount attacks on Arab countries and seek to draw Iran into the conflict.