Mohandas Gandhi
on Palestine, Israel and the Conflict between Jews and Arabs
These are excerpts from an article written by Mohandas Gandhi on
November 20, 1938 and published in Harijan on November 26,
1938.
Please keep in mind that at the time this article was written, Hitler was in
power in Germany
and war was about to break out all around the world. Because I'm an editor and
publisher of Holocaust poetry who has worked closely with a number of Jewish
Holocaust survivors, poets and translators, I find myself agreeing, in the main,
with Gandhi. All my sympathies are with the Jewish people for what they suffered
during the Holocaust, but I cannot excuse a
terrible new injustice because of terrible injustices in the past. Why should
millions of Palestinians live in walled ghettos and refugee camps today, because
of what German Nazis did to Jews? My Cherokee ancestors
walked the Trail of Tears. My Scottish ancestors were abused by Romans, Vikings
and Englishmen. Does that give me the right to take my neighbors' land and
water, the stuff of life, by force? Of course not. — MRB
Here's what Mohandas Gandhi had to say on the subject:
Several letters have been received by me asking me to declare my views about the
Arab-Jew question in Palestine
and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. It is not without
hesitation that I venture to offer my views on this very difficult question.
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 inhuman 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. ... And now a word
to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going
about it the wrong way. The Palestine
of the Biblical conception is not geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But
if they must look to the Palestine
of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of
the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet
or the bomb. They can settle in
Palestine
only by the goodwill of the Arabs. ... There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if
they will only discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are
co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to
them.
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 word's Literature, art, music, drama, science, medicine, agriculture,
etc. Given the will, the Jews can refuse to be treated as the outcaste of the
West, to be despised or patronized. They 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.