A slightly related item on Israel and the Muslim states.

Submitted by Prashant, Feb 8, 2018 at 23:11

Dear Dr Pipes, I will invite you and your readers to look at the path taken by Israel bound planes leaving India. Funny things are happening in my nook of the world. On the one hand Israel and India are realizing that they are two democracies in a very difficult and neighborhood of the world and so are coming closer and, on the other, they are both suffering at the hand of Islamists' continuous onslaught. And, in this milieu recently direct flights were started between some Indian and Israeli cities.

These flights better be direct because no country in between (countries like Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, our very dear Afghanistan) will allow these planes to land on their airports. Actually, forget about landing! The brotherly peace-loving nations between India and Israel do not even allow Indian and Israeli passenger flights to use their airspace. You would normally expect that a plane leaving Mumbai in India will fly north-west until it reaches the holy land but that is not the case. Planes flying from Mumbai to Jerusalem go directly westward and keep flying over the ocean until you get scared. They keep going on and on and on and they suddenly take a 90-degrees right turn and fly over the red sea and somehow find their way into Israel. The flight that should normally take about 5 hours takes more than 7 hours and if you are taking the flight first time it takes nearly 4 hours into the flight before you to realize what is going on.

Just so all your readers know.

Prashant

PS: Like the USA, currently India also has a strong and conservative administration. As recently as last week Indian government won some concessions from Saudi Arabia. Now the flights from India to and from Israel are allowed to use some of Saudi Arabian airspace. KSA deserves thanks for this new development.

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