Mufti Taqi Usmani, a former judge of Pakistan’s Federal Shariat Court and a prominent Deobandi cleric, announced a fatwa after eighteen months of the Gaza conflict, declaring that “it is the duty of every adult Muslim to wage war against Israel.”

Following this fatwa, Fawad Chaudhry (Fawad Hussain), a former federal minister and senior leader of Imran Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), publicly praised Mufti Taqi Usmani and offered to bear all travel expenses for individuals trained to cross into Gaza and fight alongside Hamas terrorists against Israel.

In the towns of Larkana and Mirpur Khas in Sindh province, angry crowds led by militants belonging to outfits such as Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) attacked American-owned Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) outlets. The mobs looted and set them on fire, falsely portraying KFC as an Israeli-owned business. In at least one reported incident, a daily-wage laborer was injured during such an attack.

Similarly, violent campaigns were launched against McDonald’s and PepsiCo, which were branded as “Israeli businesses.” Mobs even had their own definition of Pepsi—“Pay Every Penny Saved to Israel”—to incite anger, despite knowing that Pepsi is not an Israeli product.

Meanwhile, a member of the Sindh Bar Council in Karachi filed a petition in the Sindh High Court requesting the issuance of an arrest warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The slogan “Jang rahey gi, jang rahey gi, Israel ki barbadi tak” (“The war will continue until the destruction of Israel”) has long been chanted in rallies across Pakistan, both by left- and right-wing groups protesting against Israel and the United States.

Recently, rumors circulated about the death of Dr. Adeeb Rizvi, a noted philanthropist and surgeon-urologist, and a former left-leaning student leader of the 1950s. He is widely revered in Pakistan, often compared to the late social worker Abdul Sattar Edhi. However, a member of a left-oriented WhatsApp group speculated that the rumor of Dr. Rizvi’s death might be the handiwork of a “Jewish lobby,” alleging that such forces had long been active against Pakistan.

The phrase “Jewish lobby” has become a notorious and recurring trope in Pakistani media and political discourse. For many national crises and internal problems, blame is often placed either on India or on an alleged “Jewish lobby,” despite lacking evidence of its existence in Pakistan. More recently, Israel has also been blamed for unrest in Balochistan province, where Baloch separatists have been engaged in a prolonged and largely underreported conflict with Pakistan’s military.

Ironically, most Pakistanis have rarely seen or encountered a Jew in their lives.

In one of the most tragic examples of antisemitic violence, a terrorist Omar Saeed Sheikh murdered American journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi. Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and held hostage before being killed. A prominent Pakistani television anchor, Kamran Khan, claimed on his show that........

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