The close ties between New Delhi and Jerusalem have started paying dividends as Jewish lobbying groups in Washington have backed India by linking their advocacy of Israel-US issues with the South Asian country, InSerbia News said on December 16.
During his September visit to the U.S., Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met leaders from Jewish advocacy groups in New York and urged them to help strengthen Indo-U.S. trade ties, the report said.
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Recently, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) sent letters to top members of the U.S. Congress, saying that India and Israel are natural partners and that the two countries, along with the U.S., share fundamental values, according to the report.
In a letter, the committee wrote: “For many years, AJC, the global Jewish advocacy organization, has sought to promote enhanced U.S.-India and India-Israel relations through advocacy initiatives with the Indian-American community in congressional, campus, cultural and commercial arenas. The U.S., India and Israel share fundamental values, including religious and ethnic pluralism, electoral democracy and market-based economies – and common strategic challenges and concerns, including the urgent effort to thwart terrorism. As such, we regard the partnership between India and Israel as a natural one, ” the report said.
The AJC, which has been described by the New York Times as “widely regarded as the dean of American Jewish organizations, ” is one of the oldest Jewish advocacy organizations in the United States. With offices across the U.S. and around the globe, and partnerships with Jewish communities worldwide, the AJC endeavors to improve the well-being of the Jewish people and to advance human rights and democratic values.
Meanwhile, the Barack Obama administration has said that it has no problem with India’s recent engagement of Russia. A couple of days after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to New Delhi, the U.S. State Department said in a statement that Washington had no intention to influence Indian foreign policy. However, it advised the Modi administration to think twice before signing new trade deals with Moscow, with a senior State Department official saying that it was not the right time to have trade deals with Russia due to a series of international sanctions against it, the report said.
