 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We are here to discuss today United States' recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the UN vote that followed it. And for that we have Prabir Pukhaya Stavidas. Hi, Prabir. So I wanted to first hear from you what your opinion is on the massive 128 member state vote against U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. What kind of message does it send and what impact does it really have on this issue right now? It's an interesting issue because this time United States has been much more isolated than ever before. In fact, apart from Guatemala and Honduras, the two sort of client states in Latin America today and small island states, Marshall Islands, Nauru and so on, no major country has voted for the United States. Its opposition to the resolution that was moved on condemning, essentially condemning United States or violating the United Nations Security Council resolutions on the subject which said Jerusalem is not to be made unilaterally a part of Israel. It is only one part of Jerusalem, which West Jerusalem, which used to be a part of Israel. It's really again a change in 1948 itself. But this Jerusalem was occupied in 67 war and there are various security council resolutions saying that it should not be occupied by Israel. It's a part of West Bank and that's what should not be changed. So United States trying to change it unilaterally has been condemned by a huge number of countries, even its closest allies, including the United Kingdom, France did not vote for it. Of course, there is a certain number of abstentions that took place. But leaving that aside, this has been an unequivocal clear vote against the US trying to change unilaterally the position of Jerusalem. So I think that's a very significant change. Now, the United States has responded by essentially threats. Nikki Halley has said that we will punish the United Nations, we'll punish the countries who have behaved in this particular way. Now punishing the United Nations is a very significant position being taken by the ambassador of United States to United Nations. It's saying essentially that if you don't listen to us, we'll cut your money. Now, this is something that the United States has said in various other bodies, but not to United Nations, that you must always vote what we tell you to vote because we're giving you money. That's never been the position. In fact, it's also interesting that United Nations agreed to be in on US territory under certain conditions. And one of the things, of course, that US would play a significant part of the salaries, the money required for the United Nations. On the understanding, a lot of it goes back to US employees over there. So this threat is a very surprising threat, if you will. But yes, I think this time, US has been much more isolated than ever before in the United Nations. Coming to India on this vote, now India's position around this whole issue for the last three years is looking really odd now because the Modi government has had a really open pro-Israel policy all this while. And also then following up with the sort of support from the US-Israel lobby, so to speak. And even after the Jerusalem decision, the statement from MEA was really vague, a two-liner when there were governments across the world taking strong moves like South Africa, at least condemning it in very strong terms. And now we have the vote, India joined the number of countries that voted against this decision. And we have representatives of the government trying to defend this, or even spokespersons otherwise saying that this is pragmatic. Now at one point it just seems an embarrassing situation for the Modi government to have to take this position after three years of this lobbying. What would you think about this? Well, there are two ways of reading this. One is to read it at face value, which that in any number of times Indian government has said, we stand by our earlier positions. That we are delinking the issue of Palestine from that of Israel. Israel is a friend. We buy arms from them. We have country-to-country relations with them and that we are going to deepen. At the same time, we have our traditional position on the question of Palestine and we'll stick by that. Now we know that this has been hollowed out from the big, from at least last 10, 15, 20 years, particularly when large-scale attacks have taken place here on the West Bank or say on Gaza. That Indian government has condemned not Israel, but the attacks. Sometimes it appears that it was as if it's a natural disaster. We are very sorry that it has happened kind of statement. So this has been ambiguity in India's position regarding Palestine, but on votes, on crucial matters of vote, it has either abstained or it has voted against Israel. So that's been a consistent policy that they have not supported the Israel position on certain issues in the United Nations. This time, there was a fear that India would also abstain, like a lot of other US allies did. They didn't vote for the resolution, they abstained. So they didn't really vote against US either. So there was a feeling that India might in this case join the abstainees as it were. In this case, India has actually voted against. So that's a significant issue. We could read it as a continuation of India's foreign policy on Palestine and Israel or we could read it that this time the OIC, the countries have been far more active campaigning for their position and they have the right on their side because it's true. The UN Security Council resolutions are very clear on this and therefore US was violating United Nations Security Council resolutions, but I think there has also been a message in the capitals of different countries that this is a test case that whether you stand by international law or you don't and if you don't stand by international law, then we are free also to take positions vis-à-vis your country and it stand on various issues. India has two issues to worry about. One is the OIC has not supported Pakistan for a very long time. In spite of what is happening in Kashmir, they have tried to stay out of the Kashmir issue by and large. So therefore if they start talking about India's shall we say human rights in Kashmir, it could be embarrassing for India, but also that India has a lot of shall we say income as a part of its remittance income from West Asia. So it's a huge economic issue for India as well. We buy Israeli goods, we buy Israeli arms, they don't really buy from us. So it's a relationship where we are the buyers and therefore theoretically we should have the stronger hand, but when it comes to West Asia we are really benefiting from the relationship. So we are more vulnerable for economic pressures and this particular case I think pragmatism of the kind that we need to also protect our economic interests with the older position of what is India's traditional position on such issues that it is against colonialism, it's against the occupation of West Bank, I think both have combined. At the same time we have Netanyahu visiting India in January and although this visit was planned since before but in the light of this decision on Jerusalem, this becomes almost like the first endorsement from a third state of what is happening in Jerusalem. So I'm wondering if this gives any kind of confusing message and goes against India's interest like you said in West Asia because it definitely did vote against the US, but soon after that Netanyahu is going to be in a visit and we saw the sort of cozying up, should I say when Modi visited Tel Aviv and this is kind of this visit back kind of a thing. So don't you think this is then going to give or rather give a contradictory message to the same that India might have thought of preserving given the UN vote? Well I think India's calculation would be that we are buying so much arms from Israel so we are really buying them off if you will. So we don't really have much to worry about what can Israel retaliate against us not selling us arms. Well that would not be too bad a thing for Indian military in the long run you will have indigenous industry. A lot of people have complained that we have given our industrial future particularly in the in terms of self-reliance in armaments and give by handing it over to Israel at least the significant sectors of it and we also know that Israeli armaments industry is extremely corrupt and is a corrupting influence. There have been various cases in Israel on that itself and we also have cases in India against Israeli companies for which they have been blacklisted in the past. So I do think, I don't think Israel has leveraged. I think on this India has leveraged therefore the fact that they are going to say come we are friends and so on. Netanyahu has very little wiggle room on that count. I do think that a part of it is ideological that it's really a part of the Islamophobia of this government by which they think Israel and the United States and its war on terror a sort of ideological counterparts to its own position internally which of course they don't say publicly. Point is that it is very difficult for India to lose by taking a position against Israel but they certainly have a lot to lose by not taking a position which is according to international law. So Praveen you've outlined how the business interests interests don't really dictate that India should go with Israel in the way that it portrays itself to go. At the same time Indian media are constantly portrays this relationship as one of necessity for India while as you've pointed out there is actually an ideological aspect to it. So how do you think this image that has been portrayed in media can be addressed or responded to? I think the bigger problem is in the media itself. Today media, big media is very much a part of big capital okay and therefore the interests of big capital dictates what their media will do. That's one of the reasons why over a period of time we see media moving much more to the right A and also becoming much more shall we say manufacturing news in the interest of capital and not taking into account what the people want or the people may feel. Israel being a big arm seller has also a lot of clout with a lot of Indian companies who want to now line up for collaboration agreements and these collaboration agreements therefore also drive what they're interested in. They are the ones who are making the payoffs to big media houses. I would suspect that this is not even this innocent that they're only playing only to interest the big capital but there is also a degree of corruption within the media that there are other perks advertisements from Israeli companies various other things which are also behind. The reason that media today does not want to talk about Palestine but it's primary news is Israel and how good it is for India. So I think there is a bigger problem we have in the media which you need to address. Thank you Praveen. Thank you for joining us. This is all for today. Please do follow us on our Facebook page, YouTube channel and our website newsclick.in