Converging Narratives and Tactical Symbiosis: How Israel and India Justify State Aggression

Analysis: Areeba Jamal

Following the alleged Pakistani backed militia attack in Pahalgam, India launched “Operation Sindoor” in retaliation. In a calibrated military offensive, Delhi targeted civilian dense areas of Pakistan under the guise of eradicating “terrorist-infested zones”. The areas of Bahawalpur, Muridke, Muzaffarabad, Kotli and Shakargarh were hit by Indian missiles just after midnight on Wednesday, 7th May. According to Al-Jazeera’s reports, the brazenly feigned surgical strikes resulted in 8 civilian deaths and wounded more than 35 people, heightening humanitarian worries and providing a widely familiar pattern of securitized aggression. This blanket claim of anti-terrorism is an unmistakable parallel to Israel’s centuries old practice in Gaza and the West Bank where attack or prevention of attacks often causes catastrophic civilian injuries in the name of counterterrorism. The similarities between India and Israel in narrative construction and operational strategy are striking, and deserve greater analytic attention.

Politicization of Narratives

At the heart of the justifications of both Israeli and Indian actions lay a powerful system of narrative engineering. These are not spontaneous or accidental improvisations: they are strategic statecraft reformulating public perception through tightly controlled media, official rhetoric, and state aligned think tanks. In Israel, Palestinian resistance all equates to terrorism, whether the actor is a militant or a civilian. The Israeli narrative invokes moral absolutism where the state is the beleaguered democracy and Palestinians the existential threat. India is applying an eerily similar strategy, boxing Pakistan as an imminent existential threat to Delhi, using alleged militia attacks to back its claims. The same contours are repurposed for constructing a distorted narrative against Pakistan and Kashmiri dissidents. Pakistan’s sole purpose has been reduced to an irresponsible actor sponsoring cross border terrorism. It is this exaggerated, solitary narrative India uses to justify its dis-proportionate retaliatory stances when it could be mitigated by a proportionately less excessive reaction. The Kashmiri civilians resisting the occupation are declared ‘terrorist sympathisers’ and entire towns monitored, placed under curfews and even military lockdowns. Through this rhetorical homogenization, both states are able to wage and conceal broad-spectrum offensives behind a cloak of national security imperatives.

India and Israel have mastered a craft of building perpetual threats. To them, the enemy is not only external but also internal; not only armed, but also ideological. In Israel, Palestinians; irrespective of age, gender or political affiliation, are usually presented as a monolithic terror apparatus comprised of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. By labelling Pakistani state actors, Kashmiri militants and civilian sympathisers as ‘anti nationals’ or ‘cross border threats’, a deliberate antagonistic narrative is created which festers mass hysteria in the public and prompts the state to engage in increasingly risky military responses. Additionally, state backed media ecosystems through which these discourses are strategically curated surrender journalistic neutrality at the altar of nationalist fervour. Both Israeli and Indian media repeat state positions and dismiss diverging narratives as foreign propaganda, buttressing domestic consensus and stifling opposition.

In both India and Israel, psychological operations and information control are employed in order to erode empathy for the adversary. Social and cultural dehumanization is not reserved for the enemy alone; it is also directed against them militarily. In Israel, there’s this depiction of the Palestinian as somehow inherently violent, always taught from birth to hate Jews. In India, Muslims, and by extension Pakistanis are often represented as duplicitous, untrustworthy and unworthy of being trusted, contributing their façade of a civilizational narrative of Hindu nationalism versus Islamic radicalism. The media is responsible for 24/7 coverage of military action, which is monitored closely and dissent is criminalised by state-affiliated or sympathetic outlets. Conflicting narratives within the country are declared traitorous and as sympathizing with the enemy, significantly narrowing the space for public debate. In this climate, war is not only palatable, but also popular.

Exploitation of Legal Grey Zones and the Shield of Strategic Alliances

India and Israel have proven themselves masters of exploiting legal ambiguities in international humanitarian law. Neither state formally declares that they are at war, but both are unofficially at war. While Israel’s occupation of Palestine violates international law, the country leans heavily upon the “Doctrine of Self-Defence” under Article 51 of the UN Charter as justification for its use of force to curb the impeding issue of terrorism that plagues Israeli existence. While India invokes its sovereign right to defend its territory against terrorism, it also invokes the “Doctrine of Surgical Strikes” to expand the scope of self-defence to encompass cross border military engagements without offering parliament or international oversight. 

The two states allow the lines between internal security operations and acts of war to become blurred. Vague and elastic terms are used to justify deploying airstrikes, artillery shelling and state-backed paramilitary forces in places full of civilians through the use of terms such as ‘neutralising threats’ or ‘pre-emptive attacks’. These strategies depend on exploiting the grey areas in international legal language, under cover of international permissiveness, especially for violence toward populations that lack global political clout.

But perhaps the most worrying similarity is the diplomatic insulation both India and Israel enjoy. Israel’s historic alliance with the United States, shields it from charges at places like the United Nations, where American vetoes have repeatedly blocked efforts to bring Israel to account. Tel Aviv is also granted reprieve from the Gulf states owing to the Abraham Accords. For years, India has been recreating similar ties with the U.S., France, and other Western powers, repositioning itself as a strategic counterweight against China and as a barricade against Islamic extremism. With this alignment, both countries are able to defy international norms, normalizing systemic erosion of accountability. International human rights organisations who criticise the states’ conduct are routinely dismissed as biased or politically motivated. The world’s multilateral institutions have come to mean little more than issuing symbolic condemnations they have no enforcement mechanisms to curb such behaviour.

Shared Surveillance and Militarization Models

Israeli surveillance, border control, and intelligence models have increasingly been adopted by the Indian state to replicate the securitised management of dissent. Following Israel’s footsteps, India has set up deep surveillance infrastructure in the Occupied Territories. Delhi has sought the help of Israeli firms, including NSO Group who created the Pegasus spyware, for covert surveillance of India’s journalists, activists and opposition figures. 

Furthermore, India’s presence of armed forces in Kashmir, AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act), barriers and biometric surveillance systems indicate Israeli methods in the West Bank and Gaza where walls, check points and AI driven ‘predictive policing’ aim to contain Palestinian people. This convergence is not only a common toolkit, but a philosophical convergence, whereby internal governance has become militarised, and citizenship made stratified along ethnic or religious lines. Incidentally, India appears to be following in Israel’s lead when it comes to the doctrine of ‘disproportionate response’ militarily. Both countries use urban warfare tactics that ignore the principle of distinction under IHL, obligating combatants to differentiate themselves from civilians. In Gaza and Kashmir military action has targeted hospitals, schools and residential buildings under the guise that militants were supposedly operating from them. This ultimately produces a pattern of collective punishment which goes against both legal notions and ethical norms regarding modern warfare. 

Using rhetorical tropes, India and Israel normalise the destruction of civilian populations. In Gaza, whole neighbourhoods are razed in the name of targeting underground tunnels or command centres. Neutralising “terror camps” has come at the price of entire Indian villages being devastated under the guise of being destroyed. These justifications are legitimate appeals to moral exceptionalism, whereby state actions are not just necessary while at the same time noble. In addition, this has the effect of isolating the aggressor from moral censure and paradoxically positioning them as victims unburdened from the guilt of their actions by self-defence in their own eyes.

Conclusion

While both South Asia and the Middle East are currently experiencing independent conflicts, what is occurring is not a series of separated wars, but a framework for state violence with no accountability. Israeli and Indian strategies converged into a way for democracies to hollow out the rule of law, all while appearing orderly and legal. If unchallenged, this model of normalized war could be a new normal, unravelling the very fabric of international humanitarianism and post-WWII order which has long been designed to prevent such abuses. The international community can no longer accept security rhetoric; it must look at the current operations on the ground. Just as any other state, India and Israel must by held to the same standards. Anything short of that are failed legal principles, a failure of humanity itself.

The author, Areeba Jamal is currently getting her bachelor’s degree in Nuclear and Defence Strategic Studies at the National Defence University. She is a dedicated and analytical professional with expertise in international law, media, and public policy. Her work in governmental, legal, and media sectors has granted her insights regarding legislative processes, litigation, research analysis, and news production.