Suffolk University Government Professor Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch co-authored “How Identity Issues Keep India and Israel Apart” in Foreign Affairs, published by the Council on Foreign Relations. She and co-author Manjari Chatterjee Miller of Boston University analyzed relations between the two countries and the impact of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Israel.

They write that “India’s and Israel’s historic perceptions of colonial ideology and religious nationalism are at the root of their longstanding divergence.”

“If India and Israel grow closer, it could raise the once unthinkable possibility of trilateral cooperation among India, Israel, and the United States, and it could position India—which would no longer be seen as unquestionably pro-Palestine—as an honest broker in the Middle East peace process. But if the two countries are ever to become true strategic partners, such sensitive identity issues will need to fade.”

Hirsch teaches International Relations and Global Public Policy in Suffolk's Government Department. She is the author of several journal articles on truth and reconciliation commissions as well as “From Taboo to the Negotiable: The Israeli New Historians and the Changing Representation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem" in Perspectives on Politics.