Love triumphs Hate in turbulent times; Israeli NGO pulls off a miracle

It is very rare that when there is war, terror and hate engulfing region you get to blossom Love, Peace and Harmony…but ‘Sharaka’ has just done that while bringing South Asian Muslim Journalists and Academics to Israel for witnessing first hand what has happened in the Jewish state since October 7th, 2023.

Sharaka was founded in the wake of the Abraham Accords, which was brokered by the Trump administration in 2020 and normalized relations between Israel and four Arab countries — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

The visit is significant because there is widespread misinformation in Muslim world regarding Israel’s war against Hamas. Its a norm that whenever the war is reported in Islamic countries Israel is mentioned with adjectives like ‘Barbaric’, ‘In Human’, ‘Demonic’ etc, hence this visit will change this narrative altogether as visiting Journos has witnessed first hand what terror Hamas had unleashed on innocent Israeli citizens on October 7th.

It is hoped that this perception about the war specifically and about Jewish people in general will change to some extent when these Muslim Journalists most of whom Pakistan Americans will return and start deliberating through their mediums with Muslim diaspora explaining them what they have witnessed during their Israeli sojourn which is opposite to what is being portrayed in their media.

One visiting Journalist Mubashir Zaidi rightly said while talking to Israeli News Channel that, “I cant make extreme religious right or hardline left understand about who is at fault in this war, but I will certainly try to reach out to my rationale friends and family members to narrate who has wronged whom in this present conflict.

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 Israeli media. “The majority of times 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 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,” she added.

The delegates who visited Israel which culminates today were Hasan Mujtaba, Writer/Poet/Journalist, Mubashir Zaidi, Journalist/Author/Academic, Nilofar Mughal, Journalist (VOA), Hina Akhtar, Academic, Ehsanullah Amiri, a former Wall Street Journal correspondent in Kabul, Afghanistan.