A group of South Asian Muslim leaders, journalists, influencers, professionals, academics and civil society activists are in Israel to learn the realities of the situation on the ground, and in support of Jewish-Muslim coexistence, amid soaring anti-Israel sentiment in the Arab and Muslim world in the wake of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Most of the participants either left or fled their countries of origin, which include Pakistan and Afghanistan, and now reside in the United States and Canada.
The delegation is being led by Sharaka (“partnership” in Arabic), a non-governmental, nonprofit and apolitical project established by social entrepreneurs from the Arab world and Israel, inspired by the signing of the Abraham Accords, to promote peace between people.
The group is visiting the historic and holy sites of Jerusalem, meeting community leaders, connecting to Israeli culture and speaking with government officials. They will also tour the sites of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack to gain a better understanding of the current war and geopolitical picture. However, the main focus of the trip is the promotion of tolerance through Holocaust education in the Arab and Muslim world, in collaboration with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference).
On Tuesday night, the delegation was invited to break bread with Israeli journalists in a Jerusalem restaurant at an event organized by the Jerusalem Press Club.
Hina Akhtar, who spent most of her life in Pakistan but now lives in Washington, D.C., working in health care, told JNS that she chose to participate in the project to bear witness to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
“Oct. 7 intrigued me to learn the truth because I totally believe whatever is being portrayed in the media is not the real picture. There had to be another side of the story, so I’m here to bear witness,” she said.
In Pakistan, “there is no accessibility of content in regard to Israel and Jews. Whatever I have learned on this trip I’m going to take it back and talk to my people about it and clear the misconceptions. I feel it’s our moral obligation to make a positive difference in people’s lives so whatever has been instilled in their minds all their lives should be rectified if it’s wrong,” she added.
The greatest misconception she had discovered in Israel so far was the reality of the Temple Mount, she said.
“I was surprised to learn that even Jews in Jerusalem are not allowed to worship on their own Temple Mount, as it is under the control of the Jordanian government [Waqf], not Israel. Whereas in Pakistan, we are told that it is under the control of the Israeli government, and we are told that Israel doesn’t allow Muslims to go inside there. I witnessed the truth now,” she said.
‘We heard a lot of conspiracy theories’
Ehsanullah Amiri, a former Wall Street Journal correspondent in Kabul, Afghanistan, and currently a reporter with Canada’s National Post, has in recent months covered pro-Hamas rallies in Canada along with a number of Middle East issues.
“It was a dream of mine to come and visit Israel, despite the fact that for our entire lives in Afghanistan, we heard a lot of conspiracy theories about Israel. But this is a nice country with nice people,” he told JNS.
“Not only in Afghanistan but in most Muslim countries, politicians and clerics talk negatively about Israel without backing it up with facts for their own purposes. Whole generations have this perception, not based on what they know, but they are getting information from unreliable sources in their own circles,” he said.
He believes the Sharaka trip will provide him a chance to get more information about Israel, its media, culture and history, and serve as an opportunity to build bridges between Jews, Muslims and Christians.
Mubashir Ali Zaidi, a veteran Pakistani journalist with a large social-media following, is currently working as an English-language arts teacher in Virginia.
“Pakistanis are not allowed to visit Israel. It is written on our passports that we cannot visit,” he told JNS. “From childhood, we are taught negative stories about Israel. But when you get other perspectives, your thoughts start to change, so I decided to come see for myself.”
Israeli people “are amazing,” and a lot of his perceptions have changed while on the trip, he said. His most powerful experience so far was meeting with a Holocaust survivor.
“I’ve learned a lot about the Holocaust. Meeting a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor, a real person, and hearing her story—that was something very difficult to digest. But now I have firsthand knowledge about what happened,” he said, adding that he was “grateful to Sharaka for the opportunity to be here.”
‘Signs for a better future’
Alyssa Annis, Sharaka’s Holocaust program coordinator, explained the significance of the delegation.
“After the Abraham Accords were signed, we understood there was a mission to do ‘people to people’ diplomacy,” she told JNS. “The majority of the time, we do it with people from Morocco, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates. But lately, we see such a big outreach in greater Asia and specifically from Pakistan; it’s an audience that wouldn’t get to learn about Israel if we weren’t bringing them here,” she said.
“These people tell us that back home in Pakistan that there is so much hatred for Jewish people and Israel, but when they land on the ground here, they automatically understand that what they’ve been taught their whole lives isn’t the reality,” Annis added.
“Today, we walked through Yad Vashem with this group, and they had been taught so many lies about the Holocaust their whole lives. They heard about the Holocaust but were taught that the Jews exaggerate what happened—that maybe the Holocaust happened, but maybe it was just 1,000 people” who were murdered, she said.
And because they were taught that Jews run the media, explained Annis, they thought: “We can work with Steven Spielberg and make dramatic movies like ‘Schindler’s List’ to make something seem that it happened, but didn’t.”
She said “when we were in Yad Vashem, these people expressed real emotions and how they wanted to take all the lessons that they learned from the Holocaust and create a better future. And these people are from countries that really need signs for a better future as well.”
Annis concluded by saying: “You can see in each one of them the determination not just to be here and the risk they are taking, but they said, ‘Let’s go back to America—where most of them live now—and think ‘how can we bring these lessons back with us and also to Pakistan for the people who aren’t like them or haven’t yet managed to flee.'”
During dinner, Noam Meirov, Sharaka’s managing director, told the group that “we now understand that this story is bigger than just the Abraham Accords or just the Jews against the Arabs.”
“In the world, there is a true battle between good and evil, between the moderates and the extremists,” he said, “and this delegation is trying to think how we can cooperate and how we can create projects that will influence our communities here in Israel, in America and in Pakistan.”
At the end of the day, said Meirov, Sharaka’s vision “is to form a broader Middle East, including Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
The delegation members heard a lot of lies throughout their lives—about the Holocaust and about what Israel is, he continued: “Their communities believe the Holocaust is a lie and that Israel is a monster on earth. We brought them here to show them a different vision that will create a more moderate, more rational Middle East in which cooperation can happen between Jews and Muslims.”