An Indian Jewish POW in Pakistan ?

pagan · 01-02-2009, 05:13 AM

Flight Lieutenant Lloyd Moses Sasoon was born on July 15, 1942 in Bombay (now known as Mumbai), India. He came from one of the three Jewish communities of India, the Baghdadi. The Baghdadi community consisted of Jews from West Asia, mainly from Baghdad, who came from time to time in the 19th century as traders or as
Sasoon was commissioned in the Indian Air Force (IAF) on June 22nd, 1963.
seekers of fortune under the patronage of individuals who had preceded them, and who established large business houses or industrial establishments.

This community also produced some of Indian cinema's earliest female actors. These Jews were collectively known as Baghdadis, though several of them came not from Baghdad itself but from other Iraqi cities, or Syria, Yemen, Iran and Afghanistan. They settled mainly in Mumbai and Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta), though a few settled also in Pune, Maharashtra.

Sasoon was commissioned in the Indian Air Force (IAF) on June 22nd, 1963. In 1971 a war broke out between India and Pakistan. During the night of December 4th and 5th, 1971, Indian Canberras struck Pakistani airfields, both in the west and in the east (now Bangladesh). In thirty-five missions, 202 1,000-pound bombs were dropped. Eight Canberras attacked Masroor airfields from 20:30 onwards.

The first Indian bomber casualties of the 1971 war occurred on this night, when two of the Canberras failed to return after raids over Mianwali and Masroor. Canberra IF-916 on the Mianwali raid was apparently intercepted by a Mirage, while the Masroor aircraft (IF-923) was believed to have been hit by ack-ack (anti-aircraft) fire.

The first Canberra bomber launched on the night between December 4th and 5th 1971 against Pakistani airfields and installations had Flt. Lts. L. M. Sasoon and R. M. Advani as the crew. Mission 135 had as its target the heavily defended Pakistani airfield of Mianwali with a TOT (time over target) of 20:00. Their launching base was Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal, with the north-Indian town of Ambala as a staging base.

Four Canberras struck Mianwali in Punjab, Pakistan. While Mission 135 failed to return, all the remaining aircraft successfully attacked the targets in spite of the heavy fire reported by the crews. They encountered no air-opposition from the Pakistanis, but Mission 135 was apparently brought down by an enemy interceptor over Mianwali.

At the very time when Mission 135 was attacking Mianwali, Flt. Lt. P. S. Negi and Flight Officer R. S. Cheema of 35 Squadron, also based at Agra, were attacking Sargodha Airfield. Fg. Offr. (now Group Captain) R. S. Cheema, VM recalls:

Flt. Lt. Sasoon had decided to give his name as "Shanti" in case he was captured.

From IP onwards and particularly when we pulled up to 7,000 feet I could see the ack-ack firing from Sargodha airfield. In fact, the tracer acted as a beacon for us. One could align exactly along the runway with reference to its barrage ack-ack fire. There was no air opposition over Sargogha airfield. We dropped eight 1,000 lbs bombs over the airfield. [We] descended comfortably to 500 feet AGL (above ground level) and headed home for recovery base. During the entire duration we heard no calls from Mission 135, which was air-borne at the same time. Both Sasoon and Advani were highly competent and thorough professionals. But their tragic loss did not deter us or affect our morale in any way. We later started calling the bombing missions to Pakistani targets routine 'milk runs'.

The Indian authorities were later informed by the government of Pakistan that an aircraft had crashed near Khushab on December 4, between 20:00 and 20:30. The wreckage was located at the village of Nana, 15 to 18 miles from Khushab. The pilot and navigator were both killed, and their bodies were buried at the site.

However, a Pakistani radio broadcast of 21:30 on December 5, 1971, reported that a Flt. Lt. Shanti had been captured. It is known that Flt. Lt. Sasoon had decided to give his name as "Shanti" in case he was captured. Flt. Lt. Sasoon is still on the list of persons "Missing in Pakistan", and his wife Sylvia Sasoon still waits for him.

While Pakistan continues to maintain that there are no Indian prisoners of war in its jails, India believes that there are at least fifty-one.

http://www.interfaithstrength.com/images/POW.htm

pagan · 01-08-2009, 02:44 AM

There are several reasons why this is the perfect time for India to enter into a strong alliance with Israel:

Chanakyan theory of statecraft
Certain similarities that make them compatible in the 'clash of civilisations'
A realisation by Indians that Israeli concerns are valid
The rabid opposition of India's Marxists

Theoretically, there is thus good reason for India to ally herself with Israel. There is also an eminently practical reason: the stark reality is that India and Israel are the only two states that are actively resisting being overwhelmed in a giant Islamic crescent ranging from West Africa to Indonesia. And we are the only two states that have the fundamental religious foundations to resist dhimmitude.

There are a number of other similarities: for instance the issue of 'holy sites' in Palestine and in Ayodhya. Furthermore, it is amazing how the antediluvian Marxists around the world despise both Hinduism and Judaism; but they are quite happy to be water-carriers for Islamism in contrast. Little do the Marxists realise that they will be the first to be liquidated in an Islamist State. This is much like black Muslims in the US who do not appreciate the irony that their ancestors were enslaved by Muslim slave traders who rounded them up and frog-marched them in chains to board waiting European ships.

The whole issue of the primal rights to the land in Palestine, in particular in Jerusalem, is quite tortuous. The American scholar Daniel Pipes suggests convincingly that Jerusalem in fact was not a major holy site for Muslims. It is not mentioned even once in the Koran, says Pipes. Muslims claim that the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem (also the Temple Mount, Judaism's most sacred spot) is where their Prophet descended to after going to heaven. However, that spot was only referred to as the Far Mosque, and its alleged association with Jerusalem is recent.

It is true that Judaism is very much in the fire-and-brimstone tradition of the desert, and therefore philosophically the opposite of the far more humane tradition of the forest, which suffuses all the Indic faiths. However, it is also true that Hindus and Jews have suffered most grievously from the excesses of Islamic and Christian dogma and belligerence. Because of this, both also turned inwards: thus the ossification of caste in Hinduism and the Orthodox Jews' strict rules about how Jewishness is only inherited through the mother.

Despite all this, there is one incredible fact that almost all Jews I know recognise: that out of 148 nations in which Jews have lived, they were oppressed in 147 of them, and the sole exception is India. For instance, the Jews of Cochin landed in 72 CE at the great port of Muziris (Kodungalloor) on the Malabar Coast. Joseph Rabban was elevated to chieftain of the village of Anjuvannam achandrataram -- so long as the moon and stars exist -- by King Bhaskara Ravi Varman around 1000 CE. I know a lady named Esther, a white woman with bright red hair, who wears a sari and speaks immaculate Malayalam, as she should: her ancestors have lived unmolested in Kerala for 2,000 years, since the destruction of their Second Temple!

Young Israelis come by the thousands to India after their compulsory military service these days. Locals in Hampi and McLeodganj and Dharamsala may complain about their 'raves', but it must be a wonderful experience for these youngsters to know that there exists a land where they are not hated just for being Jews.

Furthermore, there was an extremely interesting offer from Israel in the early 1980s. Just after they bombed and destroyed Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981, the Israelis contacted India and asked for cooperation in likewise destroying Pakistan's reactors at Kahuta. They only needed refueling facilities for their planes, and permission to use Indian airspace. Of course, the Nehruvian Stalinists in power in India at the time were horrified: whatever would our Arab friends think! In hindsight, bombing Kahuta then would have set back Pakistan's 'Islamic Bomb,' although their kind friend China would still have given them the components for screwdriver assembly.

As predatory and missionary desert faiths continue to impose themselves on all the peoples of the world, it is important for the Jews and Hindus, both victims, to stand by and support each other. It is indeed a clash of civilisations.

There is also the growing realisation by many Indians that they have been led up the garden path by all the rhetoric about Palestinians. Nehruvian Stalinists justify the loud breast-beating they indulge in about Palestinians on several grounds:

Compassion for 'suffering' peoples
The warmth Arabs will feel if India supports Palestinians
Opposition to colonialism/European imperialism
In point of fact, Palestinians do not deserve support from Indians on any of these grounds.

Compassion: Palestinians swamp the media with their comparative victimhood. Yet there are plenty of others more deserving of compassion. After all, charity begins at home. Consider the ethnically cleansed Kashmiri Pandits, rotting away in refugee camps. Or consider the Hindus of Bangladesh: literally every day I hear about yet another atrocity committed, most often gang rapes and murders, or abductions and forcible conversions, of young Hindu women. Why is it that all the champions of the Palestinian cause in India have no tears for these people, our own? Why aren't they assailing Pakistan and Bangladesh? Indians need to rally around the slogan: 'Let my people live!'
Arab goodwill for India: This is laughable. What has India got to show for its pains in supporting Palestine? Nothing, nada, zilch! As Americans might ask, 'What have the Arabs done for us lately?' The only Arabs who were even half-way decent to us were the Iraqis. All the other Arabs despise Indians. In fact, most Arabs don't even have much goodwill for Palestinians, else they would have helped them rebuild their lives, instead of forcing them to live as refugees and using them as jihadi cannon-fodder
Anti-imperialism: This is a throwback to the days of the despicable NAM, when Nehru and company used to feel self-important as the 'leaders' of a bunch of banana republics. But the time for all this inane rhetoric is far gone. What is happening in Israel and Palestine is not imperialism, but the struggles of a numerically small civilisation to avoid being swamped by violent neighbours. And these neighbours have the full support of the world's Leftist media: remember the godawful fuss they made about 'Jeningrad', until it was shown to be a fabrication, special delivery for the television cameras of gullible networks?
I too at some point in my impressionable youth swallowed the Indian media rhetoric about Palestinians. There were some Palestinians at the IIT Madras, who had tales of teenage years spent cradling AK-47s fighting against an implacable enemy, a coloniser, a continuation of the colonial European assault on Asia. Later I met Israelis at Stanford, and I used to harangue them about what terrible imperialists they were.

But slowly it occurred to me that the Jews were more sinned against than sinning, and I am sure I am not the only Indian who has come to this conclusion. Their motto after millennia of oppression, 'Never again!' holds resonance for Hindus. Today we are up against the same enemy: one that views us both literally as untermenschen, sub-human monsters, spawn of Satan, fit for nothing but slaughter; the moral equivalent of vermin, as whites in American classified Native Americans two centuries ago.

There are acts of barbarism that do take place in Israel's struggle to exist. Thus Ariel Sharon is rightly condemned as the Butcher of Sabra and Chattila refugee camps in Lebanon, when Israel's ally, the Christian Phalangist militia, went on a rampage against Palestinians. That is surely deplorable.

However, the very same people who condemn Sharon, the Marxists of India, are full of eulogies for Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. Do you know, gentle reader, that Sayeed is called the Butcher of Anantnag for his role in terrorising Kashmiri Hindus? Here's verbatim email I got from Kashmiri Pandits in response to my column The Perfect Con Job: The Kashmiri Loot of the Nation.

'The irony of seeing the butcher of Anantnag (when in 1985-86 riots in Anantnag Kashmiri Pandits suffered at the hands of Mufti's men) rise to become the CM of the state today is heart-wrenching. Mufti was at the helm of the KP massacre and lootings in Anantnag way before his 'boys' came into action in the Valley.'

'In 1986 there were anti-Hindu riots in south Kashmir. We the Hindus in Kashmir know that they were instigated by Mufti Sayeed. Reason: Central Govt. under Rajiv wanted to overthrow the GM Shah government. After the riots Central Rule was applied.'

'Mufti is the butcher of Anantnag. He orchestrated the Anantnag riots in early 1986. This single incident triggered the start of our exodus. And now, he is being rewarded with the CM-ship of the state. Only in India!'

For more details on the Anantnag riots, try the URL http://www.ikashmir.org/PastPresent/chapter16.html

So why are Indian Marxists so gung-ho about Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and not about Ariel Sharon? Their Chinese handlers must have told them that it is important to keep the Marxist-Islamist nexus going, and to keep India and Israel away from each other.

And that is the final reason: the major hue and cry raised by Marxists. Since by definition everything they want is anti-India and pro-China, it is an excellent reason to proceed forthwith with an Indo-Israeli tactical alliance. Clearly, that would be positive for India and negative for China (for instance the Phalcon and the future Arrow weapons deals).

http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/jun/20rajeev.htm