Israel deal has Left fuming

The Left is all set to make the UPA’s Rs10,000-crore deal with Israel for medium-range surface-to-air missiles a major poll issue, particularly in traditional strongholds Kerala and West Bengal.

Defence minister AK Antony will have to do a lot of fire-fighting in his home state Kerala, where the ruling Left Democratic Front has trained its guns on the Congress-led UPA government.

Left media – CPI(M)’s Deshabhimani and CPI’s Janayugam – went to town on Friday echoing the DNA exposé of the Rs600-crore “business charges” paid as part of the February-27 deal.

While Janayugam wrote an editorial on the exposé, CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan anchored his column on Deshabhimani’s edit page on the issue. “The latest report is about a missile supply agreement signed by the Manmohan Singh government and Israel Aerospace Industries. It says the agreement was signed in February to buy missiles worth Rs10,000 crore and Rs600 crore of it went as commission,” he wrote.

CPI(M) politburo member and home minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said the Congress would be held answerable for the deal in the general election. “Naturally, the deal would be an election issue. The central leadership would soon device its strategy on it,” he said. Party general secretary Prakash Karat has already demanded an investigation into the agreement.

A Delhi-datelined report in Deshabhimani said Antony channelised Rs 450 crore from the 6% “business charges” to the Congress election fund.

The IAI deal is messier than the Swedish Bofors deal. Not that it’s big money. The country in question is Israel, accused of genocide in Gaza. For the CPI(M), eyeing the decisive Muslim vote-bank across Kerala, everything US or Israel is taboo.

Congress candidate in Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor is already at pains justifying his article in Israeli daily Haaretz, while his counterpart in Ernakulam, KV Thomas, is trying to wash his hands off the plaque he presented to Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.

“Israel is the cruellest nation…The US was the only nation that refused to support the UN resolution condemning the massacre in Gaza. The UPA government is toeing that line. Instead of isolating Israel, the Congress is eager to maintain diplomatic ties and enter into new contracts with Israel,” Vijayan wrote in his article in Deshabhimani.

“India is launching spy satellites for Israel. India sent Texar, which takes aerial pictures of Palestine for Israel to annihilate innocents.
One more such satellite is ready for launch. India is the largest market for Israeli weapons,” says the article, which hints that the Congress is making Indians a party to the massacres by Israel.
Another article published in Ganashakti, the CPI(M) mouthpiece in West Bengal, strongly criticised the 6% “business charges”, saying “bribe is more powerful than the country’s interest”.

The article recalled that the CPI(M) and the CPI had written to prime minister Manmohan Singh in February 2009, objecting to the deal, but their pleas were ignored.

Mohammad Salim, a CPI(M) Lok Sabha member from the state, said the scandal proved certain politicians, agents and military officers were serving their own interests by projecting the defence sector as a “holy cow”.

“This is India’s biggest-ever defence scandal. When we objected to it, we were misinterpreted,” Salim said.

Asked whether the scandal will become an important part of the Left campaign, he said: “Of course, we will tell the people how they have been cheated in the name of national security.”