With me, the concept of friends or allies doesn't work, nor do I believe in any such thing, certainly not till the time India is in it for the slot of being a hyper power, and for now we remain far from it. India neither has allies, nor friends, all that we are doing is, wherever possible, and to whatever extent possible, we are aligning our interests with others, but it also means, with one country we might align our interests on one issue, but there remains no certainty that we will align our other interests as well with them on other issues where we don't see eye to eye, and so in the Indian foreign diplomacy, we don't have the concept of allies or friends.
By the way, what we are doing is what is termed as pursuing an "independent foreign policy". Would rather term our relations with other nations as strategic partnerships, with a common agenda here and there, and that's about it. The reason for using this term "strategic partnership" is because this term by now is a hugely misused term with little significance, so one might just use it with the relevance of earlier days lost.
Is Israel an ally? With all due respect to Israel for what it is, and for all that it has done for us, the answer remains, no, it is not.
Let the US and EU lift the arms embargo on China, and see how Israel starts to develop a much stronger partnership with China. The stakes are way too high for Israel to not make use of the opportunity if ever presented, though they already have pretty decent relations with them. China is a definite hyper power of tomorrow, will Israel ever miss on them? No, never.
Let the Pakistanis get over with their obsession of Palestine, let them shed their hatred for Israel, and see the immediate impact, as such Israel and Pakistan have a relationship, much remains on lines of what India and Israel had before our two countries developed the diplomatic relations in 90s, though for now it all remains in the closet. Pakistan, a nuke power, an Islamic country with a significant say in the Islamic world, if opportunity comes by, again Israel wont miss this bus. It will be a need based relationship.
My contention about foreign relations is always one of not getting emotional, but be practical, know the reason why the other is hooked to you, and make the most of the situation.
If we prioritize, today our 3 strongest strategic partnerships are with Russia, the USA, and Israel, and in pretty much the same order, with France itching up to join at number 4 slot, but there is still some time for it.
Since you labeled our relationship with Russia as just for money, I might just say, a lot of stuff we do with Russia doesn't remain in public domain, what we have with Russia remains unparalleled with any other country. You can be reasonably sure, each time the PM and Russian prez catch up, there are good number of secret documents signed, which remain very strategic in nature, and strategic in every sense of the word, unlike how the word is misused these days, though there remains no rhetoric or hype around it, so folks, like you and I, don't find it appealing enough.
