More than 6,000 Israelis – diplomats, spies, military personnel, industrial advisers, technicians, bankers, businessmen and academicians – are new deployed in India to sustain and expand the current Indo – Israeli nexus. Their operations, which cover almost every walk of life in India, are based on a vast web of bribes and scams to which the Israelis know that every Indian in the temple of power is vulnerable and is greedy for easy money, sex and free jaunts in overseas pleasure resorts. India’s defence contracts to firms in Israel (where nearly three million Jews live) now run into billions of dollars. A large part of this infusion of huge wealth into tiny Israel for sophisticated arms from poverty-stricken India, where half a billion people live on a pittance of a dollar a day, comes from the home remittances of Indian labour employed in the oil-rich Muslim Arab states and the enormous profits India makes from the export of Indian goods to the Arab world. India’s colossal payments to Israel for weapons help the Israeli Government in financing the horrendous war on the stone-throwing Arab Palestinians. But for India’s BJP rulers, such as the Pakistan-hating Home Minister L.K. Advani, who told his Israeli hosts during his Israel-yatra in June last year that India and Israel face a common enemy – the “Muslim terrorists” – the three million Jews in Israel are far more important than the 140 million Arabs. No Indian ruler has so far uttered a word of condemnation for the bloody repression which the Hitlerian-style Israeli Government has unleashed on the Arab Palestinians.

Since the recent exposure of bribes and scams in India’s defence deals by investigative media reporters on website Tehelka.com, in India, the depth of Israeli penetration of the BJP-led government, the cesspools of power and corruption in the Indian armed forces has been steadily surfacing into public view. More of it is bound to hit the newspaper headlines in the coming months when a judicial commission of inquiry begins its probe of defence scams and sleaze. Typical of the bribery-ridden deals the Israelis clinch with greedy Indian defence officials is the more than $20 million which the Israelis paid to India’s disgraced and ousted Defence Minister George Fernandes who once portrayed himself as a socialist icon and a “Mr. Clean”. Irrefutable evidence furnished by the “Tehelka.com” journalist sleuths shows that initially he and the Treasurer of his Samta Party, a partner in the 19-party BJP-led coalition federal government, accepted Rs. 10 million from the Israeli agents and their Indian brokers as the first part of the bribe for India’s purchase of the Israeli Barak missile defence system. The Scientific Adviser to the Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Abdul Kalam, India’s top specialist in missiles, had opposed the Israeli offer, saying that the Barak missile system (missiles fired from ships) was flawed and unsuitable to Indian maritime conditions. When the Israeli officers of the Israeli Rafael Company, which markets the Barak missile system, learnt about it, they lost no time in putting pressure on Defence Minister George Fernandes to sign the Rs. 5600 million Barak missile deal. A source in London, close to the Hinduja business empire which is being hounded at the Indian end by the BJP-led government for its involvement in the Bofors guns deal with Sweden during the Rajiv Gandhi regime, told me that the Israeli agents virtually blackmailed George Fernandes and aide, S.K. Jain, with proof of large payments made to them in foreign banks and his amorous dalliance with Israeli girls, possibly Mossad playdolls, in hotels in Israel. This compelled George Fernandes to break the rules and award the contract to Israel’s Barak missile system makers hurriedly.

An important character in this murky transaction is a retired Indian Navy Commander, Suresh Nanda, son of a former Indian Navy chief, Admiral M.S. Nanda, who heads the Crown firm of commission agents and brokers. He showed the ropes to the Israelis and their minions how to put pressure on Fernandes to sign the deal. A former chief of the Indian Navy, Admiral Bhagwat, who was virtually crucified out of the Indian Navy and maligned by Fernandes and his minions, has openly accused the disgraced Defence Minister for indulging in corruption and bribery to sign the Barak deal in spite of his strong opposition to it in the initial stages.