The world media is in a rush to condemn Israel for anything that goes wrong in Gaza and other Palestinian Authority areas. Muslims also blame Israel for wrongdoings happening in their own countries. Pakistani political and religious leaders started their election campaign with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish slogans despite the fact that Israel is one of the greatest innovative and welfare countries in the world. The election atmosphere in Pakistan entails all parties accusing each other of supporting India, US funded or foreign agendas.
Political party’s candidates win preliminary seats by abusing Israel and Jews, this rhetoric comes under the definition of religious and ethnic racism. Candidates even lose their elections if they are wrongly accused of being Zionist or Israeli agents in Pakistan.
People always accuse Israel of being a terrorist state, even though they do not know how to define a terrorist, nor are they able to establish how a state is involved with terrorist activities. There is a difference in committing war crimes; which would involve the intentional killing of civilians, however if civilians are caught in the cross fire then it is known, according to international law as collateral damage.
The UN and EU passed many resolutions and condemned Israel for killing civilians in Gaza during various army operations, but never blamed Israel for war crimes, of being a terrorist sponsored country, nor has Israel has ever been considered as a terrorism financing country. No single International forum that deals with terrorism has brought Israel into its consideration so far.
There is not a single Jewish organization that is listed as a terrorist organization by the UN, EU or even the Arab League. Israel is as much of a victim of terrorism and misconception as Pakistan but the difference between Pakistan and Israel is that Pakistan is on the list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) while Israel is not. Pakistan has lost thousands of its citizens to terrorism in the past decade, including members of its armed forces.
When internationally banned terrorist and sectarian organizations have its members contesting the general elections, cleared by the Electoral Commission of Pakistan (ECP) — the message we send to the west and the rest of the world is not a positive one. Pakistan in many ways -whether we wish to admit it or not- is just like Israel, as both countries are fighting for their survival against the Islamic terrorism.
The People of Pakistan should have learned lessons from the state of Israel about how a deprived and devastated nation became one of the most powerful nations in the world
If we take an unbiased look at Israel, it is one of the strongest developing nations in terms of economy, finance, technology, science etc. Israeli exports have a high demand in the world market especially in the military, agricultural and education sectors. Many Israelis have also won the Nobel Prize in the fields of literature, economics, chemistry, peace etc. Israel is ranked in the top ten most innovative nations worldwide by the 2017 and 2018 Bloomberg Innovation Index.
Perhaps the people of Pakistan can learn from Israel how a deprived and devastated nation becomes one of the most powerful countries in the world, instead of dreaming of its mass destruction.
After the mass genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of the western world, and many Arab nations who collaborated with Germany in said genocide — Israel recovered courageously. Initially fighting wars with nations way more powerful than them — they defended themselves successfully. They not only made their Army and Intelligence unbeatable but spent their full energy inventing many new products in terms of benefiting the entire world.
After successfully creating the state of Israel, the Israeli nation had the option of taking revenge on the western world by creating Jewish terrorist organizations all around the world; a feat that wouldn’t have been difficult as every second Israeli citizens possesses a western nationality as well. They could have killed millions of western citizens in the revenge of the six million Jews that faced genocide. Instead they preferred to participate in the survival of the world. The reason why Jewish nation chose to be creative instead of destructive is because they understood the value of life. They paid a high price for thousands of years to which I believe lead them to cherish the true meaning of humanity.
Pakistan should perhaps most understand the sacrifice of millions of its people that helped it achieve independence however we do not value the sovereignty of our country. Pakistan is infamous its creativity, that has become obscured by its terrorist image in the world We induced seeds of terrorism and religious extremism within our nation to benefit other nations. We poisoned our own generation in terms of providing new life for western generations.
Israel has one of the most efficient judicial and educational systems, whereas we have corrupted our judicial institutions and have created an illiterate generation in order to make them slaves to their wealthy masters. We completely ruined our institutions such as education, health, agriculture, industry, and tech. Similarly we have lost 0.1 million lives since 9/11 but still fail to properly counter terrorism.
So perhaps instead of chanting death to Israel, we should put aside our religious prejudice, and political misconceptions and embrace nations which could help Pakistan counter its terrorism, and live up to its full potential.
The writer is author of books, director of the Middle East Affairs at Command Eleven. He is a counter terrorism researcher based in the UK. Twitter @DahriNoor2
Published in Daily Times, July 29th 2018.