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What India’s New Security Paradigm Means for Israel
An Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane lands at the Ben Gurion International airport in Lod, near Tel Aviv, Israel, March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Indian strategic restraint was designed to prevent escalation with Pakistan. In practice, it did the opposite. Terror groups backed by Pakistan’s security agencies exploited the firebreak between terrorism and state aggression, on the assumption that India would avoid decisive retaliation or cross-border action. Limited responses produced predictable patterns, and predictability invited more violence.
India has replaced this framework with a doctrine of compellence. Major attacks are now treated as acts of war. This principle was made explicit during Operation Sindoor, when the Prime Minister announced that major terrorist attacks would be answered as acts of war rather than treated as matters for law enforcement. The government no longer waits for lengthy attribution cycles or international pressure before acting. Pre-emption is considered a sovereign right. During Operation Sindoor, India struck early and deep, using long-range fire, drone swarms, loitering munitions, and real-time fused intelligence. The operation broke the old template and signaled a permanent doctrinal change.
The end of strategic restraint
This evolution is institutional, not episodic. Indian deterrence is now pattern-based rather than event-based, signaling that retaliation is now to be expected rather than debated. Public expectations help shape policy, and citizens expect retaliation rather than investigation. The political reality, in which national strategy is tied to public sentiment, narrows the space for restraint.
The shift extends beyond military action. During the 2025 ceasefire discussions with Pakistan, Delhi rejected all external mediation. That was not a negotiating tactic. It was the expression of a new doctrine. India now treats crises with Pakistan as regionally internal and prefers direct communication between the Directors General of Military Operations, the top operational military officers on each side. Outside involvement is kept at a minimum to preserve freedom of maneuver and crisis ownership.
Treaties under conditional legitimacy
India’s approach to treaties has changed as well, reflecting the same shift toward coercive clarity. The suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty, a 1960 agreement that divided the rivers of the Indus basin and survived multiple wars, marked the first time a resource-sharing treaty was used as coercive leverage in South Asia. The shift echoed earlier remarks by Indian leaders that blood and water cannot flow together, a formulation now reflected in policy rather than rhetoric. For decades, arrangements like this were treated as stabilizing anchors meant to insulate both countries from conflict. India no longer accepts that premise. Water, airspace, and border-management agreements now survive only if they reinforce India’s security narrative.
The same logic applies to the Shimla Agreement of 1972, which committed India and Pakistan to resolve disputes bilaterally. Once a cornerstone of India’s diplomatic posture, it now carries less weight because it places more constraints on India than on Pakistan.
India continues to declare a No First Use nuclear policy, but political leaders have introduced deliberate ambiguity about how that commitment should be interpreted in a rapidly changing threat environment. What was once a doctrine of assured retaliation is evolving toward assured punishment, a formulation that narrows the room for adversary miscalculation while maintaining rhetorical restraint. Precision conventional strikes now operate close to Pakistan’s nuclear command-and-control infrastructure, compressing the conventional–nuclear firebreak. New capabilities such as MIRVs (canisterized missiles kept at higher readiness) and routine SSBN patrols show that India’s deterrent is no longer merely symbolic. It is becoming a readiness-oriented system in which technology and doctrine are evolving together.
India has also redefined its counterterrorism doctrine. Proxy groups are treated as instruments of hostile state policy, not as deniable actors operating in a grey zone. Zero tolerance refers not only to the occurrence of terrorism but to the continued existence of the networks that enable it. India now views the broader ecosystem surrounding terrorist groups as a legitimate set of targets.
A final dimension is often overlooked. China is the silent second audience for India’s choices. Signals meant for Pakistan carry an implied message for Beijing. India’s interception of Chinese-origin PL-15 air-to-air missiles and successful defeat of Pakistan’s Chinese-supplied air defense systems during Operation Sindoor provided valuable intelligence on Chinese weapons design and vulnerabilities. India’s new deterrence logic is built for a two-front environment in which actions in one direction have consequences in the other.
What emerges is a picture of a state transforming under fire. India is not becoming reckless; it is becoming coherent. It is aligning doctrine, public expectations, defense industrial capacity, and geopolitical messaging around a single principle. Security must be achieved by India, not granted through outside mediation or constrained by outdated assumptions.
Despite these shifts, several structural constraints remain unchanged. India continues to face significant intelligence gaps, limited real-time ISR coverage along key sectors, and persistent bureaucratic friction in inter-service coordination. The political leadership remains sensitive to the costs of prolonged conflict, and the military is deeply cautious about simultaneous commitments on two fronts. These enduring limitations serve as a crucial reminder that doctrinal evolution does not eliminate operational friction.
Not all members of India’s strategic community concur with this trajectory. Several scholars argue that a posture centered on rapid retaliation and pre-emption may, in practice, erode crisis stability rather than strengthen it, particularly without sustained reforms in civil-military coordination and decision-making. Moreover, Pakistan’s domestic fragility, decentralized proxy networks, and continued reliance on nuclear signaling introduce significant uncertainty. These structural conditions suggest that India’s increasingly assertive doctrine will not necessarily yield predictable adversary behavior and may interact with Pakistani vulnerabilities in destabilizing ways.
A coherent but high-stakes doctrine
This shift is not without risks. A posture built on pre-emption and rapid retaliation compresses decision time on both sides, increasing the danger of misinterpretation or premature escalation. Pattern-based deterrence assumes intent can be accurately discerned, but intelligence failures or political pressure could easily prompt India to act on incomplete signals. The erosion of stabilizing agreements such as the Indus Waters Treaty and the weakening of the Shimla framework remove guardrails that once shaped crisis behavior. Greater strategic autonomy gives India more room to maneuver, but also narrows the margin for error in a nuclearized environment.
There is also a diplomatic cost. India’s rejection of external mediation strengthens its claim to sovereign crisis management, but reduces the number of actors capable of de-escalating a crisis once it begins. Washington’s traditional stabilizing role will become more constrained, while Beijing may interpret India’s new doctrine through its own rivalry calculus, tightening the two-front dynamic India seeks to manage. Assertiveness delivers clarity, but can also prompt counter-moves that make South Asia more volatile, not less.
Implications for Israel
These shifts matter for Israel. India’s new deterrence posture — explicitly rejecting nuclear blackmail, collapsing the line between proxy terror and state responsibility, and demonstrating a willingness to strike early and with precision — mirrors many of the principles Israel has relied on for decades. Both states face adversaries that use terrorism as a strategic tool under the umbrella of nuclear ambiguity.
India’s performance in Sindoor, especially its defeat of Chinese-origin PL-15 missiles and HQ-9/P air defenses, provides operational insights that are directly relevant to Israel, as Chinese technology expands across the Middle East. The emerging convergence is not rhetorical; it is doctrinal. India’s willingness to impose costs on an ecosystem that enables terrorism, and to do so without waiting for external validation, opens new avenues for Israel-India strategic coordination.
India has written a new playbook, and the world needs to pay attention.
Dr. Lauren Dagan Amos is a member of the Deborah Forum, a lecturer and a researcher in the Department of Political Science and the Security Studies Program at Bar-Ilan University. She specializes in Indian foreign policy.
John Spencer is Chair of War Studies at the Madison Policy Forum and Executive Director of the Urban Warfare Institute. He served 25 years as an infantry soldier, including two combat tours in Iraq. He is author of the book Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connections in Modern War and coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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Feds say Cisco likely failed to protect pro-Palestinian workers from harassment
(JTA) — Cisco Systems likely violated the civil rights of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees, a federal agency has found, after employees were subjected to harassing messages — some of them posted by employees in an internal forum called the Connected Jewish Network.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined in June that there was “reasonable cause to believe” Cisco subjected the employees to a hostile work environment based on their national origin, religion or association in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The determination follows on media reports and an EEOC probe into an ugly climate at the tech company following the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly attacks by Hamas on southern Israel. Pro-Palestinian employees called on the company to end its business dealings with Israel, while Jewish employees said the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees.
The EEOC case, however, turned in part on messages shared in the internal Connected Jewish Network forum. A complaint filed by Legal Aid at Work, which represented the Muslim and pro-Palestinian employees, said employees on the Jewish forum had “repeatedly glorified violence, joked about sending people to their deaths” and “labeled Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as murderous, violent, terrorists.”
“This is a massive multinational corporation with all the resources in the world and they couldn’t get it right,” Christopher Ho, a director at Legal Aid at Work, told the Guardian, which reported on the EEOC finding last month. “Thankfully the EEOC did.”
Ho said Cisco had “at best failed to take their harassment seriously” and through its inaction had sent “the implicit message that its pro-Palestinian employees were unworthy of protection.”
The letter is not a binding ruling, and both sides said the EEOC has indicated it will not sue. The finding could nonetheless strengthen employees’ cases if they pursue their own lawsuits. The employees are considering collective and individual litigation, according to media reports.
The case examines the period after a group of mostly Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees called Bridge to Humanity circulated an open letter urging Cisco to end its business dealings with the Israeli military. More than 1,700 employees signed the letter. The employees said they were subsequently subjected to racist and Islamophobic harassment.
In August 2024, employees — including some concerned Jewish employees — filed a 76-page ethics complaint accusing more than a dozen colleagues of creating a hostile work environment through posts on the Connected Jewish Network, which was visible to all company employees, according to the Guardian.
The episode was not one-sided. Wired magazine, in a 2024 investigation into the dispute, reported that some Jewish Cisco employees also believed the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees. One former employee told the magazine that Cisco leadership could have done more to “reduce the mess across the board.”
Legal Aid at Work believes this is the first EEOC finding against a major tech company involving discrimination against workers engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Since the Oct. 7 attacks, the EEOC has made combating workplace antisemitism a major policy and enforcement priority, with scrutiny on academia and the private sector increasing under the Trump administration.
Cisco has disputed the EEOC’s determination, saying it had “thoroughly investigated all concerns and took appropriate action.” The company previously said it had removed some comments, issued discipline warnings and provided coaching to multiple employees.
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Mahmoud Khalil sues Columbia University citing ‘hostile environment’ for pro-Palestinian students
Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian Columbia University alum who was detained by the Trump administration last year, is suing his alma mater along with an Israeli dean of the school he attended for facilitating a “hostile environment” for pro-Palestinian students.
Khalil became a national symbol of the campus pro-Palestinian protest movement when he was detained in March 2025 after the government accused him of being aligned with terrorists. On Monday, he filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court accusing the school of engaging in months-long “deliberate indifference” toward the harassment of pro-Palestinian students on campus, including at the hands of right-wing pro-Israel groups.
He contends that Columbia’s alleged indifference ultimately helped to lead to his 104-day detention by federal immigration authorities, during which he missed the birth of his first child, before being released after a federal judge ruled his detainment was likely unconstitutional. He is joined in the suit by members of the School of International and Public Affairs Palestine Working Group, a pro-Palestinian student group on campus.
“Columbia laid the groundwork for my targeting by the Trump administration through its deliberate indifference and discrimination aimed at intimidating Palestinian students,” Khalil told reporters at a press conference in New York on Monday.
SIPA’s Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo speaks during a book talk for Fareed Zakaria’s new book, “Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs on April 3, 2024 in New York City. (Shahar Azran/Getty Images)
In addition to the university, the suit also names Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, who is Israeli-American, as a defendant. The complaint says that Yahi-Milo had unfairly accused Khalil, while a student in the school, of antisemitism and harassment.
In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Columbia representatives defended Yarhi-Milo in general terms.
“Throughout her time at Columbia and during her service as dean, Dean Yarhi-Milo has worked with and supported students of all backgrounds, including our Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students,” the statement reads. “The University is grateful for her tireless efforts on behalf of our students and her commitment to a campus free of discrimination and harassment.”
Columbia representatives declined to comment further on the lawsuit but said that “creating a campus environment where every member of our community feels welcome, supported, and safe is fundamental to who we are as a university. It is also a responsibility we take seriously.”
A leading figure of the encampment movement that began at Columbia before spreading to schools across the country, Khalil was the first pro-Palestinian student protest leader to be detained by the Trump administration and spent months in an immigrant detention center despite holding a green card.
In the months since a federal judge ordered his release, Khalil has filed a number of lawsuits, including against pro-Israel groups that he said “conspired” with the government to target him. He has also sued Columbia before, for disclosing student records as part of a congressional investigation.
Khalil’s latest lawsuit against Columbia claims the school violated Title VI protections for him and his fellow plaintiffs based on their ethnic identity, national origin or “affiliation with Palestine.” The lawsuit invokes the same federal civil rights law that Jewish and Israeli students have used in discrimination claims against universities, some of which have resulted in settlements.
Columbia itself signed a controversial agreement with the Trump administration last year to resolve federal civil rights investigations, paying $221 million and agreeing to a number of concessions in order to free up hundreds of millions in federal funding. During his press conference Monday, Khalil called such settlements “disgraceful.”
The suit notes that, as a student, Khalil called Yarhi-Milo “genocidal” in a message to fellow students. The suit then describes a subsequent internal university investigation into Khalil as “unfounded and retaliatory,” and claims the school “repeatedly launched meritless allegations of antisemitism against Mr. Khalil” prior to his federal detention.
During the press conference, Khalil accused Yahi-Milo of being someone who “weaponizes her identity to shield herself from legitimate concerns and criticism.” Khalil added, “Her priority has never been her students, me and my fellow students here. Her priority has always been Israel.”
The lawsuit’s examples of indifference include a claim that Columbia failed to intervene when a right-wing group, Accuracy in Media, labeled some of the members of Palestine Working Group as “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites” in messages on the side of trucks driven near campus for months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. The group had targeted pro-Palestinian students in a similar fashion at several campuses.
Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia who is Jewish, spoke at the press conference in support of Khalil, whom he called a friend. “We all see how the university’s anti-Palestinian racism has directly endangered its students,” said Howley, who wore a Jews for Racial and Economic Justice hat and a “Not In Our Name” shirt. “I won’t be wasting any more time on town halls or listening sessions or imagining anything.”
In a statement to JTA, Accuracy in Media president Adam Guillette said his group “uses publicly available information, and we are steadfastly opposed to doxxing. We pledge to continue delivering accountability to pro-Hamas radicals across the country.”
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Ed Sheeran says it wasn’t his call to drop Macklemore over ‘Free Palestine’ remarks
(JTA) —
Pop superstar Ed Sheeran said he wasn’t behind his tour’s recent decision to drop opening act Macklemore following the rapper’s recent pro-Palestinian remarks at a stadium show.
“I am not complicit,” Sheeran wrote in a statement on Instagram Tuesday, saying that Macklemore leaving the tour “was the promoter’s decision, it was not mine.” These were his first public words on the controversy that has gathered steam over the last 24 hours.
Hours after Sheeran’s comments, three of his other supporting acts announced they would be leaving his tour. All three acts — Aaron Rowe, Beoga and Finneas — posted pro-Palestinian solidarity statements to Instagram in their announcements.
Sheeran’s own note added, “I am appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine.” The British singer-songwriter wrote that he had been “involved in direct talks” between Robert Kraft and various promoters “to try and find a mutual resolution for all.”
Kraft, the Jewish and pro-Israel billionaire who owns one of the stadiums where Sheeran and Macklemore had been scheduled to play, said on Monday that he had told Sheeran’s team that Macklemore wouldn’t be allowed to perform there.
In his own statement to JTA, Kraft had said that Macklemore’s recent performance at New Jersey’s MetLife stadium, at which the rapper accused Israel of genocide and broadcast images from Gaza, “has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community.” Pop star Pink, who is Jewish, also criticized Macklemore following the performance.
Sheeran didn’t mention Jews in his statement, but noted, “I have always used my platform and music to bring people from all backgrounds and cultures together and this won’t ever change.”
US rapper, singer, dancer and DJ, Benjamin Haggerty, known as Macklemore, performs at the Goldencoast Rap Festival in Corcelles-les-Monts, near Dijon, central-eastern France, on August 30, 2026. (Arnaud Finistre / AFP via Getty Images)
He also had some veiled criticism of his tourmate’s methods. “Those who come to my shows do not expect a political forum,” Sheeran wrote. “I respect Macklemore’s strength of purpose to stand up for what he believes. However, there is room for multiple approaches to the same end: peace… If we only focus on shouting the loudest, nothing will ever change.”
The other acts who announced they were leaving Sheeran’s tour didn’t agree. Some had strong words for Kraft and Zionism.
“As Irish people we know all too well about genocide, forced famine and violent occupation,” Rowe wrote in his own statement. “I cannot stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power to silence the rightful voices of those who speak up against Israeli genocide and who highlight the savage murder of children.”
“It’s important that everyone knows that the real enemy is the zionist lobby,” Beoga, also an Irish act, wrote in the band’s own statement. “Research how much Robert Kraft has done to fight the BDS movement. That will give you a sense of what we’ve all been up against.”
In a shorter statement, Finneas said, “Artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed.” He added, “I stand with Palestine and its people.”
The Israeli-American Council, which organized a boycott against Macklemore following his New Jersey show, criticized Sheeran from the other direction in a new statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“It’s time to take responsibility for giving a stage to antisemitic messaging,” the IAC said, of Sheeran. “This isn’t just ‘criticism of Israel.’ It’s a message that crosses the line between legitimate political criticism and antisemitism. This is Ed Sheeran’s stage, it’s the tour that carries his name — and so the responsibility for what happens on it is his too.”
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