Why is Israel considered illegitimate as a religious nationalist state while Pakistan is a religious nationalist state to which most people do not object?

Answer 1

It simply boils down to the fact that Israel is made up of Jews whereas Pakistan is made up of Muslims. It is socially acceptable to demonize Jews and their beliefs, but unacceptable to demonize Muslims and their beliefs. All other logical reasons to separate Pakistan from Israel make the Pakistani case look more illegitimate than Israel.

For example, the four main ethnic groups of Pakistan: the Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, and Balochi, were never united as one nation prior to the creation of the British Colonial India project. These were peoples who had fought one another at different times, lived entirely different styles of life, saw the Islamic religion differently at a fundamental level, and who have strong intra-ethnic loyalties. By contrast, the Jews consistently saw themselves as a united people. For example, when Jews became emanicipated and started to join national armies, rabbis from all over Europe passed responsa banning Jewish military participation on the grounds that a Jew could kill another Jew. Jews had similar lifestyles regardless of their country of residence, and the yearning to return to Zion was in all Jews. So strong was the desire to return to Zion that when Messianic Pretenders like Shabbetai Zevi in the Ottoman Empire gave the Jews hope that the End Times were coming, European Jews who lived in countries militarily opposed to the Ottoman Empire heeded the call and returned to Israel.

Most people would point to the fact that a sizable portion of Israel comes from the Diaspora after 1945, as a difference. However, this does not make Israel unique as Pakistan also had a sizable population come from the Diaspora after 1945. In 1950, the population of Pakistan was 37.5 million people of whom 7.5 million were refugees from India. That means that roughly one-fifth of the Pakistani population comes from the Diaspora and should make the Pakistani case equally problematic, if Diaspora Immigration is an issue.

Others say that it was the forcible exile of the Palestinians that is the issue. Regardless of whether Palestinians were forcibly exiled or they left of their own accord, there is no doubt that 7 million Hindus fled Muslim rule in Pakistan and similarly fled for a state that would protect their interests. Since independence, Pakistan has routinely discriminated against Hindus with laws prejudicial to them and their interests, school-books that demean them, and occasional violent incidents. Israel by contrast settled with those Muslims who chose to stay, allowed their Imams to govern life-cycle rituals and maintain mosques, and have given Israeli Muslims nearly all of the rights of citizenship enjoyed by Jews.