Riding the success of the Abraham Accords, Israel sets its sights on Pakistan

Last week, a Pakistani-American delegation arrived in Israel, perhaps for the first time ever. Israelis lionised the visitors. They viewed it as yet another sign that the normalisation process set in motion by the Abraham Accords was succeeding. Arab states appeared to be falling like dominos in the face of the Israeli charm offensive, and now there was a possibility that Pakistan could be next.

The guests met with the President. They visited the Kotel and Haram al-Sharif. They spoke effusively of brotherhood between Pakistan and Israel. Their tour guides were purportedly both Jewish and Palestinian.

Initial reports in Israeli media were short on facts and long on self-congratulation. But a subsequent report on NPR filled in some details. It noted that the trip organiser was a Pakistani-American, Anila Ali, an Orange County (CA) schoolteacher.

Her group, the American Muslim and Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council (AMMWEC), was responsible for recruiting the participants. Reports said there were 15 people in the group, mostly Pakistani-Americans and one of member of Pakistan’s tiny Jewish community.

"Sharaka's board is heavy on Israeli participation and noticeably light on Gulf figures, leading me to suspect this is more an Israeli initiative to which Arab normalisers have been added"

Another NGO, Sharaka (meaning "partnership" in Arabic), "sponsored" the trip. Ali is a board member of the group. The NPR story did not explain what "sponsorship" meant. I assume it means the NGO picked up the tab for the travel expenses. In an interview on the Sharaka site, Ali said "they are the ones who took us."

The Israeli government may also have contributed towards the trip. When I tried to reach out to Ali about the trip, she never responded to my questions, and neither did the two groups.

Sharaka is yet another Gulf-Israeli normalisation initiative based in the UAE. It consists of a board filled with right-wing Israelis, including Netanyahu’s former media advisor Astren Ostrovsky, former Labour member of Knesset (MK) Einat Wilf, and David Brog, former chief of Christians United for Israel and current director of Maccabee Task Force, an anti-BDS campus group founded by Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban.

Sharaka's board is heavy on Israeli participation and noticeably light on Gulf figures, leading me to suspect this is more an Israeli initiative to which Arab normalisers have been added.

I’m honored to be the first Pakistani & American to present a book, an eyewitness account of the #Pakistan movement written by my father, Qutubuddin Aziz, to the President of Israel, @Isaac_Herzog. The president’s warmth & grace humbled me. @ammwecofficial @sharakango pic.twitter.com/TY6qe2xRYX

— Anila Ali (@anilaali) May 12, 2022

But this begs a few questions: what was the original source of the funding? Did they merely pick up expenses or were the tour participants paid? My guess is that Gulf leadership or business interests keen on promoting commercial deals between Israel and the Arab world provided the cash.

Pakistan erupted in fury when news of the visit was published in the Israeli press. The TV presenter, Ahmed Qureishi, who was pictured with Orthodox Jews praying at the Kotel, was fired by the state broadcaster. A few days later, AP published a story claiming that a Muslim-Jewish "dialogue group," Mukhayriq Initiative, had called for his reinstatement. There was no mention in the article that both Anila Ali and Ahmed Qureishi are on the board.

The Pakistani legislature immediately voted to reaffirm the ban on contact between Israel and Pakistan. Recently toppled political leader, Imran Khan, saw it as an opportunity to lash out at his rivals. He claimed that his political opponents approved the mission and planned to use it as a trial balloon, testing the reaction of the Pakistani public.

An Israeli analyst interviewed by NPR doubted the significance of the visit, saying that there is little that either country can offer the other. The primary purpose of Israeli normalisation with the Gulf is making common cause against their mutual enemy, Iran. Pakistan has no rivalry or enmity toward Iran. So that issue won't resonate at all with Pakistanis:

"If Iran is not the main issue for them, what can they gain?" Eyal Zisser, a Middle East expert at Tel Aviv University, says about Pakistan. "Why should they risk themselves in terms of, you know, the public opinion there?"

Perhaps Israel can offer its vast cache of military weapons and surveillance technology as it has to Pakistan's rival, India. There is very little that Pakistan can offer Israel, as it plays no geostrategic role in the areas of most concern to Israel: Iran, Syria, Lebanon, etc.

In other words, the visit seemed merely cosmetic: a feather in the cap of the organiser and yet more proof for Israelis that the Abraham Accords were a smashing success.

"Simultaneous to her claim of founding multiple Muslim charities and empowerment NGOs, Ali has questionably embraced some of the most unsavoury characters in the pro-Israel Islamophobia world"

Ties to the Islamophobia lobby

Simultaneous to her claim of founding multiple Muslim charities and empowerment NGOs, Ali has questionably embraced some of the most unsavoury characters in the pro-Israel Islamophobia world, including Daniel Pipes and the Clarion Fund. In an interview with the Middle East Forum, an Islamophobic thinktank, that was then posted on its sister site Islamist Watch, Ali is referred to as a “Muslim Against Islamists”.

To these far-right groups, who promote pro-Israel and anti-Islam rhetoric, she is a "good Muslim" who accepts Israel as a Jewish state. It goes without saying that his view is shared by very few Muslims anywhere.

Pipes, who founded the MEF has made common cause with Indian radical Hindu extremists nationalists known as Hindutva, which has ruled India for the past decade, and has addressed Hindutva think-tanks about the worldwide threat of Islam to western and Indian civilization.

Is Ali aware of this affiliation? As a Pakistani-American, why is she making common cause with a figure who embraces Pakistan's arch-rival, India? Does she care that Pipes is playing both sides (Pakistan and India) against the middle?

Ali's women's empowerment group, AMMWEC, features far-right Muslims, including Zuhdi Jasser, on its board. He supported the NYPD's spying campaign against local Muslims, despite the community mounting a lawsuit against the practice. He is also affiliated with the Clarion Fund and appeared in its Islamophobic film projects. 

Ali not only endorsed Jasser's advocacy of spying on the Muslim community, but she urges Muslims to join local police forces. “AMMWEC address[es] profiling [and] home-grown extremism... initiat[ing] a partnership with local and national law enforcement – and successfully began placing young Muslim women in police internships,” the site reads.

In another section of her site, Ali claims to support “normative” Islam, but to detest "radicals" among Mohammed's disciples:

“Our founding prophet brought a dynamic message of overcoming stagnation and ignorance, but today many invoke his name to repress, regress, and radicalise...We must confront bigotry...when it comes from within our own community.”

"Such programs allow Israel, amidst the mass violence it's inflicting on Palestine, to trumpet the inroads it has made into the Muslim world. This is precisely the strategy behind the Abraham Accords. Ali, in that sense, has been a serial self-promoter and willing partner in this charade"

In fact, Ali opposes mainstream US Islam, decrying the “far-left” Muslim activists who are happy to play the victim and do not speak out against extremists, and believes accountability on behalf of Muslims is the key for integration in American society.

Ali is also a persuasive networker. Her website offers marquee names of senior Democratic leaders and White House staff who have addressed AMMWEC events. She also delivered a paper at a White House conference, “How to Engage and Stop the Radicalisation of Muslims in the US." She was once invited to advise President Obama on combatting Islamist "extremism".

She touts herself as a "centrist" Democrat and warns against the Party’s progressive wing, likening it to the “intolerance” of the UK Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.

She was also a delegate to the 2012 and 2016 Democratic national conventions and a failed Democratic primary candidate for a seat in the State legislature. Unfortunately, local and national Democrats do not recognize that she is a stealth Islamophobe dressed in sheep's clothing.

CAIR Bay Area director, Zahra Billoo, warned American Muslim in an address to the Americans for Palestine national conference last year against the seemingly benign efforts by Israel lobby groups for "dialogue." She said that while these efforts seemed on their face to promote interfaith understanding, they were in essence tools exploited by pro-Israel groups to co-opt Muslims.

Such programs allow Israel, amidst the mass violence it's inflicting on Palestine, to trumpet the inroads it has made into the Muslim world. This is precisely the strategy behind the Abraham Accords. Ali, in that sense, has been a serial self-promoter and willing partner in this charade.

Richard Silverstein writes the Tikun Olam blog and is a freelance journalist specialising in exposing secrets of the Israeli national security state. He campaigns against opacity and the negative impact of Israeli military censorship.

Follow him on Twitter: @richards1052

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