March 19, 2025; According to a report by the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), a group of Pakistani journalists recently visited Israel. This revelation has sparked significant debate, as travel to
Israel on a Pakistani passport is officially prohibited. Pakistan does not recognize Israel as a legitimate state, and its passports explicitly exclude Israel as a travel destination.
The founder of Pakistan, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, firmly opposed Israel’s creation, once describing it as an “illegitimate child of the West.” Given this longstanding policy, the question arises: how did this group of journalists manage to travel to Israel? Their visit suggests that undisclosed diplomatic or backchannel engagements may be occurring between the current Pakistani regime and the Israeli government.
This development is particularly controversial at a time when much of the world is strongly condemning Israel for its actions in Gaza, which have been widely described as genocide and ethnic cleansing.
The following is the original JNS report:
Rare Pakistani delegation visits Israel
One of the trip participants said she was “not surprised to find the complete opposite” of what the Muslim world had told her about the Jews.
(March 19, 2025 / JNS): A delegation of Pakistani journalists and educators made a rare visit to Israel last week, defying a travel ban by the South Asian Muslim country which has no diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
The 10-member group, which came through the Israeli NGO Sharaka, or partnership in Arabic, is the largest delegation from Pakistan that the organization has brought to Israel to date.
“I always wanted to come to Israel to find out all the questions in my mind and to clear all the confusion about what my country and the Muslim world has been telling me about the Jews,” Pakistani journalist and documentary film director Sabin Agha, one of two women in the group, told JNS in an interview in Tel Aviv during their visit. “I am not surprised to find the complete opposite of what the state narrative of Muslim countries was.”
The secular Karachi-based journalist hopes to become a messenger of peace and harmony between the two nations in the wake of the Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, especially in what she called “a very anti-Israel, anti-Jewish” Pakistan where people get offended “just by the mention” of Israel or the Jews.
The group of Muslim influencers visited the hard-hit southern Israeli communities, where they met with survivors of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023; prayed at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; and visited the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center, also in Jerusalem.
“It was a pleasant surprise to be in Israel because before we came we had been getting only one-sided information,” said Kaswar Klasra, editor-in-chief of The Islamabad Telegraph, noting the warm welcome the group received immediately on landing at Ben-Gurion International Airport from immigration officials to airport cleaners and then throughout their trip. “It will not be easy for Pakistanis to accept the reality because they have been fed baseless negative lies about Israel by both world and local media.”
Most of the members of the delegation did not want to be interviewed or photographed due to security concerns and fears of repercussions on their return home.
But the Pakistani editor said that he was determined to tell his countrymen the reality in Israel, including how he was able to pray freely at the Al-Aqsa Mosque—which, he confessed, shocked him—even if it meant losing his job after over a quarter century as a journalist.
“They are poisoning minds across the globe,” he said. “This disinformation needs to be addressed.”
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