Mumbai: Consul General of Israel in Mumbai, Yaniv Revach, on Wednesday said his country and India are not only fighting terrorists, but also false narrative wherein the attackers pretend to be the victims.
India and Israel marked the seventeenth anniversary of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks with a joint conference in Mumbai, where both countries emphasised the need for stronger cooperation against terrorism and highlighted new challenges, including the use of cryptocurrencies to fund extremist activities.
Revach, drew attention to one of the most widely recognised accounts from the 2008 attack, the rescue of 2-year-old Moshe Holtzberg from Chabad House. He highlighted the actions of two individuals who ensured Moshe’s survival. “One was his Christian nanny Samra, the other was Zaki, the Muslim kitchen worker. Both saved young Moshe while his parents were slaughtered in the other room,” he said.
Now 19, Moshe continues to be regarded as a symbol of resilience, a point Revach connected to recent events in Israel. He shared that his partner’s cousin had been kidnapped and murdered during the October 7 attack.
Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narvekar focused on the broad similarities between the two democracies. He emphasised that India and Israel, though separated geographically, have navigated parallel journeys as modern nations carved from long civilisational histories. “India and Israel are ancient civilisations reborn as modern nations. We inherited freedom but also the responsibility of protecting it in difficult neighbourhoods,” he said.
Narvekar pointed out that the forms of violence faced by both countries are driven by an ideology that treats diversity as a challenge and democratic freedoms as vulnerabilities.
The conference also examined how terrorism continues to evolve through new financial methods. Ella Rosenberg, senior fellow at the Jerusalem Centre for Security and Foreign Affairs, explained that extremist networks increasingly rely on digital currencies to move funds discreetly.
“You see one wallet transferring to another, but you do not see who stands behind it,” she said, noting that the anonymity associated with cryptocurrency platforms complicates enforcement. She argued that money laundering and terror financing now share “the same operational foundations,” making traditional regulatory tools insufficient.
The conference concluded with leaders reiterating that the two nations will continue to work together against conventional and digital forms of terrorism.
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