CFI Honorary President Lord Polak CBE and founding Chairman of CF India Lord Popat today met with Israeli Ambassador H.E. Mark Regev and Indian High Commissioner H.E. Y.K. Sinha to celebrate trilateral ties between the UK, Israel and India as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Israel this week.
In their meeting, the peers and diplomats welcomed Prime Minister Modi’s landmark visit, the first to Israel by an Indian Prime Minister, and discussed how to deepen the already extensive cooperation between the three countries in sectors including trade, defence, health and technology.
The strong relationship between the two countries in recent years has led to Prime Minister Modi’s administration not supporting a number of anti-Israel resolutions in the United Nations, joining the UK which has expressed “enduring disappointment” with the UN Human Rights Council’s “bias against Israel”.
In light of the visit, Lord Polak and Lord Popat have co-authored an op-ed published in the Jewish News this week, where they hail Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Israel as a “celebration of democracy” and praise the “strong bond” between Hindu and Jewish communities in the UK.
The Conservative peers write that both Israel and India stand to make “huge strides” by deepening bilateral ties, with India’s utilisation of Israeli tech to improve its farming methods, and Israel’s gains as India’s second largest defence supplier. Read the full article here.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warmly welcomed the Indian Prime Minister to Israel yesterday, underlining the “close cooperation and deepest friendship” between the two countries and describing the “bond of democracy and creativity… deep respect for the past and a boundless optimism for the future” shared by the two “sister democracies”.
In the first day of Prime Minister Modi’s visit, the Indian leader laid a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and paid his respects at the grave of Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism.
This morning, the Indian Prime Minister met with President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Netanyahu this morning and will meet a Jewish victim of a terror attack as part of his packed three-day itinerary.
