In recent years, much fanfare has accompanied the “bromance” between Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu — and the nationalist leaders’ intensification of the long-developing pact between their countries. Now Azad Essa’s new book, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, brilliantly traces the history of their “strategic partnership.”

Israel today has a far-right government whose leadership is known for celebrating the murder of Palestinian babies at weddings. US military support still continues apace, to the tune of $38 billion in the current decade. Yet, as academic Saree Makdisi points out, support for Israel among Europe’s liberal elites has become harder to justify. Indeed, the Israeli state’s brazen racist violence against Palestinians has shattered liberal Zionism’s attempted “disavowal” of Israeli apartheid, founded on settler colonialism.

No such problem appears to trouble the current India-Israel alliance, which is no longer restrained by India’s historical stance of outward support for Palestine. The Hindu nationalist Modi government’s partnership with Israel is going from strength to strength, not only in the arms trade and cybersecurity, but also in the realm of agriculture and water. There is tangible US support for such an alliance through the I2U2 trade and security pact, so named with respect to the involvement of India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States, also known as the West Asia Quad.