One day before foreign and defence ministers of India and the United States in Delhi last week jointly “expressed their support for humanitarian pauses” in Israel’s war in Gaza—but not an end to the conflict—New Delhi voted in favour of a UN General Assembly resolution condemning “Israeli settlements” in “Occupied Palestinian Territory”.

Certainly, the anti-Israel vote at the UN is to address the growing, but still largely unspoken, sentiment in India that Israel’s war against the Palestinians in Gaza has become revengeful. What else would you call the bombing of hospitals, schools, and UN compounds—ostensibly because Hamas fighters are hiding somewhere beneath those buildings? More than 11,000 people have been killed in fighting over the last month.