WASHINGTON: Americans critical of Israel's relentless military operations in Gaza have cited India's response to the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai as a model of restraint and respect of civilian lives that offers another way of dealing with the October 7 attacks by Hamas.
Although, it must be pointed out at the outset, Indian reaction has been aggressively punitive to subsequent terrorist attacks in subsequent years.
Calls for restraint have been mounting with increasing toll of civilian lives in Gaza and the Joe Biden administration is under pressure from within the Democratic party to press Israel to either settle for a ceasefire or agree to humanitarian pauses to hostilities to allow for aid and relief to reach the civilian population.
The demand for a ceasefire has been rejected by Israel and it has the US' backing on that. But the need for humanitarian pauses has been acknowledged and echoed by the Biden administration; the President himself has backed it, as has his Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
A group of Democratic lawmakers had introduced a resolution calling for an "immediate" ceasefire within 10 days of the October 7 attacks -- championed by a Palestinian-descent Democratic member of the House of Representatives, Rashida Tlaib -- and 13 Democratic Senators on Friday called for a "short-term cessation of hostilities that pose high-risk to civilians, aid workers or humanitarian aid delivery in Gaza".
Ro Khanna, an Indian-descent Democrat in the House of Representatives, is among the growing voices in the party calling for restraint.
They all recognise Israel's right to defend itself and back its resolve to eliminate Hamas, the terrorist group that carried out the October 7 attacks, in agreement with the Democratic administration in the White House, but they are calling for restraint in the form of a ceasefire or a pause, as the humanitarian crisis deepens in Gaza.
"When India was attacked by terrorists in Mumbai, they did not just bomb civilians," Ro Khanna told this reporter exclusively.
"We need to look at how to surgically bring the Hamas perpetrators to justice. The bombing of innocent civilians must end," he added.
The Congressman was referring to the four days of mayhem in Mumbai in November 2008 by 10 terrorists of Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Pakistan-based terrorist group that is on the list of designated terrorists of the United Nations and the United States.
The terrorists killed 166 people, including six US nationals.
There were calls for then government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to respond militarily by either striking Lashkar-e-Toiba's headquarters in Muridke in Pakistan Punjab or its facilities in Pakistan occupied Kashmir or the ISI, which had planned and overseen the operation from conception to operationalisation, including guiding the terrorists as they battled Indian security forces.
Shiv Shankar Menon, then Foreign Secretary, has recalled in his book 'Choices: Inside the Making of India's Foreign Policy' that he was among those who called for a military response.
He wrote that he advised his boss, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, and Prime Minister Singh that "we should retaliate, and be seen to retaliate, to deter further attacks, for reasons of international credibility and to assuage public sentiment".
But the government did not take his advice and, he wrote, in hindsight India gained more through restraint than what it had stood to gain by retaliating, which would have been "emotionally satisfying".
"But," he wrote further, "on sober reflection and in hindsight, I now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and to concentrate on diplomatic, covert and other means was the right one for that time and place."
He went on to list the windfall of benefits from that decision, including, and most importantly, isolating Pakistan.
Menon doesn't venture too far into the consequences that would keep rolling for years after, calls for booking those responsible became a fixture of any and every India-US communique and it, ultimately, drove a Titanic-sized wedge into a close relationship between the US and Pakistan, a major non-NATO ally. Pakistan remains in the doghouse with the US.
Thomas Friedman, a columnist with The New York Times, cited India's response to the 26/11 attacks in a recent column to urge Israel to consider a different response citing India's 2008 response, as recalled in Menon's book.
"I am watching the Israel-Hamas war and thinking about one of the world leaders I've most admired: Manmohan Singh. He was India's Prime Minister in late November 2008 when 10 Pakistani militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, widely believed to be linked to Pakistan's military intelligence, infiltrated India and killed more than 160 people in Mumbai, including 61 at two luxury hotels. What was Singh's military response to India's Sept. 11? (IANS)
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