Pakistan denies Israel trade after businessman’s export

Pakistan on Sunday denied rumors of trade with Israel following a Jewish businessman’s tweet about successfully exporting food samples to Jerusalem and Haifa.

Fishel Benkhald, a Pakistani Jew based in the southern port city of Karachi, went viral for tweeting about his first kosher food shipment to Israel. The two countries do not have diplomatic ties.

"Congratulations to me as a Pakistani. I exported the first batch of Pakistan food products to Israel market,” he said last week.

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Benkhald shared a video clip showing his visit to an Israeli market. He walks past stalls with containers of dates, dried fruit and spices with product tags in Hebrew.

Pakistan denied having any diplomatic or trade relations with Israel. "There is no change in the policy,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told media in response to queries about bilateral trade.

Pakistan officially backs a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has a longstanding position of non-recognition of Israel until an independent Palestinian state is established within the pre-1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Pakistan’s Commerce Ministry said rumors of bilateral trade were "sheer propaganda.”

"Neither do we have any trade relations with Israel nor do we intend to develop any,” it said in a statement.

Benkhald, who is part of a dwindling Jewish community in the Muslim majority-nation of 220 million, had his religion status in his national Pakistani documents corrected from Islam to Judaism in 2017. Although a statement on his Pakistani passport says the document is valid for travel to all countries except Israel, he is the first Pakistani to have officially performed a pilgrimage there with the permission of Islamabad.

"Food, trade, music and tourism bring people together. Let’s build bridges,” Benkhald said in his tweet.

Associated Press