terry5
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Serial liar & Fake fantasist living in clown cuckoo land
The mystery of the ‘Jew’ claiming a beating in Karachi | My Pakistan | Jewish Journal
4:34 am
8
PHOTO: FISHEL BENKHALD TWITTER PAGE
Arutz Sheva, an Israeli media network identifying with Religious Zionism, published news by Ari Soffer on March 5 that, “A Jewish activist in Pakistan was savagely beaten by a Muslim mob Wednesday - and then arrested and roughed up again by police.”
I spoke with Fishel Benkhald about the incident over the phone on Sunday evening. I do not doubt he was beaten but I do not think any arrest took place. In fact, I think he was 'rescued' from a bad situation. All inquiries with the law-enforcement agencies pointed to this. He is not in custody. He was, I suspect, detained for questioning given that such an inflammatory situation developed. In this photo, it appears that Fishel is in what appears to be a van used by either the DHA patrol or one of the law-enforcement agencies. The right side of his face appears to have been hit.
Update: After posting this blog several people got in touch with me including a journalist. It appears that Fishel has a history of provoking people in public areas. I do not condone any aggression or violence but I do think that Fishel created this situation to serve his own purposes. For whatever it is worth, I spoke to him to try to ascertain the situation.
The 'fight'
About three weeks ago, according to Fishel, he went to a vigil organized for the Peshawar school attack where he met a man and struck up a conversation, maintaining that non-Muslims should be allowed to become presidents in Pakistan. He says that the man agreed with him at the vigil but later retreated from his position on Twitter.
Fishel declined to mention the man’s name but said that it was evident from their interactions on Twitter. “I don’t bear him a grudge,” he said.
The man asked for his cell phone number and later asked Fishel to meet him at Mirchi 360 in Khadda market, a small commercial area with restaurants, at midnight on Wednesday.
“It was a stupid thing to do,” he told me.
Here is the Arutz Sheva reporting on the specifics of the fight:
"I was debating over Twitter with a young educated Pakistani Muslim that non-Muslim Pakistanis should be allowed in theory to be elected president according to our constitution," the discussion was purely theoretical, he noted, given that non-Muslims account for only around 3% of the Pakistani population.
After a back-and-forth "I proposed to debate face to face," said Benkhald. "He asked for me for my cell phone number and I gave it to him."
The two agreed to continue a friendly discussion at a restaurant in Karachi. But when he got there, Benkhald soon found himself ambushed.
"I went there alone but he was with his friends, we started the debate in a normal discussion manner but soon it got heated up and cursing started."
At that point, a "mob" began to gather around him "and two of the guys who were with him started manhandling me - I should have left at that time.
"They started punching me and when I fell they started kicking my head. Someone also tried to snatch away my mobile."
Benkhald managed to tape part of the altercation, including the assault. Arutz Sheva has opted not to include it due to the explicit and violent nature of parts.
At that point police arrived, but instead of arresting his attackers, they detained Benkhald.
"The police came and took me away, they didn't take the other guys. The police asked me if I am from Israel or from any other country. I told them that I am a Pakistan and am Jewish from (my) mother's side but registered as a Muslim in Pakistan."
Blindfolded and cuffed, he was then handed over to Pakistan's Rangers paramilitary force, who continued questioning him about his ethnic origins, and going through his social media pages after demanding his passwords.
"They beat me, but not much," claims Benkhald, and accused him of being a spy for either Israel, the US or India.
Eventually he was released after his brother intervened and bailed him out. the ordeal left Benkhald with a swollen eye and bruising. (End of Arutz Sheva report quote)
Note: Fishel told me that the man invited him to a debate face to face but Fishel told Arutz Sheva: "I proposed to debate face to face." (So this part doesn't quite match up.)
Unlikely arrest
What Fishel maintains is that the “DHA police” (DHA is Defence Housing Society in whose jurisdiction Khadda market falls) came and took him away to their “police station”. As he described them as being uniformed in blue, I maintain that the DHA vigilance staff and not the police came. DHA has men on patrol around the clock in this area. They are not the official police and do not have any powers to arrest someone.
Fishel says he was taken “up the hill”, which would be the DHA building at Khayaban-e-Hafiz. He was kept there for an estimated 45 minutes, but Fishel is not absolutely certain as it was hard to keep track of time. He was blindfolded and handcuffed, he maintains.
He was then handed over to the paramilitary Rangers, he maintains, but the Rangers spokesperson has denied this case ever happened. Fishel says he was taken elsewhere and kept till the next day at 6pm. He says he was not beaten, just slapped. He was “interrogated.'
Fishel has repeatedly asked for an FIR or police report or complaint paperwork but when he went the next day he wasn’t even allowed in. I maintain two things:
1. The DHA vigilance team does not have the authority to arrest anyone. They might have handed Fishel over to the Rangers as they did not want an incident on their hands in this potentially inflammatory context.
2. (Correcting an earlier point) The paramilitary Rangers canregister an FIR. A few months ago they were given powers and one police station in each jurisdiction. They can arrest people as well.
However, neither the Rangers, nor the police, nor the DHA spokesman said a case was registered. The Rangers spokesman denied it. Clifton SP Amjad Hayat said the same thing. A DHA spokesman told our crime reporter: “Honestly speaking no such thing is in my knowledge.” I cross checked with a retired senior police officer, who is usually in the loop, and he said that if all three were denying an FIR was registered it was true. They do not need to lie if they register a case.
Fishel had thought a case was registered against him. I asked him who had said there was one, and he did not say that any of the vigilance staff or Rangers had said so. When he asked the vigilance staff they just said: “You will find out [if there is a case.]”
Fishel agrees that he put himself at risk. “I am in even bigger trouble with my family,” he said. “This is the last time we save you’re a%$.”
I asked him why he made a video of himself, claiming a beating. (No beating shows up in the video). He said that when things get “crazy” millennials like him take videos to “shield” themselves.
Background: Who Fishel claims he is
Fishel maintains: His father was a secular Muslim in Karachi and his mother was Jewish, with the maternal side Sephardic Jews coming from Yazd, Iran. He declined to give me his mother's name or surname as he said it would affect the rest of his family. That identity thus remains unclear to me. He does not remember what year his parents got married. He says they died when he was young. He is 27 years old and works as a construction contractor. He came to Karachi, he says in July 2014 from Morocco. I am therefore not entirely sure he is even Jewish in the first place. If this is true it certainly would be a spectacular revelation.
What Fishel wants
Fishel says he has been campaigning for volunteers to go clean up the Jewish graveyard in Karachi. “The cleaning should be done for free,” he said. “Until Karachiites clean them with their own hands they won’t own it.” His campaign has been mostly limited to outreach on Twitter. He has found that most people are adverse to going to the graveyard as it is in what they perceive as a troubled spot in Karachi.
I asked Fishel if he did not think that trying to get people go clean up such a sensitive heritage site was problematic and put it at risk. He disagreed, saying that the location and various articles about the Jewish graveyard were all over the internet and anyone who wanted to desecrate the graves would have done so already. “Anyone with an evil intention will find it anyway,” he added. And while this position of his makes sense, I rebutted by adding that it was inflammatory if a person saying he was Jewish tried to campaign for a Jewish cemetery. We agreed to disagree on this point.
Not the last Jew in Pakistan
Here I'd like to add that it is perhaps incorrect to say Fishel is the last Jew in Pakistan. Please see a previous blog I wrote on the possibility of others existing. It is also a stretch to say he is an activist leading a campaign. Being vocal on Twitter doesn't qualify). His 'Jewish' connection needs to be investigated as well. I find it hard to take his word for it.
It is obviously completely unacceptable that a man (no matter what his religion) should be beaten up for his beliefs, if this is true. But I do question his decision to meet a complete stranger given the situation on the ground in Karachi. Here is what one person said in the comments section about this:
@Jameelur Rasheed said: I am sorry for whatever happened to you. Having said that, you are the biggest fool on planet to have agreed to meet just a random guy you had a brief conversation with over twitter. I won’t do it despite the fact that I am a Muslim.
Other readers pointed to certain tweets by Benkhald which have been inflammatory. I have yet to trawl through his timeline but if this is the case, and I hope not, he would have unnecessarily put himself in a difficult position.
Previous contact
I was in contact with Fishel last year, if memory serves correctly. We met over Twitter and then a few emails were exchanged because I was interested in his take on the Jewish cemetery. On principle I do not write about it out of fear that it will come into the spotlight. This is part of the sensibility one is compelled to adopt to protect heritage sites. I have known experts who have worked on these issues, but highlighting them in the media or on social media serves no purpose whatsoever at this given point in time, I believe.
Suffice it to say that I did not believe Fishel merited an interview at the time. Something put me off about what he said he was trying to accomplish. I thnk he just likes the media attention. I wish he realised that he is putting himself and his family at extreme risk.
I do hope he recovers from the incident and that he stays safe. I shall now go back to getting some real work done. What a waste of everyone's time
. And while it is really easy to always label all Pakistanis as aggressive and easy to provoke, I think there is a lot to also be said about people who deliberately create situations. It was extremely easy for Arutz Sheva to paint Fishel as a victim of a 'Muslim mob' and as a one-man activist. This is, in my mind the easy way out. I am extremely pro-Jewish and heck if there were any Jews in Pakistan who were willing to disclose their identity and get into public fights, I would be standing right by them. But this was an entirely different situation. I cannot say it was amusing. I hope it doesn't happen again.
