Screen grab from the Israeli news broadcast
An Israeli television anchor has claimed on a live broadcast that Israel has taken “all of India” and its 1.4 billion people to manufacture weapons for the country, the remarks which have gone viral in India and raised questions about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Israel and just days after New Delhi and Tel Aviv had agreed to jointly produce weapons and were finalising a free trade agreement.
i24 News anchor Sharon Gal made the claim during a panel discussion when a fellow panellist remarked that Israel had no production line, meaning it lacked a domestic manufacturing base for weapons being used in the ongoing war.
Gal swiftly shot back: “We do! In India. We took all of India.”
“Listen, we need one billion 400 million people to manufacture for us, for the entire world,” she said.
The panel also included Erez Winner, an expert on military and security affairs who works at the Israel Centre for Grand Strategy. Speaking on the ongoing war between the US, Israel and Iran, Winner said that unlike Israel’s alert system, which notifies citizens about the country’s security level, many Gulf countries that have come under retaliatory attack from Tehran are far less prepared.
“The other countries that were attacked throughout the Gulf, they don’t have any,” he said, referring to the absence of alert systems. He added that while some countries have no air defence at all, others that do have air defence lack any alert system.
Winner also said that Israeli security systems would be “very, very busy selling weapons systems in the coming years.”
Gal’s comments drew sharp reactions, with many Indians calling it embarrassing for India, while others questioned what his statement really meant.
“We took all of India, meaning?? What on earth does this mean? Are we an Israeli colony now?” a user wrote on X.
“What does this really mean? It sounds very embarrassing to be honest,” another said.
A third user said, “‘We took all of India.’ So say the Israelis after a visit from Modi. Is this India’s future? Being a weapons manufacturer for a racist, colonizing, apartheid state? What a betrayal of the enormous sacrifices our grandparents made in forcing a similar state to quit India.”
Gal’s remarks come against the backdrop of escalating tensions in the region following large-scale military strikes launched by the United States and Israel against Iran on Saturday, February 28, under “Operation Epic Fury” and “Operation Roaring Lion.”
Tehran has responded with “Operation True Promise 4,” launching waves of missiles and drones targeting Israeli territory and military bases across the region where US forces are stationed, raising fears of a broader regional conflagration.
This post was last modified on March 3, 2026 5:52 pm