Dissimilarity of the Two Closely Founded States

Two counties, Pakistan and Israel, appeared on the world map within a period of one year, respectively on August 14, 1947 and May 14, 1948. A common misconception, repeatedly on the tongues of the intellectuals and politicians, is that both the states have a similarity of being the ideological states, created as homelands of two nations on the basis of their religions. But an astute mind can easily find the difference of the nature of both the states.

The validity of the claim of the Muslims in subcontinent Indo-Pak being a ‘nation’ is clear. They lived there for centuries, not as an ethnic group but a nation. Only one hundred year before the creation of Pakistan entire sub-continent was under the Muslim rule. On every nook and cranny of this land there are hundreds of monuments of their splendid past. Graves of their forefathers still found there. They have their centuries-deep racial roots in the soil of land, which were going to be their homeland as Pakistani nation. They are and were a nation by every definition with a rich cultural heritage of their art and architectural styles lying everywhere from the foothills of Himalayas in the north to the shores of Arabian sea in the south and from the north western parts bordering Afghanistan to Sylhet and Chittagong in the extreme east of Bengal. They were in majority in the parts of India demanded by them to be their homeland.

And Israel? Is it the country of some ‘Israeli nation’? No not at all. Very interestingly, on March 3, 2010, the Supreme Court of Israel was going to consider an application of a group of Israeli citizens to compel the Interior Ministry to register them as belong to the ‘Israeli nation.’ Why? Because Israel’s Interior Ministry recognizes 126 nations on the surface of the earth but still not any ‘Israeli nation.’ It is the state of the Jews. By recognizing the people who live in Israel to belonging to the ‘Israeli nation’, the Palestinian Arabs living in the territories called Israel will automatically gain the status of the Israeli nationals, which the Jews are never ready to grant them.

The Jews, who came to Israel as settelers, were dispersed over dozens of the countries in Europe, North America, Africa and Asia, living as ethnic-religious minorities. Until the idea of Nationalism flourished and many of the nations in the clutches of the western imperialism woke up to get freedom, the Jews, not anywhere in the world had the claim to be a nation. Austro-Hungrian, journalist Theodor Herzl, the founder of the political Zionism, first had nothing in his mind except the Jews would go through individual assimilation and absorb in different nations where they lived. But thus his venture to create the political Zionism would lose its value. Even after getting the Zionist idea originated in his mind Herzl had no plan of establishing a ‘State of the Jews’ in Palestine. First Argentina was his goal to be the homeland for the Jews. Anti-Semitism was not the case of only Germany and Hitler, but entire Christian world was skeptical and wary of this ethnic community. Hatred in the hearts for the Jews could be easily felt, and also reflected in the literature, both in prose and poetry, of different western languages. The western countries did not want this cancer grow in their bodies.

In the beginning when the evil plot was getting materialized, the plotters were not at the point what the name be given to the proposed state; a Jew State or Hebrew State. If it were a Hebrew state then equal rights of the Palestinians, Muslims and Christians, living in its territories and speaking Hebrew had to been recognized. A renowned Israeli Jew intellectual, peace activist and the founder of Gush Shalom (NGO) Uri Avnery whose write-ups frequently appear in English newspapers of the Gulf countries, has recently, in one of his article, referred to Israel’s largest newspaper Yediot Aharonot running a TV ad showing selected past issues. The day the State of Israel was founded, a giant headline announced: ‘Hebrew State!’ But later it got changed to be the Jews State.

A dangerous plot was hatched by the Zionists and the British foreign secretary Arther Balfour to thrust the dagger of the Jews State; “Nation-State of the Jews” belonging only to the Jews, right in the heart of the Muslim Ummah. Advin Samuel was the second famous Jew in the high ranks of the British government during the last two years of the First World War. He became the secretary of the state for Indian affairs. He was strongly opposed to the Zionism and called it a ‘mischievous political creed’. In a memo to cabinet criticizing the Balfour Declaration, he expressed his views about the idea of creation of a Jew State in Palestine “I assume that it means that Mohammedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English and France is with the French and that Turks and Mohammedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country.”

Pakistan’s case is totally different. Though its status is ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’ yet it is not the state of only the Muslims. It is the nation state of the Pakistanis regardless of their religion, language and ethnicity. The famous Objectives Resolution, guaranteeing the equal rights for all of its citizens, clearly says in its clause 6: “Wherein adequate provisions shall be made for the minorities freely to profess and practice their religions and develop their cultures. Clause 8 makes the matter much more clear in case of the rights. “Wherein shall be guaranteed fundamental rights including equality of status, of opportunity and before law, social, economic and political justice, and freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship and association, subject to law and public morality.” So dissimilarity of Israel and Pakistan as ideological states is clear.