Aware of the risks she was taking by making the trip to Israel from Pakistan, Sabin Agha told The Media Line that discourse about the Jewish State within her home country revolves only around the conflict rather than the culture and the people.
“The only information that I had about Israel was in the context of war with Palestine, the war with Hamas, a conflict, an armed conflict that is going on,” the investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker told The Media Line.
Despite the general pro-Palestinian sentiment in Pakistan, state repression has prevented mass anti-Israel protests from breaking out, Agha said. “I am aware of that information as well that it was deliberately stopped from taking place the anti-Israel high-profile or large-entry Israel rallies in Pakistan.”
Even before traveling to Israel, she had the sense that Israelis weren’t as different from Pakistanis as they were made out to be. “I had a pretty good idea that, you know, the Israeli people are just like us, just like normal human beings.
It's a country which has a thousand-year-old history. It has civilization, it has culture, it has a religion,” she said. “And so do I. So do we. So what makes them so different?”
Relations between Israel and Pakistan have long been fraught with tension, shaped by Pakistan’s staunch support for the Palestinian cause and its refusal to recognize Israel as a state.
Despite occasional backchannel contacts, official ties remain nonexistent, and any suggestion of engagement with Israel is often met with political and public backlash in Pakistan.
Deep-seated mistrust, historical grievances, and regional alliances further complicate any potential rapprochement, keeping diplomatic relations at a standstill.
Amid these tensions, a delegation of Pakistani civil society leaders traveled to Israel last week as part of a program meant to promote tolerance in the Arab and Muslim world through Holocaust education.
The visit was organized by Sharaka, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting dialogue and coexistence in the Middle East, and was supported by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Details of the trip
The 11 Pakistani participants toured the Holocaust museum, visited sites of the October 7, 2023, massacres, and met with Israeli counterparts, highlighting the potential of person-to-person diplomacy.
Israelis, on the other hand, are not Islamophobic, they said. They noted that his multifaceted reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has resulted in two separate threats.
What, Agha wondered, was so egregious about Israel to warrant the Pakistani passport being marked with “This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel”?
“I wanted to find out what Israel has done to Pakistan. And I found out completely the opposite of it,” Agha said. “Whenever we would even go to a restaurant or meet people on the streets, if we mentioned, I'd be like—what if I mentioned Pakistan? I'm from Pakistan, how are they going to react? And there was the opulence of, you know, smiles and warm welcome, that, oh, you're from Pakistan, welcome to Israel. So it was completely the opposite.”
Journalist S., who wished to remain anonymous, highlighted the importance of changing Pakistan’s education system in order to tamp down extremism among the population. S. has covered the kidnapping and murder of Jewish American journalist Daniel Pearl at the alleged hands of a British Pakistani terrorist.
While bemoaning US President Donald Trump’s decision to pause foreign aid to Pakistan, the journalist noted that foreign aid has been used to fund extremist seminaries. “Seminaries are out of control, and states just can't regulate them,” S. said.
The Pakistani government is actually interested in improving ties with Israel and the Jewish people, journalist B., who also wished to remain anonymous, told The Media Line.
“But they don't have the courage now because the religious fundamentalists are too much in power, and they dictate their terms most of the time,” they explained.
Agha pointed to Israel's technological progress as a particular source of inspiration for Pakistan. “These are the areas, technology and business, which Pakistan and Israel must collaborate with each other,” B. said. “And Pakistan can learn a lot from Israel regarding these sectors and benefit from each other.”
Agha said Israel must contact Pakistan to improve relations between the two countries. “You know, maybe with a roadmap. And also, we see in the Muslim world what the state line in Pakistan has been like in the past. The track record is that we always look for our politics and others in trade and business towards Saudi Arabia.”
“And so Saudi Arabia is like our holy land for us because of the Muslim country. So if the Muslim countries take a positive track towards Israel, I think then Pakistan would have a bit of opportunity,” she explained. “It will take this opportunity and they will feel at ease to connect with Israel.”
An anonymous Pakistani news producer, B. added that normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia would also allow Pakistan to soften its view of Israel. “If the Muslim countries take a positive track towards Israel, I think then Pakistan would have a bit of an opportunity,” B. said. “It will take this opportunity and they will feel at ease to connect with Israel.”
Many of the Pakistani participants described a sense of identification with Israelis due to the common threat of terror. B., put it simply: in Pakistan and in Israel, “the pain and the grief are the same.”
“I was not able to define whether it's Israel or it's Pakistan,” B. told The Media Line. “The pain was the same.”
B. expressed admiration for Israelis’ ability to grow from their pain, noting that Pakistanis tend to have a much longer period of mourning. “Mourning is good. You are sad, it's good,” B. said.
“But you need to learn. You need to move fast. You need to move on.”
The participants described a Pakistani society that is much more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than the Israeli cause. B. summed up the reason for that dynamic: “It's because of the same religion,” she said. “It's because they are Muslims.”
S. had an even harsher diagnosis of Pakistani society. “We are an antisemitic nation,” the journalist told The Media Line plainly, adding that the sentiment is more profound than mere opposition to the state of Israel.
“The state has peddled this narrative for a long time, and seminaries are preaching it day in and day out,” S. said. Even in the supposedly cosmopolitan city of Karachi, they said, the main street has been painted with American and Israeli flags so that those pedestrians trample on them.
“The culture of Israel is one of the universal human themes,” Agha noted. “The sufferings of the citizens— the common people who had nothing to do with the armed conflict—like the female hostage that we met at the Nir Oz area. She's a mother. She lost her husband,” she explained. “Children were like in trauma. She was in trauma for 54 days. The same goes for the story of Shiri Babas and her family. She was killed, and her nine-month-old and four-month-old children were killed. It's just the husband that was released.”
“So, these are universal human themes, like, you know, to connect people with people,” she continued. “This is what we, as filmmakers, do. So, I will try my level best to show that suffering. To also, and also show the culture of, I'll be more interested in showing the culture of Israel, which is like very welcoming, very warm.”