by Mian Hameed 18 August 2020
Pakistan is not a newcomer to the newspapers in Israel. In Israel, Pakistan is debated from a few viewpoints. At times, the columns written cultivate citizenry’s resentment for Pakistan. Other opinions may show Israel as a victim of Pakistan’s policy or covert actions. Clearly, a point is taken; Israel is frustrated with Pakistan for not recognizing it.
A recent opinion in an Israeli newspaper again questioned Pakistan’s perpetual boycott of Israel. The opinion questioned Pakistani foreign policy (FP), and Pakistani logic. The opinion went on to question in what way Pakistan has helped the cause of Palestine by not recognizing Israel. After a stab at Pakistani xenophobic tendencies, the article suggested Pakistani domestic-ism was interfering with her FP that could bode well for Pakistan should she accept Israel as a legitimate State.
One can move an argument along on any of the aforementioned opinions to impress upon Pakistan’s ill-conceived approach to Israel, but in my view, the narrowness in such opinions will ignore the soundness in the argument. It won’t be the first time. The doctrine of concision in the United States’ media nurtures narrowness in thought, and the created lucidity conveniently explains away Pakistan.
Pakistani passports are stamped: Good for all countries except Israel. Can we judge this restriction from a fundamental restraint in ideologies, due to religion, or from what Walter Miller observed of the nineteenth century, a presence of a chief pressure from home on the neighborhood and its polity?
In the case of Israel, Pakistan’s FP is shaped from a much overlooked fascinating fact—Pakistan’s constitution. The assessment of Israel for a Pakistani actually comes primarily from the chief pressure, their values incorporated beautifully in the Constitution of Pakistan. Pakistan’s constitution “equilibrium” calls for the Pakistani people’s “full contribution towards national peace and progress and happiness of humanity.” Please note, it does not ask Pakistani people to serve their interests, rather it calls for contributing towards the happiness of humanity. A spirit Pakistanis possess even today.
The “progress and happiness of humanity” is a behavioral value, and is the base of a compelling logic that sets the aroma for justice and wellbeing, which the world has long forgotten. Accepting Israel would bring into question the “equilibrium” of Pakistan’s constitution and will jeopardize an internationally accepted principle, the right of self-determination Pakistan so dearly speaks of.
For a Pakistani, the said spirits—the wellbeing of all, in her constitution is an innate sense. The innate benefit to her constitution comes from a mother’s influence taken after the principles in her religion—Christianity and Islam alike. The innate thing is fortified by the mothers of Pakistan in their children by the use of engraving vocabulary, [A’jiz, ghareeb, maskeen, mazloom, zalim]. These are words of virtue when emphasized by anyone, or by a Pakistani mother beholding any religion; it forbids agony, condemns agony in the harshest terms of humanity, and builds a reservoir of compassion among Pakistani people.
(It is my observation, more so than the impact from the clergy of any religion, the mothers and grandmothers have ingrained the cause of humanity, and the fight against agony. Though this quality had resonated pre-partition among the majority Muslims, after independence, the people of all faiths in Pakistan have nurtured the traits of the wellbeing of humanity.)
From such value fortification, it is almost automatic to hold Israel’s depressing human rights record in contempt. They feel the presence of agony, and can relate to it in a concrete manner when they hear words as that of Hanan Ashrawi, who after the U.A.E.’s announcement of normalizing a relationship with Israel, in her tweet equated the Israeli occupation to “country stolen,” “demolition,” and “murder.” –Aljazeera. Ashrawi is a Christian, a Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLA) member, an activist, a legislator, and per Wiki, a UVA graduate, and a recipient of the Sydney Peace Prize.
The principle of the right of self-determination is another vital reason why Pakistan cannot recognize Israel. Pakistan was created on the basis of the two-nation theory and the right of self-determination. Pakistan has fought for the plight of Kashmiris, and their right to self-determination.
Accepting Israel means Pakistan will crush the hopes of Kashmiris that have lived in agony for more than 70 years. Kashmiris are living under a continued lockdown since August 05, 2019, from the Modi government’s abrogation of article 370. The world is silent on Modi’s lockdown, but the Constitution of Pakistan is not. “Silence can be as deadly as violence.” – President Jimmy Carter.
Accepting Israel would mean Pakistan has participated in causing and promoting agony. It would mean Pakistanis have acquiesced to injustices of Israel, India, and elsewhere. It would mean Pakistan cannot break the shackles of slavery from the British colonialism and has accepted apartheid Israel secured from a colonial guarantee given in a letter by Foreign Secretary Arthur Belfour “to Lord Rothschild, a leading British Zionist,” and created a Jewish State on the principles of the “modern Zionist movement” founded by Theodore Herzel, who wrote in 1896, the Jewish state will be attained by “The promotion…of the colonization of Palestine by Jewish agricultural and industrial workers…” —Palestine Papers by Doreen Ingrams. – A very hard pill for humanist Pakistan to swallow.
With circumstances of a historic nature, re-teaching Pakistanis to see Israel as not an illegitimate State is not a reality. Many Pakistanis in 1947, for a principle and dignity, migrated to Pakistan and sacrificed all. Asking these people to accept Israel violates these dignities.
Thinking that an Emirati Muslim holds the same values as a Pakistani Muslim is a fallacy. Thinking that what Arabs are doing, saving their lives and businesses, that Pakistanis would do the same – Think again.
Pakistanis don’t care about shallow Arab values. Pakistanis, mostly an Aryan race along with a few others, are strong behaviorists and would eagerly accept the challenge to take the Aryan race to the task. They find death in disgrace.
The newspapers in Israel have entertained a notion that possibly the Pakistan military could play an instrumental role in shaping Pakistan’s FP, i.e., recognizing Israel. This hope should have quickly died in Israel from the very inception of the U.S. AF-Pak policy—a U.S. strategic blunder, where the battleground was Afghanistan, but its target Pakistan, has crystallized camp formations for Pakistan, and her military.
For the Pakistani strategists and the learned, after AF-Pak, there is not much incentive left to recognize Israel, unless Israel concedes to major concessions for the cause of Palestinians. Those ‘journalists’ in Pakistan that may float a notion to debate Israel are traditionally seen in Pakistan as receiving “a fist full of dollars,” and part of a pleasing dance. For these journalists, the common people usually wish them their hope—a divine intervention to take a toll.
AF-Pak has made Pakistan cap her aspirations held in the old “new world order,” and is likely to play an integral role among the upcoming new world players (China’s $400B investment initiative in Iran), where Israel is a taboo entity, India an outcaste, and those Arab regimes that find their continuity in the United States have likely forfeited prestigious club seats in the new world’s parlor.
It is the teaching of these mothers parted well before 1947, which have nicely packed the vital sense of agony and wellbeing of all among their children. A few became the future constitutionalists of Pakistan that have influenced Pakistan’s constitution face—the frontispiece.
Should Pakistan follow what the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has done—UAE Israel normalizing ties, the Pakistani establishment will meet its demise, not so much from fanaticism in Pakistan, at times supported by the West as a bulwark that gives us accentuated peaks, but from the words of virtue etched by the mothers in their children, which is a strong aspect of Pakistani society that has equated Israel occupation to a pool of Palestinian blood.