Kasim Hafeez grew up in a Pakistani Muslim immigrant community in Britain that was rife with antisemitism and Israel hatred. Every day, he was exposed to anti-Western ideas. As a student he decided to join a terrorist organization to kill or be killed for the cause, but an accidental intervention of fate caused him to change course, and walk a path completely opposite to what he had known all his life. Today, he fights antisemitism, stressing that the events of October 7 have highlighted the importance of Israel and the battle on its behalf. In an interview with "Globes," he tells his unbelievable life story.
Hafeez lives in the US with his wife, also a pro-Israel activist, and serves as Deputy Director of Communications for Messaging of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a pro-Israel Christian organization with some 10 million members, and deputy director of its outreach department. Over the years, he has spoken around the world in support of Israel and against radical Islam. He is a sought-after interviewee in the media and is very active on social media, where he publishes informational videos about, among other things, his visit to Israel in December 2023, shortly after October 7 and his shock at seeing Kfar Aza. "People in that community woke up that morning like a normal day. They woke up with their families and this was a massacre. It evoked more the idea of a pogrom from the, you know, Russia than a modern conflict… it took a long time to kind of process."
What did you take with you from this visit?
"It had a real impact on me. And, you know, it just it made me realize why this fight is so important. Look, I've worked in this field for a long time, and we always talk about how evil Hamas are and how evil is Hezbollah. And if they could, they would do this. And we knew that. But to actually see them do it, being in that environment and to see the sight, the smell. That you're walking and you're hearing the glass crunching under your feet. These are people's lives which were destroyed because of hatred. You know, it's - I don't want to say powerful because it's not the right word -- but it's very jarring, and it's something that I won't ever forget."
"So, on October 7th… I had just got back from a birthday party and, you know, I saw the rocket alert early on and, you know, so my wife also works in the pro-Israel space. I saw the rocket alerts and I said, look, I've got to post this on my social media. I'll come to bed soon. It was late. And I just didn't go to sleep because it just carried on and it carried on… After about 24 hours, well, we have a friend who lives in Sderot, and seeing her Facebook posts about what was happening and actually asking for help, it became very apparent that this is something very different. And that's when it really sunk in… it's very challenging because in those moments you do feel kind of powerless, sitting in America.
"Because, I love and care about Israel and the Jewish people. It's something I've dedicated my life to and to be there. It genuinely felt that something had broken inside of me, and I would say only in the last few weeks that it's begun to heal… But when I came back from Israel, it just gave me the drive to fight harder and do as much as I could."
Aren't you afraid of what might happen to you because of your support for Israel?
"A long time ago, threats used to bother me. Now I honestly don't care… And you know, you have to be smart and take precautions. So, I take precautions. But, there's a point where, if we back down every time we feel afraid, then that's literally how extremists win by bullying and intimidation. And I know that because I used to be on the other side."
"So, ultimately we are in America. We are in an incredibly privileged position where we don't have Hezbollah and Hamas on our borders. So, me speaking out on Instagram and receiving threats on people who don't use spell check is completely fine… I also received a lot of racist threats, a lot of racism for being Pakistani from Arabs, which I find it very interesting. This is ironic."
A father who praised Hitler
Hafeez was born in December 1983 in Nottingham, UK, to Pakistani Muslim parents who immigrated in order to improve their lives. His mother was a housewife who raised him and his older sister, and his father worked in quality control at a factory. "I grew up in a predominantly Muslim Pakistani neighborhood," he says. "I think it's important to note that the environment I grew up in wasn't extreme… but there was this antisemitism, which was just every-day.
"The most extreme example was my father who would say things such as, 'Hitler was a great man. He didn't kill enough Jews.'"
"[It's] strange in two respects. One, because we didn't know anybody Jewish at all. I didn't meet anybody Jewish until I was in my 20s. Really. And the second thing was, Pakistanis don't have any real issue with Israel. Pakistan has issues with India but Pakistan and Israel have no direct confrontation."
And yet, as a child and teenager, Hafeez accepted it as true. "Like when people would say the Jews control America, the Jews control the UN, the Jews control the media… This was just said as a fact, not 'this is an opinion, ' but 'this is a fact.'
"Within Pakistan and Pakistani culture, both in Pakistan and overseas, there is this ingrained antisemitism in the education system in just general dialog… but there's no real reason for it. It's kind of inherited."
Hafeez says that until his generation came along, the community was passive and only expressed antisemitic sentiments verbally. "But what happened was my generation became radicalized in England… In the period that I'm growing up, you had the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and people were talking about jihad as a positive… So we're Muslims. We're not really seen as British, we're not really seen as Pakistanis. We're looking for identity. And into that void, groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun [fundamentalist Islamic terror organizations] come into communities and start to push their own agenda. And they take the hatred that we've grown up with and weaponize it… and also making it active."
Hafeez happily embraced these agendas. At the age of 18, he consumed the speeches of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and waved Hezbollah flags at the "Nakba Day" demonstrations in London. "So as I’m going through college, you're seeing this hatred and people mobilizing… I wanted to do more, and I decided that the best thing I could do, or the most effective, was terrorism.
"I had known of people who had gone to join the Taliban to fight America in Afghanistan. So, there were groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, which were openly recruiting people from the UK. There was a bookshop in Birmingham which would openly sell DVDs and recruitment material from al Qaeda. It was readily available, not hidden under anything. It was just openly available " He was on the verge of being recruited into a terrorist organization, when fate intervened.
An amazing discovery
In the Israel-Palestine section of a local bookstore, Hafeez came across the book by American jurist Alan Dershowitz "The Case for Israel." He purchased it on a whim, annoyed that such a book even existed. "But I bought this book because I believe these are Zionist lies. Who was going to make a case for Israel?" he recalls. "It was the first time that I'd heard a different perspective, not the same perspective that I was taught, that I believed, that I was willing to kill for, that had celebrated people being murdered. You know, the second Intifada was happening and I'm not thinking 'This is terrible. Women and children are being killed.' I'm thinking, 'Well, they kind of deserve this.' So, I read the case for Israel and it created a little bit of doubt."
The book challenged Hafeez's basic beliefs, motivating him to conduct research about Israel that eventually led him to visit in 2007. "I thought if I go to Israel, I will see that it is actually everything negative I believe, and I can then go back and continue." He hoped the visit would validate everything he had always believed, so he could return to the fold of his extremist community.
Hafeez landed at Ben Gurion Airport and, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, entered Israel. "I spent eight hours in security because I was very honest. But it was an interesting experience, but not a negative experience overall," he laughs.
"Here's the thing I realized about Israel. One, it's very normal. As normal as the Middle East can be. And two, I realized that Israelis and Pakistanis aren't that different. We're very pushy. We don't know how to do a queue or a line. We're very loud, unnecessarily, and we like to eat.
"It was just being there and seeing it, you know… It's cliched, but you don't see apartheid. You see people from all different backgrounds… And just the reality of it was very difficult to process… It's a lot more difficult to hate an actual human being who has a family and is trying to do the same things as you but is just from a different background. And I had this moment when I kind of realized that I was wrong. It was at the Western Wall."
One moment etched in his memory was on the second day of the trip, when he encountered an Arab couple strolling through Jerusalem’s Old City. "I met this Arab-Israeli couple. They were walking in the souk and I noticed that she'd got a headscarf on and I go, 'As-Salaam-Alaikum,' and I launched into this - it's very embarrassing to talk about - 'I'm so sorry that you're oppressed living here, and it's so difficult.' And this guy is like, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'"
The couple explained to Hafeez that life in Israel was comfortable, they had good jobs, and were not afraid of religious persecution. "And that was kind of mind blowing. At the time, I'm like, 'Well, this guy's obviously brainwashed.'"
"But I then spent the rest of my time in Israel… just trying to understand Israel, just trying to understand: Why is this country? Why did it have to come into existence? What's so important about it? Why is it hated? And that really changed my perspective."
A visit to Yad Vashem also made its mark. "[It] was difficult… for me to reconcile as a human being who grew up in the West [but] had made excuses for this horrible atrocity. It’s very difficult. You start to kind of question your own humanity, and what you've become."
"The constant death threats"
When he returned home and began to tell his family and friends the things he had learned - he found himself rejected and threatened. "Honestly, when I was going back - and this was probably naivete from my perspective - I did not think it would be a big deal. I didn't. I thought, 'Okay, I'm not going against Islam. I'm not saying anything against the faith.' So, literally I just went back, started talking to my friends and family. It was a big deal. It was received very negatively. [I was] given an ultimatum of, 'You have to choose. You either carry on this path, or you are going to be kicked out of the family.' And the more I started speaking out, the more negatively it was taken."
He came to public diplomacy on behalf of Israel completely by accident after reading an interview with a British local politician who condemned Israel. Hafeez wrote a letter in response. "I wrote a letter, basically going, I'm from this background. I went. I saw it. What you're saying is false. And that got circulated on social media, and people started reaching out to me, and going, 'Oh, thank you so much,' on Facebook. I was like, 'Thank you for what? Like, okay.' And then, "The Jewish Chronicle" in London contacted me, and were like, 'We don't believe you're a real person. We've had people say that this is fake.' I was like, 'No, no, no, I'm a real person. I can guarantee you.' So, they asked me to write an article, just about my story, so I did that."
At this stage, Hafeez founded the Zionist pro-Israel advocacy organization "The Israel Campaign," speaking at conferences, writing articles, and talking on every platform in favor of Israel. "It kind of just went from there… I started doing speaking and other activism," he says.
At that point, he also began to discover the price of supporting Israel. "Eventually I moved to Canada because it just became very difficult. With all the constant death threats, and looking over my shoulder in the UK, it just became challenging. So, I moved to Canada, and that's where CUFI reached out to me."
Led by Pastor John Hagee, CUFI is the largest Christian Zionist group in North American.
"The core of CUFI support is that this is a biblical issue, not a political issue… Because there are promises made in the Bible in Genesis: 'I will bless those who bless you.' And there is a terrible history of Christian persecution of the Jewish people. And we want to be a generation that want to right historical wrongs."
I read in your Instagram that you are a Christian, a coffee lover, and a sports lover. Are you no longer a Muslim?
"I became Christian a few years ago. Interestingly, when CUFI hired me, I wasn't Christian. I kind of stepped away from religion altogether when I went to Israel because I just felt lied to in general. I would consider myself, at the time, an atheist… but it just didn't resonate. So, I kind of really went on a journey to explore faith. I went to Hindu temples, to Sikh gurdwaras. I really explored faith and religion. But I became a Christian and its good for me.
"Antisemitism in the US has become mainstream"
Nowadays, Hafeez works as a Christian Zionist for the benefit of Israel, regularly issuing pro-Israel advocacy videos to audiences throughout the US, conveying historical facts well as the reality in Israel since October 7 and the current war, against a background of rising antisemitism in US. "It's become mainstream, and that's the scary part. It's no longer where people are afraid to express antisemitic ideas. People are loudly and openly expressing it; it's not even hidden anymore. Social media, obviously, is just out of control, but you're seeing it on college campuses, in the signs that people are holding, how Jewish students are being treated… If what is happening today to Jewish students on a lot of campuses in this country, were happening to any other minority group, there would be outrage. And so, so we are we are going down a dangerous path, because it is being mainstreamed."
On the other hand, says Hafeez, there is also an increase in the number of Christian students joining in support or Israel. "We're seeing more and more Christian students realizing that this is a fight that they cannot be silent on, and it's imperative that they speak up and at the very, very least, show Jewish students that they're not alone."
Do you ever talk to protesters who shout "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," to hear what they want to happen in practice?
"Honestly, I think that the majority of people don't know what they're saying… A friend of mine, his partner is Lebanese, and we got introduced, literally, last night. We got into a conversation and she was like, 'Well, you know, from the river to the sea. ' I was like, 'What does it mean? Which river and what sea? ' She's like, 'Well, you know, the river next to it and the sea over there.' I was like, 'Are you serious right now?' But no, she had no clue. Probably not the best way to start meeting your friend's fiancé, but she had no clue about any of it, just had picked up these slogans because everyone else is saying it."
How do you explain it?
"They're joining something which they think is popular and cool. One: It's very catchy. It is like our slogans aren't as good. People want to feel like they belong to something. You know, and it's terrible to say, but it's almost like a soccer game, you know, there's flags and there's badges and there's scarves and all. There's all this merchandise that people buy and feel part of something, when they really don't have any idea of what they're representing. And two: It has no real impact on their lives."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on August 19, 2024.
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