The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle
Leon Cohen
July 7, 2014
“I'm ashamed to admit it now,” said Kasim Hafeez, 29, on May 28 in Glendale, “but I was an anti-Semite.”
He was speaking to an audience of about 70, mostly Christians but also some Jews, at the World Outreach and Bible Training Center. The event was organized by the center and the pro-Israel organization StandWithUs.
He told the story of how he, a Muslim born to Pakistani immigrants to Britain, became a supporter of and advocate for Israel.
He now lives in the area of Winnipeg, Canada, where he is going to be doing professional Israel advocacy. In a June 12 news release, B'nai B'rith Canada announced that Hafeez has been appointed the organization's education and community relations officer for its Midwest region.
“I know my upbringing was not unique,” he said. “A lot of young Muslims are brought up with this same idea” about Israel and Jews.
His grandparents, he said, came to Britain from Pakistan in the mid-1960s primarily for economic betterment. Hafeez grew up in a predominantly Muslim community raised by parents who were “fairly observant” but “not radical” Muslims.
Nevertheless, he remembers his father saying that German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler “was a great man” whose “one mistake was that he didn't kill enough Jews.”
Such ideas, he said, were “background noise” for him through his teen years. Then in 2000, he traveled to Pakistan to visit family.
He attended events at which flags of Israel, the U.S. and India were burned, and saw people who “were killing innocent people in the name of ideology” being “treated like heroes” in various communications media.
“It was the first time in my life that I was confronted with the idea of violent jihad to achieve a political aim,” Hafeez said. “I became very engrossed in that way of thinking.”
Trip to Israel
Back in Britain, he attended the University of Nottingham and became involved in the school's Islamic Society, which “pushed me to the very extreme.”
He was active in anti-Israel activities and he participated in intimidating Jewish and pro-Israel students. And he began saving money so he could go to a terrorist training camp.
Then while visiting a bookstore, he saw a copy of U.S. lawyer and Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz's 2003 book “The Case for Israel.” (See Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, Sept. 5, 2003.)
He felt so incensed that somebody would dare write a book like this that he bought it, intending to write a refutation. He embarked on two-and-a-half years of reading that caused him to start doubting all that he had been taught. “I started to realize that it's very difficult to disprove the truth,” he said.
Finally, he decided he had to see Israel for himself. Using the money he had intended to use to go to terrorist training camp, he flew to Israel.
Upon arrival, he had to spend some eight hours with Israeli security, which “wasn't a bad experience” and one he is able to joke about now. After he was released, he ended up in Jerusalem, “speaking to all sorts of random people,” he said. “What constantly shocked me was the diversity” of people he saw.
While hoping to find evidence of “Israeli apartheid,” he met an Israeli Arab who said that while Israel is “not perfect,” nevertheless, “I have freedom here.” He also met a Druze, and “I've never heard anybody defend Israel like this Druze gentleman did. I call it a 'Hatikvah' [Israel's national anthem] moment.”
He ended up at the Western Wall, surprised that he as a Muslim could go there while in Saudi Arabia there are many religious sites off-limits to non-Muslims. And he had “a moment of clarity.”
“I'm somebody whose grandparents fought for an independent Muslim state of Pakistan so they could have their freedom and their right to practice their religion and not be at the mercy of [India's] Hindu majority,” he said.
“And I've got the arrogance to say to the Jewish people, who've had a presence in the holy land before the first Muslim even set foot on the earth… 'You don't have a right to your own land.' I mean, how stupid can you be?”
After he returned he began to speak about the new truths he learned about Israel. He acknowledged that “it's been tough.” Most of his family “is boycotting me.”
He has also received death threats, which, amazingly, he is able to joke about. He said he wants to tell the people who send him threatening emails to put them through a spell-check first; “Don't spell 'kill' with a 'c.'”
But “I would not change a millisecond” of what he has been doing. Israel “is an issue for everybody who believes in freedom and human rights and in the right to be different,” he said. “That is the beautiful thing about Israel.”
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