Welcome Alex! I applaud your calmness in responding to some very excitable opinions here, and despite plain old bigotry. If you have not been to Pakistan, you cannot know how much hogwash and ignorance and prejudice there is against Jews.
I have studied the Holocaust, for no other reason than I felt compelled to. Maybe because I think as citizens of the planet, as human beings we all have within each of us equal depth of goodness and depth of evil. And some of us must remember. And there are other holocausts (it seems there will ever be, other holocausts) which others of us must remember -- sometimes, when I think of this slaughter or that tragedy, it is all too much, you know? So someone else must study those, remember those. Spread out the witnessing, so to speak. I don't know if that makes any sense.
Anyway, when I watched the anti-Muslim pogrom in Bombay (so it was then) in Jan 1993, and watched the Kristalnacht rampages of the Shiv Sena and the BJP, watching all of that, the same as 1930s Germany, and I managed to get on a flight to Pakistan that week...watching all of that, I knew that there must be a Pakistan, just as there must be an Israel.
Pakistan and Israel have far more in common than they want to admit. Both are refuges for people who simply want to be who they are, practice their religion, raise their families according to their traditions. Both have populations who have gone from being in the minority to being in the majority. Both have neighbors who think they should not exist or who wish to punish them for existing. Both have identity issues, about what it means to be a homeland for a particular religion and to be democratic or secular at the same time. Both are dealing with terrorism and international intrigue. Both have bigots and fundamentalist nutcases. Both have politicians playing the communalism ruse or the reliogious ruse or the exterior enemy ruse to stay in power.
The way I look at it, we are all Jews. There is always someone who will persecute us for what we are or for what we are not. There is always someone who will target us to control the masses. Each and every one of us, whether because of religion or language or colour or economic strata, will be blamed or targetted. That is what I mean when I say, we are all Jews.
It is the Muslims' turn now, this century, that much is clear.
