By Junaid S. Ahmad
It is hard not to retch when one hears yet another Pakistani defense minister, nearly two years into the televised genocide of Gaza, suddenly discovering his voice to call for “Muslim unity” against Israel. The timing is always exquisite: when the corpses of Gaza’s children are stacked too high for the world to ignore, when another Western-backed ceasefire farce is about to be signed, or when domestic discontent in Pakistan is simmering dangerously close to boiling. At such moments, a stern-faced man in Islamabad dutifully proclaims solidarity with the Palestinians, as though words could substitute for courage. The performance is so transparent that even the clumsiest village theater troupe might blush at the lack of subtlety.
Yet these rhetorical spasms still serve their purpose. The Pakistani public, viscerally outraged by the slaughter in Gaza, must be given some token gesture of empathy, some recycled speech about the “ummah” and “resistance.” The ruling class knows full well that silence would be too dangerous. And so, every so often, a carefully measured declaration is released — a placebo for a wounded conscience, a sedative for a furious population. It is the political equivalent of sprinkling rose water on a corpse.
The mercenary instincts of the brass
The reason these statements never translate into meaningful action lies not in some tragic weakness of Pakistan’s civilian politicians, but in the deeper DNA of the country’s military establishment. For decades, Pakistan’s generals have operated not as defenders of their own people or as champions of Muslim causes, but as mercenaries-for-hire to whichever power or patron keeps their privileges intact.
Saudi princes, Gulf petro-monarchs, Western overlords, even tacit Zionist interests — all have, at one time or another, found the Pakistani brass ready to provide services. From dispatching troops to crush popular uprisings in Arab lands, to supplying manpower for America’s endless wars, the generals of Islamabad have never hesitated to rent out their soldiers in exchange for dollars, oil, or diplomatic cover. The Palestinian cause, for them, is little more than a card to play when domestic opinion demands a performance.
This mercenary instinct is dressed up in many ways. Sometimes it is justified as “strategic necessity,” sometimes as “balancing great power interests,” sometimes as “ensuring national survival.” But strip away the jargon and the truth is banal: the army will defend its institutional privileges at any cost, and if that requires aligning with Gulf tyrants, Israeli expansionism, or American hegemony, so be it.
Zionism in khaki
It is often said, half-jokingly, that the Pakistani brass admire Zionism more than they despise it. And why wouldn’t they? Zionism, after all, has perfected the art of turning a military caste into a ruling elite, transforming colonization into a permanent state of emergency, and marketing brutality as “security.” The generals in Rawalpindi look at Tel Aviv and see a distorted mirror image of themselves: a praetorian state where military men hold the purse strings, dictate foreign policy, and cloak self-interest in the rhetoric of existential struggle.
This is why the Pakistani military’s hostility toward Israel has always been more pantomime than principle. The generals detest the optics of Gaza’s massacres — too graphic to defend — but they admire the structure of the Israeli project: a militarized society, a compliant political class, and an elite that thrives on perpetual crisis. In their own daydreams, they envision Pakistan as a kind of “Zionist state of South Asia,” minus the competence and global influence.
Silence of the sultans, silence of the generals
And Pakistan is not alone. Across the Muslim world, the regimes that boast about their Islamic credentials have responded to the Gaza genocide with cowardice or collaboration. The Gulf monarchies, swimming in oil wealth, have perfected the art of funding Western think tanks while starving Palestinian hospitals. Turkey roars on television while signing trade deals with Israel. Egypt plays border guard for the Zionist siege, treating desperate Palestinians like criminals.
Pakistan, however, has elevated this hypocrisy into high art. Here, the gap between public sentiment and elite behavior yawns wider than almost anywhere else. On the streets, Pakistanis chant for Gaza, donate to aid convoys, and dream of a world where Muslims defend one another. In the barracks, however, generals calculate their pension funds in Dubai, their children’s tuition in London, and their next IMF bailout underwritten by Washington. The silence of the sultans finds its most cynical echo in the silence of Islamabad’s generals.
The American lunatics in charge
Of course, none of this would be possible without the indulgence of Washington. The current American administration, staffed with Zionist ideologues so drunk on their own propaganda that they mistake mass murder for “self-defense,” has offered Israel not just weapons and money but a moral blank check. This is not mere support; it is complicity of the highest order.
American officials, with the smugness of empire, lecture the world on “rules-based order” while watching Gaza burn. They clutch pearls about human rights in Xinjiang while supplying bunker-buster bombs to level Rafah. They tweet about “LGBT rights” during Pride month, then grin as Israel turns Gaza into a graveyard for children. Lunatic is almost too mild a word; what we are witnessing is moral psychosis — a deranged belief that history will bend to their lies simply because they repeat them loudly enough.
For Pakistan’s generals, this madness is not a problem but an opportunity. As long as America remains enthralled to Zionist ideology, Islamabad’s brass knows that their occasional theatrics on Palestine will be forgiven. They can denounce Israel in speeches while coordinating with Washington in practice, confident that nobody in power will call their bluff. The lunacy of Washington, in other words, provides cover for the duplicity of Rawalpindi.
Performative solidarity
The entire charade depends on performative solidarity. Every now and then, a Pakistani leader will thunder about Gaza at the UN, or lead a prayer at a mosque, or call for “unity of the ummah.” These gestures cost nothing, risk nothing, and achieve nothing. But they are not meaningless: they serve as pressure valves, releasing the anger of a population that might otherwise direct its fury inward.
When people are given words instead of weapons, when they are handed prayers instead of policies, when they are told that “unity” is coming tomorrow, always tomorrow — then the ruling class can continue looting in peace. The generals need this theater. Without it, the contrast between their mercenary reality and their Islamic pretenses would become too obvious to contain.
A country colonized by its own army
The irony, of course, is that Pakistan itself is effectively colonized — not by foreign armies, but by its own. The generals live like viceroys, presiding over vast estates, siphoning off budgets, and treating civilian governments as disposable puppets. They claim to defend the country from external threats, but the truth is inverted: it is the people of Pakistan who need protection from their own military aristocracy.
To expect such a caste to defend Gaza is to expect a parasite to heal its host. The generals will never jeopardize their Gulf villas, their American visas, or their international bank accounts for the sake of a besieged Palestinian family. Their solidarity is theatrical, their Islam is ornamental, and their courage is purely imaginary.
The real resistance
And yet, despite this suffocating hypocrisy, the spirit of resistance persists. It is found not in the marble offices of Islamabad but in the streets, among the poor who march for Palestine, among the activists who risk arrest to challenge the siege, among the writers who refuse to let silence become normal. It is civilians, not generals, who embody what solidarity means.
History, after all, is rarely kind to parasites. Empires fall, generals fade, and mercenaries are remembered not as heroes but as footnotes of shame. The Pakistani brass may flatter themselves as strategic masterminds, but they are more accurately described as well-fed vultures circling over a carcass, feeding just enough to stay fat without ever risking a real fight.
A closing provocation
So let us dispense with illusions. The defense minister’s call for “unity against Israel” is not a strategy but a script. It is not courage but cowardice disguised as noise. It is not solidarity but seduction, meant to distract a wounded people from the fact that their so-called guardians are little more than clients of empire.
The Israeli generals will continue their slaughter until stopped. The American government will continue its lunacy until humbled. And the Pakistani generals will continue their theatrics until exposed. But no amount of rhetoric can erase the truth: those who stand silent in the face of genocide are complicit in it.
The future will not be shaped by the brass in Rawalpindi or the lunatics in Washington. It will be shaped by the millions who refuse to be pacified by theater, who see through the hypocrisy, and who demand a politics that defends the living instead of the parasites. Until then, every call for “Muslim unity” from Pakistan’s high command should be treated for what it is: a bad joke, performed by men who mistake their own cowardice for pragmatism.
And perhaps the most cutting humor of all is this: Gaza bleeds, Washington cheers, Tel Aviv plots, and Islamabad rehearses its next speech — while the people of Pakistan, betrayed yet again, are asked to clap for the performance.
Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a member of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST – https://just-international.org/), Movement for Liberation from Nakba (MLN – https://nakbaliberation.com/), and Saving Humanity and Planet Earth (SHAPE – https://www.theshapeproject.com/).
11 September 2025