Kozhikode: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday expressed his communist government's unequivocal support to the Palestinian cause, and more strikingly, cast aspersions on the state of Israel. Vijayan denounced the Narendra Modi-led BJP government for not condemning Israel's ongoing invasion of Gaza -- on the claim of rooting out Hamas -- that has left over 11,000 Palestinians dead. He was addressing the CPM's Palestine Solidarity meeting in Kozhikode.
The salient feature of Vijayan's speech was his Left government's aversion to Israel. He stretched it a bit far and said the Left parties throughout the country have only ever connected with Palestine. “In the past, Israel was not a country that we accepted. We did not even have normal bilateral relations with Israel,” Vijayan said.
“On whose side is India? To this question, the Left Front in India has, every time, responded with the answer, Palestine, without even thinking for a second. We say the same thing today, we said that yesterday and we will say that tomorrow as well.”
But in that Vijayan is wrong.
The Left parties in India, including those in Kerala, have had healthy relations with Israel from as early as 1998 and until most recently as February this year when a 27-member delegation from Kerala led by B Ashok, Principal Secretary & Agriculture Production Commissioner of Govt of Kerala, visited Israel on an 'exposure training of farmers'.
Kerala's Minister for Agriculture, P Prasad, was scheduled to lead the delegation, but the LDF (Left Democratic Front) leadership in the state vetoed his trip at the eleventh hour. It is understood the LDF felt sending its minister on the tour after criticising PM Modi for his government's bonhomie with Israel would backfire.
But Prasad would only have been the second Kerala 'Left' minister to visit Israel had he been approved. The late Krishnan Kaniyamparambil, who served as Agriculture Minister in the EK Nayanar government, between June 1997 and May 2001, visited Israel in an official capacity. He too, like Prasad, was a member of the CPI.
'Basu, a catalyst for change'
But more esteemed Indian communists have visited Israel, officially. The biggest of the lot is West Bengal's longest-serving chief minister, Jyoti Basu. The late Indian communist stalwart led a 21-member business and trade delegation to Israel in July 2000. In 1998, another CPM veteran, Somnath Chatterjee, then chairman of West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, led a Bengal delegation to Israel seeking investment opportunities in agriculture and high-tech areas.
But Basu's visit was unique as he is arguably the first chief minister from a state in India to officially visit Israel.
In an article titled 'India and Israel: Towards Greater Cooperation' that was published in the peer-reviewed political science journal, India Quarterly, R Rajen Singh wrote that when asked 'whether the Left parties that had strongly opposed India's relationship with Israel in the past, had now come to terms with ties with the Jewish state, Jyoti Basu said that the situation had changed'.
“Those were the days of the past when we opposed the regimes in South Africa and Israel. But now our policy has changed. Even the Indian foreign policy has changed and there are full diplomatic relations with both these countries,” Basu reportedly said.
Then Israeli Ambassador to India, Yehoyada Haim, lavished praise on Basu, calling him a catalyst for change. He said Basu's decision to make an official visit to Israel had made his country acceptable to all political parties in India, even to the Left parties.
