General VK Singh said India could not be like Israel because of some people in the country.
Union Minister V K Singh on Wednesday took aim at everyone from members of the opposition, student leaders, journalists and actors, who, according to him, had held back India from becoming a state like Israel in taking down terrorists. In a sweeping Facebook post in Hindi, he attacked anybody criticising and questioning government and called for a "surgical strike" within India against these sections.
The former army chief wrote the post amid a fierce political fight between the government and opposition parties following the Indian Air Force strike in Pakistan's Balakot. While the government has claimed credit for having the spine to authorise the attack in avenge the Pulwama terror attack, opposition parties have demanded that the action not be politicised.
With the Air Force declining to officially release any figure on the number of terrorists killed, the opposition has also questioned government claims on the figure.
Upset at these questions, General Singh said India wanted revenge and expected Prime Minister Narendra Modi to enter Pakistan with a tank and finish off all Pakistanis.
"We want to be in Israel mode overnight. No, it won't happen. If Modi is there, I have expectation and faith that revenge will be taken. It will be fierce and 100 times more intense. But India cannot be Israel and will not be Israel," he said in the post written in Hindi.
And then he counted the reasons why he thinks India cannot become Israel.
From student leaders who were "like leeches" to media outlets that referred to terrorists as "militants", no one was spared.
"Because there is no JNU in Israel where youngsters can raise slogans in support of breaking the country," he said, in an apparent reference to the alleged anti-national protests in the university in February 2016.
Because no courts are opened for terrorists at 2 am in night and nor does journalists there "cry" for human rights of terrorists, he went on. He also targeted "actors who are ashamed of and see intolerance in the same country where they were born".
The country is supreme in Israel, not religion or caste, and no Jat, Gujjar or Maratha torch public property there, he added.