Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that the country enjoys “tremendous” support in India, as he reacted to claims made by US Vice President JD Vance who had said that the US was Israel’s “only powerful ally”.
In an interview with Fox News, Netanyahu said: “We have some other friends, like a small country called India, you know, it has 1.4 billion people and, boy, do we have tremendous support there.”
The Israeli Prime Minister also said that the country gets immense backing from India on Facebook. “You know, I have this Facebook thing, and I have overwhelming support there. I may have many others,” Netanyahu said.
India and Israel enjoy a good relationship, and so do Netanyahu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Earlier this year, the Israeli PM referred to his Indian counterpart as a “personal friend” and called India a “global power”.
PM Modi paid a state visit to Israel in February and had said that India stood with Israel “firmly with full conviction”. This was two days before Israel and the US launched a surprise attack on Iran, which later snowballed into a full-fledged war.
Vance’s ‘only powerful ally’ claim
Netanyahu’s latest remarks on India came a day after Vance rebuked Israel after reports of criticism of President Donald Trump’s deal to end the Iran war emerged from inside Netanyahu’s government.
“Donald Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” Vance said during a press briefing, further adding: “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have left, anywhere in the entire world.”
Vance had also said that most of the weapons protecting Israel for the past three months were made by the US and paid for by American tax dollars.
Reacting to Vance’s remarks, Netanyahu told Fox News that while he holds the US Vice President in high regards, he doesn’t agree with everything he says. The Israeli PM also claimed that countries reach out to him asking: “’Can you teach us some of the things that your military does, and can we have some of your AI and cyber expertise?’”
Iran war and US-Israel ‘rift’
Reports of a rift between the Israeli and American administration, and Netanyahu and Trump are not new. Ever since deliberations on resolving the conflict with Iran began, reports hinted at a difference of opinion between the two leaderships.
Last month, an Axios report had said that Trump referred to Netanyahu as “f**king crazy” and accused him of being ungrateful. The report emerged at a time when peace negotiations between the US and Iran were underway, and yet Israel continued to pound Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
More recently, Trump told Axios that the Israeli PM knew “who the boss is”. “We get along very good. (Netanyahu) knows who the boss is,” Trump said in a brief phone interview. Trump has been publicly critical of Netanyahu in recent weeks after Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon threatened peace talks with Iran.
