
It’s used to project western power into the region. Originally this was used by France, who was initially Israel’s closest ally. But after France lost Algeria, its interest in middle eastern affairs decreased. So Israel needed to find a new western backer, and it went to the United States.
The West set up many such states during decolonization, South Korea, a pacified and neutered Japan, South Vietnam, etc.. in a world where hostile invasion of another country was discouraged after WW2 Israel and Pakistan are the most egregious of them since those involved carving out lines through existing ethnic boundaries and transplanting a foreign population over that later genocided the natives.
I think it’s important to note that Zionism existed as a project independent of the interests of the western states. Zionist militias had been actively at war against Britain because they saw it as too pro-Arab and an obstacle to the creation of Israel. Yes the UN partitioned Palestine, but the Zionists were already there, armed, and active.
I read some stuff on it and the British partitions of Palestine and colonial India are extremely similar. My old roommate is a Bangladeshi immigrant and he talked about how his parents fled a genocide in 1971 which is probably one of the worse genocides I’ve read about which the US were aware of and allied with that country. The Indian independence leaders were socialists and anticolonialists so it’s no wonder that Britain carved out a proxy to leave the subcontinent destabilized
An Indian federation with republics like the structure of Russia with a democracy would have been the ideal scenario for the region bc it’s so diverse. The partition itself made religious divisions worse and made it a political issue. These divisions set the seeds for the rise of the extreme forms of Islam and Hindu nationalist consolidation that we see in the continent today
Yes, the rise of extreme Hindu nationalism specifically as encouraged by the right wing BJP is extremely alarming. Modi is a horrible person who ignored the massacre of Muslims in the state he governed, Gujarat, before he was PM. And religious tensions have long been a source of violent conflict in India, especially during the conversion era of the Mughal Empire