Never mind Iran, we must talk about Pakistan - The Jewish Chronicle

What kind of state poses the most serious threat to Israel today? A large and populous one? Check.

One with a strong presence of Islamism throughout society? Check. What about one where strong anti-Israel sentiment and rhetoric feature prominently in the public sphere? Another check, I’d say.

And — getting serious now — what about a state that is a relentless sponsor of terror? Double check. Finally, what if this state had some sort of nuclear capability to be worried about? Triple check. If we’re playing rogue-state bingo, that’s pretty much a full house.

It is unsurprising, then, that Jerusalem (and the international media) is so resolutely focused on Iran. But what is surprising (often amounting to delinquency) is that Pakistan is so often left out of the conversation. Both Pakistan and Israel were birthed in trauma and violence; both were carved out of larger spaces to provide a home for persecuted minorities (for Pakistan in the region, for Israel globally); and both were founded within a year of each other, 1947 and 1948 respectively.

You’d think Islamabad might have some sympathy with its near-geopolitical twin, but apparently not. It refuses to recognise Israel to this day.

That isn’t going to change any time soon. While Arab governments line up to make peace with Israel, Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan refuses. “I am PM of Pakistan. #WeStandWithGaza #WeStandWithPalestine,” he tweeted during the last Gaza conflict in May (attaching a quote by Noam Chomsky to add insult to injury).

More worrying, however, is the overt antisemitism at the highest levels. Recently Khan accused the family of former president Nawaz Sharif of corruption and privilege and attacked Sharif’s grandson, Junaid Safdar, for playing polo at Cambridge University. Safdar’s mother then fired back that Khan’s two children, who live with his ex-wife Jemima Goldsmith, were being “raised in the lap of the Jews”.

She made the comment because she knew it would find an audience. It is hard to overestimate the scale of antisemitism in Pakistan — which, with a population of more than 200 million, is also the second most populous Muslim state on earth. This is a country where a prominent media commentator, Zaid Hamid, claimed that Jews were behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks, in which 174 were killed. In a 2008 world opinion poll, 72 per cent of Pakistani respondents claimed they couldn’t say who was behind the attacks, while as many people blamed Israel as al-Qaida (four per cent).

It wasn’t always this bad. As Israeli journalist and political analyst Jonathan Spyer points out, during the Cold War, both were US client states in the battle against the USSR, so there were areas of commonality. Things got worse with the arrival in 1978 of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq as president, who brought political Islam to the highest levels of the state. Alongside that was Israel’s deepening security relationship with India, Pakistan’s enemy. That ended any chance of strengthening links between Jerusalem and Islamabad.

Then, of course, there is the Inter-Services Agency (ISI), Pakistan’s premier spy network. As Spyer observes: “ISI in Pakistan had been described variously as a state within a state and the true rulers of the country. ISI conducts its own security policy as regards Pakistan’s neighbours and there are undoubtedly elements within ISI that are sympathetic to jihadist ideals.”

ISI helped to found the Taliban back in 1994, soon after the end of the Soviet-Afghan war, and supported this gang of jihadists throughout the post-9/11 period. Osama bin Laden was found to be hiding in the city of Abbottabad in Pakistan, which just happens to be the location of the Pakistan Military Academy.

Israel and Pakistan remain in different strategic spheres. They have different priorities and different enemies, and there is no evidence that Pakistan has supported Palestinian terror groups. But it does have what Israeli analysts describe as the “global jihadi outlook”. It may be one step removed, but it’s there.

Many years ago, Bruce Reidel, a former CIA officer who served on Bill Clinton’s National Security Council, told me an interesting story. During the Kargil conflict between Pakistan and India in 1999, which began when the Pakistani military infiltrated troops into Indian-controlled territory, he attended a meeting at which Clinton furiously told then-Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif to pull out all his troops. The move had happened behind Sharif’s back, but he begged Clinton not to force him to make the army climb down so humiliatingly. “Do this to me,” he told Clinton, “and the next PM you’ll have to deal with will have a big beard.”

This possibility should terrify us all. Nawaz Sharif knew that fanaticism is never far away in Pakistan — and he understood the dangers of this. It’s high time the wider world did, too.