new york | It was a remarkable sight: the president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan sitting on a New York dais alongside leaders of the American Jewish community and Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, eating a kosher dinner beneath a blue-and-white banner reading “Council for World Jewry.”
It was all the more notable considering the significant personal risk the appearance must have entailed for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who has been the subject of several recent assassination attempts at the hands of Muslim extremists.
And indeed, there was near-unanimous agreement among Jews and Pakistanis at the Saturday, Sept. 17 event that Musharraf’s mere presence before an audience of Jewish officials represented a potentially historic step in Muslim-Jewish relations.
For his landmark gesture, the Pakistani general received a series of standing ovations.
“I would never have imagined that a Muslim, a president of Pakistan and, more than that, a man in uniform would ever get such a warm reception from the Jewish community,” Musharraf said.
Beyond the novelty of the appearance, however, Musharraf’s half-hour speech met with disappointment from some Jewish leaders who found his remarks rich in hyperbole but poor in specific proposals.
“If we waited 100 years” to hold this meeting “it would have been even more historic, but what is it we have achieved?” asked Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “In his world, in his culture, this is a major step. From our perspective, it isn’t.”
Norman Liss, an attorney and a member of the American Jewish Congress’ executive committee, had a negative impression.
“Zero progress,” he said before the applause had died down, noting that Musharraf said little beyond earlier comments about establishing relations with Israel — providing Israel takes a series of steps and a Palestinian state is established.
Musharraf’s address followed closely on the heels of his brief encounter last week with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on the sidelines of the United Nations World Summit and a recent meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries.
Musharraf spoke about religious similarities between Muslims and Jews and characterized recent hostility between the two groups as an aberration against a background of historical coexistence. He further earned plaudits for insisting that terrorism “cannot be condoned for any cause.”
Many in the audience saw Musharraf’s decision to address a Jewish audience as a public-relations move rather than the reflection of a serious desire for detente. Like many in the Muslim world, Musharraf views the American Jewish community as key to securing political influence along the Beltway, some said.
Still, many considered the symbolism of the event key. Unlike Palestinian leaders, who often have made conciliatory statements to foreign leaders in English while urging their constituents to war in Arabic, Musharraf spoke before a full contingent of Pakistani media beaming his words back home.
For Dr. Abdul Rehman, an officer of the MMSI mosque in Staten Island, N.Y., Musharraf’s appearance gives the “green light” to Muslims to work toward cooperation and dialogue with Jews.
“This gives us the credibility to go out and speak,” he said.