Is Pakistan like Israel?
By Khaled Ahmed June 13, 2010 Ayesha Siddiqa in her June 6 column in The Express Tribune made a very interesting comparison between Pakistan and Israel: both were supposedly formed on the basis of religion, both are national security states with illegal nukes and are internationally isolated. The comparison is favourable to neither. There are minor differences, however. Pakistan has a constitution which says it is a religious state. Israel doesn’t have a constitution, so its legal status is undecided. But were the two demanded in the name of religion? It is not certain. The only document that lays out the nature of the Israeli state is proclamation of Madinat Yisrael of 1948. (Stat e in Hebrew is madina!) This is the proclamation about the foundation of the state. It speaks of Israel as a homeland of all Jews. It says the values of the state of Israel will be based on the teachings of the Hebrew Prophets. The Proclamation of Independence, read over ...