West Bengal can seek Israel Help, But India can’t – Strange ways of Communism!

War on Israeli links: Marxists turn defensive with Antony revelation

PNS | Kochi

It
was the CPI(M) which had first raised the issue of Israeli connection
in the election campaigns in Kerala, and for more than a month they had
used it effectively against the Congress-led UDF but a sudden turn of
things has pushed the Marxists into the defensive on the same issue.

With
latest media reports suggesting that the Left had been dealing directly
with Israel since 1999 and Defence Minister AK Antony alleging that the
Left Front government in West Bengal had been in vital industrial
partnership with Tel Aviv, the CPI(M) is now searching for a way out of
the trap it had set for itself.

The CPI(M) attack against the
Congress-led UDF over Israeli connections had started with the
allegations against Congress candidates Shashi Tharoor in
Thiruvananthapuram and KV Thomas in Ernakulam that they were agents of
the Jew nation. The Marxists also accused the Muslim League of being
unable to break the fetters imposed by the pro-Israel Congress on the
issue of Tel Aviv’s attacks against Palestinians, especially on Gaza.

The
CPI(M) campaign had got a shot in the arm with a report appearing in a
Mumbai newspaper that the UPA Government had given a missile purchase
contract to an Israeli company, whose credentials were redoubtable. The
Marxists went all out to capitalize on the suggestion by the newspaper
report that Rs 600 crore could have been paid as kickbacks in the Rs
10,000-crore Barak missile deal.

Though CPI(M) general secretary
Prakash Karat exonerated Defence Minister AK Antony in the dubious
Defence deal, which inflict serious dents in the minority vote-bank of
the UDF, while calling for a comprehensive probe into it as he doubted
Defence personnel and bureaucrats could have had a vital role in the
matter. However, his party colleagues went for a direct attack against
Antony for the deal and the Defence Minister shot back.

Just
when Antony alleged that West Bengal’s Left Front Government had
industrial partnership with Israel running to thousands of crores of
rupees, allegations also came up that it was during the term of Jyoti
Basu this relationship with Tel Aviv had started. A newspaper report
that came out simultaneously revealed that a delegation from Kerala
including a Left Minister in 1999 had visited Israel as part of an
agro-industrial partnership initiative. This pushed the Left into a
defensive position.

The newspaper report on the Israeli
connection of the EK Nayanar-led former LDF government put the CPI(M)
in a spot as it proved that the allegations the CPI(M) had been raising
against KV Thomas, who had merely passed on a gift to Ariel Sharon, of
being an Israeli agent were hypocritical. Immediately, Karat began
downplaying the Israeli connection issue, but the UDF took it from
there.

Senior Congress leader and Union Minister for Overseas
Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi said in Kannur on Friday that the CPI(M)
was hypocritically raising the issue of Israel as it was reeling under
a terrible “poverty of philosophy”. He asked the CPI(M) leadership
whether the Polit Bureau had cleared the former LDF Government’s
agro-industrial cooperation initiative and Jyoti Basu’s move for
industrial relationship with Israel.

“Let the PB come out with a
statement if they had got its clearance. If they had not been cleared
by the PB why is the CPI(M) leadership not taking action against them
for going for deals with Israel?” Ravi asked.

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