Modern Pakistan

From Security to Intolerance
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the largest city, Karachi, had about 2,500 Jews engaged as tradesman, artisans and civil servants. Their mother tongue was Marachi, indicating their Bene Israel origin. In 1893, the Jews of Karachi built the Magain Shalome Synagogue, and, in 1936, one of the leaders of the Jewish community, Abraham Reuben, became the first Jewish councillor on the city corporation.
Under British jurisdiction, the Jews in the area became known as Pakistant, and were treated with tolerance. In the early twenthieth century, a variety of associations existed to serve the Jewish community: the Young Man's Jewish Association, founded in 1903, whose aim was to encourage sports as well as religious and social activities of the Bene Israel in Karachi; the Karachi Bene Israel Relief Fund, established to support poor Jews in Karachi; and the Karachi Jewish syndicate, formed in 1918, to provide homes to poor Jews at reasonable rents.
The Jews lived primarily in Karachi, but a small community served by two synagogues lived in Peshawar in the northwest frontier province.
The founding of an Islamic state immediately prior to the establishment of the State of Israel created a rising feeling of insecurity within the Pakistani Jewish community. After Israel declared independence in 1948, violent incidents occurred against Pakistan's small Jewish community, which numbered approximately 2,000 Bene Yisrael Jews. The synagogue in Karachi was set alight and Jews were attacked. The plight of Jews became more precarious following disturbances and demonstrations directed against the Jews during the Arab-Israel wars in 1948, 1956, and 1967. The persecution of Jews resulted in large-scale emigration, mostly to India, but also to Israel and the United Kingdom. The small community in Peshawar ceased to exist, and the synagogues were closed.
By 1968, the number of Jews in Pakistan had decreased to 250, almost all of whom were concentrated in Karachi, where there was one synagogue, a welfare organization, and a recreational organization.
Out of Muslim solidarity with the Arab states, Pakistan did not establish any ties with Israel and frequently joined in anti-Israel moves in the United Nations and boycotts initiated by the Arab states.
Anti-Semitism
Pakistan maintained a hostile stance toward Zionism and Israel. In his address as chair of the Second Islamic Summit in 1974, Prime Minister Z. A. Bhutto asserted: “To Jews as Jews we bear no malice; to Jews as Zionists, intoxicated with their militarism and reeking with technological arrogance, we refuse to be hospitable.”
Many influential political figures, including the military chief-of-staff, promoted the theory that the 1991 Gulf War was a “clear manifestation of the anti-Muslim forces at work at the behest of Israel and the Zionist lobby in the United States.” The leader of the main Islamist party, Jammat e-Islami, termed it the “war between the Jews, the worst enemy of Islam, and the Muslims.” The party has strong links with anti-government Islamist forces in Egypt and blames western lobbies, including Zionists, for attacks on religious parties and movements in all parts of the Muslim world.
In 1996 Pakistani officials continued to condemn the Middle East peace process and to declare that Pakistan would not establish relations with Israel until Israel fully implemented UN resolutions.
The media in Pakistan have provided extensive coverage of the political and personal career of the cricket star Imran Khan. Since Khan's marriage in 1996 to Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of a British industrialist and politician, Sir James Goldsmith, Khan was accused of acting as an agent of the "Jewish lobby." Jemima Khan publicly denied that her parents were Jewish. An Egyptian newpaper distributed in Pakistan accused Khan of receiving large sums of money for his election campaign from the "Jewish lobby." Following complaints from Khan, the deputy editor of the newspaper retracted the story and published an apology.
Since India established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, the Pakistani media have repeatedly referred to the “Zionist threat on our borders,” and occasionally combine both anti-Zionist and antisemitic rhetoric. This is particularly common in the Islamist press, but also occurs in mainstream publications.
The tiny Jewish community in Karachi maintains a low profile. Despite the developments in the Middle East peace process, Pakistan's hostility toward Israel and Zionism has not waned. The increasing influence of extreme Islamists have further undermined the security of the Jewish community.
Modern Pakistan
Magen Shalome, built by Shalome Solomon Umerdekar and his son Gershone Solomon, Karachi’s last synagogue, was demolished in the 1980s to make way for a shopping plaza. Most of the Karachi Jews now live in Ramle, Israel, and built a synagogue they named Magen Shalome. Some Jewish families do remain, but they prefer to pass themselves off as Parsis due to the intolerance for Jews in Muslim Pakistan. Their number is estimated to be around 200 persons.
Since 1979, Jews escaping persecution in other Arab lands, such as Iran, used a secret passage from the country through Pakistan to reach India, where Jews enjoy relative peace. The fundamentalist Iranian government, however, discovered and closed the passageway in 2000, halting the exodus of Jews to India via this route.