Why India switched sides on Israel-Palestine — and why it matters

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets with Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu in New Delhi, India, on February 25, 2026. | Press Information Bureau (PIB)/Anadolu via Getty Images

This past week, we got a vision of what the future of world politics might look like. And it wasn’t pretty.

The glimpse came during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel, in which he signed an expansive defense cooperation agreement and gave a speech to Israel’s parliament (called the Knesset).