NEW DELHI: India has been subjected to scrutiny and questioning over similar actions that have not even been proven.
Since the start of May 2024, five top adversaries of Israel have died unnatural deaths. On 24 May, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, 63, and his Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian died when their helicopter mysteriously crashed in the mountainous area in the northwest of the country near the border with Azerbaijan.
On 13 July, the Israeli Defense Forces initiated an airstrike along the Gaza coast in which they killed Mohammed Deif, Hamas military commander. His death was, however, announced earlier last week.
Two weeks later, Hezbollah’s most senior military officer, Fuad Shukr, was killed in an airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon.
Perhaps the most vital chapter in this tale of a series of assassinations was the 31 July killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. Haniyeh was taken out in his Tehran, Iran-based apartment in the middle of the night where he had gone to attend a state government event. More importantly, he was reportedly killed in a bomb blast that was smuggled and planted in his home months ago, which, it is being alleged, that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad detonated at the time of its choosing.
The deaths of Raisi and Hossein are publicly regarded as accidental, but those who have followed the developments claim that both were killed in an “accident” as they were political figures unlike the other three high-profile targets (Deif, Shukr, and Haniyeh) who were seen and regarded as “active terrorists” which allowed Israeli agencies to take responsibility for their death through official and unofficial media reports.
The killing of these top leaders, who Israeli and United States believe, were the soul of Hamas and Iran-backed armed organizations has created a sense of chaos and confusion which has been exacerbated due to Western agencies coming together to choke and restrict funding to these organizations.
The Israeli agencies, sources said, are actively looking for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar with all the resources at their disposal as they believe that his killing will break the proverbial spine of Hamas. Sinwar is regarded as the mastermind of the 7 October 2023 attack on Israeli citizens which sparked off this entire chain reaction that has spread chaos across the world.
These five killings have the potential to bring Hamas to the discussion table and force them to accept the conditions set by Israel and bring some semblance of peace in the region, at least that’s what Tel Aviv believes will happen, official sources told The Sunday Guardian.
All these killings, achieved because of the close collaboration between Washington and Tel Aviv, even though violative of multiple international laws including those related to killing non-combatants, non-citizens on foreign soils, have generated little or no discussion, let alone criticism, in the US media. The American media, in contrast, has prominently taken up the alleged assassination attempt of Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun allegedly by Indian intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (R&W).
An Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, is already awaiting trial for his alleged involvement in this case in a prison in New York. Ever since the Department of Justice, United States, released the documents related to the alleged Pannun assassination plot, prominent US-based media outlets have used it to launch a soft war on the Indian government, which officials in New Delhi say, is attributed to the perception in Washington that such extrajudicial killing of terrorists is the sole right of Washington and no other country should do it.
In the last two years, at least 25 Khalistani and jihadi terrorists, active or “retired”, whose involvement in terror attacks against India was conclusively proven, have been killed across various parts of the world including in Canada and Pakistan. Like Washington, both these countries have blamed India for these killings, despite being unable to present any proof that can tie these deaths to Indian hands.
Sources in Delhi say that the killings of these terrorists on Pakistani and Canadian soil have proven that both these countries are giving shelter to individuals who have indulged in terror activities and despite numerous requests, both have failed to bring these perpetrators to task.
The same has been the case with Israel and the United States which were forced to carry out the killing of individuals, who it claims are terrorists, on foreign soil because the host country was not taking action against them. However, the only difference is that while Washington and Israel have been applauded for their role in “bringing peace to the region” by carrying out these extrajudicial killings, India on the other hand has been subjected to scrutiny and questioning over similar actions, which have not even been proven by those who have blamed New Delhi.