Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he had discussed in India ways to enhance security cooperation against the threat of Islamic extremism faced by the two countries.
Netanyahu made the remarks during a six-day visit to India, the first by an Israeli prime minister in 15 years. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose long-standing National Bharatiya Janata Party has long admired Israel’s tough stance on terrorism, has been welcomed.
India is concerned about the resentment of the Arab countries that depend on it in oil and also take into account the feelings of the vast minority of Muslims and therefore remained for decades away from Israel. But with Moody coming to power, the two sides built their relations based on security and the economy.
Right-wing Netanyahu told a news conference on security that India and Israel were democratic countries with natural affinity, but he made it clear that the societies of the two open countries and the liberals were at risk.
“Our way of life is challenged, especially the pursuit of modernity and the pursuit of innovation, which face challenges from fundamentalist Islam and its terrorist branches from different angles,” he said.
The two countries have long sought to tackle Islamist militants, mostly from Gaza and Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, to Israel, while most militants pose a threat to India from neighboring Pakistan.
Officials say India and Israel are covertly cooperating with these threats, especially in the exchange of intelligence.
“We discussed in this visit how we can strengthen our two countries in the civil and security fields and in every field,” Netanyahu said at the conference.
About six months ago, Moody became India’s first prime minister to visit Israel in power. He did not visit Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is located, as visiting leaders usually do.
Netanyahu toured the Taj Mahal on Tuesday and will also visit the state of Gujarat, which belongs to Moody and also Mumbai, the financial capital of India.
Netanyahu will join the 11-year-old Israeli boy Moshe Hotzberg, whose parents were killed in Mumbai in 2008 by Pakistani-based militants, at a memorial ceremony for the city’s Jewish center where the attack took place.
The boy, who lives with his grandparents in Israel, arrived in India on Tuesday as a guest of Moody.