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Gandhi on Palestine

Mahatma Ghandi | 13.04.2004 07:16 | Social Struggles | World



Gandhi on Palestine



My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South
Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these
friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have
been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment
by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close.
Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of
the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships,
therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy for
the Jews.

But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry
for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The
sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews
have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other
peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born
and where they earn their livelihood?

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to
the English or France to the French. It is wrong and in-human to impose
the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be
justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction
but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to
reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews
partly or wholly as their national home.

The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews
wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in
precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French. If the
Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced
to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they
want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the
national home affords a colorable justification for the German expulsion of
the Jews.

I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of
non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable
encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons
of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the
face of overwhelming odds.

Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing
the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth. Every
country is their home including Palestine not by aggression but by loving
service. A Jewish friend has sent me a book called The Jewish
Contribution to Civilization by Cecil Roth. It gives a record of what the
Jews have done to enrich the world's literature, art, music, drama,
science, medicine, agriculture, etc. Given the will, the Jew can refuse to
be treated as the outcaste of the West, to be despised or patronized. He
can command the attention and respect of the world by being man, the
chosen creation of God, instead of being man who is fast sinking to
the brute and forsaken by God. They can add to their many contributions
the surpassing contribution of non-violent action.

SEGAON, November 20, 1938

Mahatma Ghandi

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

they did

13.04.2004 10:54

The Jews DID choose non-violence. They protected themselves and refused to retaliate. Which meant that the attacks kept on coming, so the Irgun decided that this policy was stupid and was formed, and began to retaliate. Palestine belonged to the Jews and the Arabs, not just the Arabs, but they refused to recognise that.

Martin Luther King supported the Jews, and said that anti-Zionism was in fact anti-semitism.

har


"Arabs and Jews?"

13.04.2004 14:35

At the time the mandate came into effect 1922, the population of Palestine consisted of approximately 638,000 Muslims, 93,400 Jews and 81,400 Christians. To say that this region consisted of "Arabs and Jews" isn't wholly true.

You don't also seem to be disputing much of what Gandhi has said, thus perhaps claiming him to be right. You only pick up on the violence issue. If you are saying that Israel was merely retaliating to Palestinian terror, surely you must understand that Palestinians were merely retaliating against Israeli occupation of their land...

Matt


reply

13.04.2004 17:56

I am not disputing the alleged statements and opinions of Ghandi because I know nothing about Ghandi and so am not in a position to discuss is opinions on Palestine.

I don't know the statistics for the number of Jews etc, but in 1854 Karl Marx, who was very anti-Jewish, said that Jerusalem had 15,500 inhabitants, including 8,000 Jews and 4,000 Moslems (Arabs, Turks and Moors). This was confirmed by all others there. So even half a century before Zionism Jews were the majority in Jerusalem, although I don't know about Palestine as a whole.

Most of the Palestinians were immigrants as there was extensive immigration from the Arab world. Why are these people not referred to as stealing the land or their jobs or whatever? Even when Jewish immigration was massively restricted, Arab immigration was allowed. It seems its only Jews the Arabs didn't like.

Was that census before or after the vast majority of Palestine was chopped off and made into transjordan? When the state of Israel was created, every single place the Israelis got was majority Jews.

Jews didn't take any land, they bought it all legally. The PLO was formed in 1965, and Israel wasn't occupying anything. Its goal was to liberate Palestine by liquidating the Zionist presence (killing the Jews).

The goal of the Palestinian terrorists is and always has been genocide of the Jews. All throughout the Oslo period Arafat and his chums openly said (in Arabic only) that it was a trojan horse and they were in jihad against Israel, would kill the Jews, etc.

har


Reply

13.04.2004 22:20

To your comment about Oslo accords and Arafat's comments - Wikipedia encyclopedia makes it clear what actually happened -

"In letters exchanged between Arafat and Rabin in conjunction with the 1993 Oslo Accords, Arafat agreed that those clauses would be removed. On 26 April, 1996, the Palestine National Council voted to nullify or amend all such clauses, and called for a new text to be produced. A letter from Arafat to US President Clinton in 1998 listed the clauses concerned, and a meeting of the Palestine Central Committee approved that list. A public meeting of PLO, PNC and PCC members also confirmed the letter in Clinton's presence."

As for population, although I rarely criticise Marx's words, in fact many have stated that in 1880, Arab Palestinians constituted about 95% of the total population (450,000). A few Zionist immigrants had already started arriving in this area before 1897 (when the World Zionist Org. was set up). By 1903 there were some 25,000 of them, mostly from Eastern Europe. They lived alongside about half a million Arab residents.

"Jews didn't take any land, they bought it all legally"

When Britian withdrew from Palestine in 1947-48, Jewish forces seized areas alloted to the Jewish state but also conquered substantial territories allocated for the Palestinian one. I neednt go into the land grab of the 1967 war. This isn't buying legally...

"The goal of the Palestinian terrorists is and always has been genocide of the Jews."

Wasn't it the goal of Zionists to remove all Palestinians from the regions it wanted?

Matt


..

14.04.2004 10:37

The Zionists always made peace offers and since around the time of WW1 were increasingly concerned about getting peaceful relations with the Palestinians/Arabs. After 1967 Israel offered the whole lot back in return for peace. In return for a false peace with Egypt, Israel gave back territory larger than Israel itself. The PA did not follow its proper procedure when it claimed to remove those clauses, so they are still in effect. In Arabic they still talk about jihad against Israel and their schoolbooks show all of Palestine (including Israel) belonging to them.

dhgh


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