Tag Archive for Fishel Benkhald

‘Last Jew in Pakistan’ Ambushed, Beaten by Muslim Mob, Then by Police

Fishel Benkhald, who is spearheading a campaign to restore Karachi’s neglected Jewish cemetery, was viciously beaten, then arrested by police, after agreeing to a ‘friendly’ debate over minority rights.

By Ari Soffer

 

A Jewish activist in Pakistan was savagely beaten by a Muslim mob Wednesday – and then arrested and roughed up again by police.

Fishel Benkhald after being attacked – Courtesy

Fishel Benkhald – who is leading a one-man campaign to preserve the old Jewish cemetery in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi – has been a vocal activist for minority rights in the country, which is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and where minorities such as Christians, Hindus and non-Sunni Muslims are routinely persecuted.
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A self-declared Pakistani Jew crusades to save Karachi’s only Jewish cemetery

One single Pakistani Jew fights for the remembrance of the once thriving Jewish community in Karachi, that had been forsaken and is now under threat from an encroaching Muslim cemetery.

By in Karachi

 

There are few clues as to the identity of the last Pakistani Jew to be buried in Karachi. A heart-shaped piece of marble set into a slab of rough concrete in the city’s Jewish cemetery in February 1983 has none of the detail or Hebrew script of the more elaborate tombs built a century earlier, when Jews were a self-confident minority in a country where they are now often demonized. Continue Reading »