‘India lone voice of silence’: Sonia slams govt for not calling out Israel’s ‘Gaza genocide’

NEW DELHI, June 27: In a blistering attack on the Modi government, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi on Saturday said its “stony silence” and “inaction” on Israel’s “Gaza genocide” are not just morally reprehensible but also inexplicable from a national interest perspective.
Gandhi, the Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson, claimed that India has alienated itself from its historical allies in Palestine, Iran, and the larger Middle East and has distanced itself from global public opinion, while letting Pakistan swoop in to claim the space of a mediator.
In an article for The Indian Express, Gandhi also termed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel ahead of the US-Israel joint attack on Iran a “bewildering strategic decision”.
This is the fourth article on West Asia within one year that Gandhi has penned. In March, she wrote a piece on the Iran war in which she said the Modi government’s silence on the targeted assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not neutral but an abdication, and raises serious doubts about the direction and credibility of India’s foreign policy.
In her latest article, the Congress leader said the spirit of Indian nationhood demands that it speaks up for Palestinians whose children have been so brutally targeted and the calculus of national interest demands that India respond to the global public opinion against the Israeli regime’s “genocidal actions” in Gaza and its “brutal displacement and dispossession of lakhs of Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank”.
“The Modi government’s continued silence simply cannot be explained rationally or morally,” she said in her article titled ‘India remains silent on Gaza, the world continues to speak up’.
In September 2025, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded that Israeli authorities were committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, she said.
In June 2026, the same commission – now headed by Justice (retired) S Muralidhar, a distinguished Indian jurist – has poignantly reiterated that Israeli actions are intended to destroy the very existence of the Palestinians in Gaza by targeting their children, Gandhi said.
“The 94-page report is a harrowing read, with grim details on the extent of the devastation perpetrated by Israel in Gaza and the genocidal intent underpinning its actions. At least 20,000 children have been killed, and another 44,000 have been wounded, many for life,” she said.
The targeting of children is not incidental, but a deliberate strategy, Gandhi asserted.
“Twenty-seven per cent of those killed or wounded have been children and many of the boys were found with bullets on the head and neck. Ninety-seven per cent of Gaza’s schools have been destroyed,” she said.
Healthcare infrastructure, including paediatric hospitals, has been destroyed, resulting in a 300 per cent increase in miscarriage and childbirth complications, Gandhi said.
In the two-and-a-half years since the “dastardly, horrific, and absolutely unacceptable attack” by Hamas on Israel, it has become clear that the retaliation of the Israeli armed forces and political leadership has been characterised by “wanton cruelty and barbarity”, she said.
“Senior Israeli leaders, down from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his senior cabinet colleagues themselves, have called for the ‘complete siege’ and ‘total annihilation’ of Gaza, denounced the Palestinians as ‘animals’ who have ‘no right to exist’, and defined success for Israel as ‘hundreds of thousands fleeing Gaza’,” Gandhi said.
Despite this clear “genocidal intent”, the support of President Donald Trump’s government in Washington DC has enabled the Israeli government to continue its “brutal campaign” against Palestinians, she said, adding that the rest of the world has felt the pricking of its conscience.
The UN has been unable to act with any resolve due to American obstruction, but through its agencies it has played a stellar role in the documentation of Israeli war crimes, she said.
Leading powers historically associated with the Western bloc – including France, the UK, Canada, and Australia – have recognised Palestinian statehood after decades of indifference to the Palestinian cause, she pointed out.South Africa, a country with which India has shared a long history of anti-colonial solidarity, has dragged Israel to the International Court of Justice for its violations of the Genocide Convention of 1948, Gandhi noted.She also pointed out that several European states have restricted arms sales to Israel, and several Latin American nations have downgraded or severed their ties with the country.
The International Criminal Court has even issued arrest warrants for the Israeli political leadership, she said. Justice Muralidhar’s report, which has sparked renewed conversation and activism against the Gaza genocide, has been met with “stony silence” from the Narendra Modi government, the former Congress chief said. Gandhi said India was historically exceptional among the nations of the world for our commitment to postcolonial solidarity, national sovereignty, and international peace. (PTI)