Gandhi's Grandson Visits Palestine

At times the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can seem intractable. Very often we forget how it started. “They have been fighting for hundreds of years,” we often her. Often the history of the conflict, and thus the historic injustice, is purposely clouded for political reasons. We need someone with unquestionable integrity and who is has no interests involved to cut through the mess and explain what is at heart of the conflict. There are few better candidates than Gandhi. Asked for his opinion on Zionist migration in Palestine, Gandhi wrote the following letter on November 20th, 1938. Ten years before the Palestinians lost their homeland to the violent establishment of Israel.

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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 colourable 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 aggre-ssion 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.

If only the international community would have heard his word then, it’s still not too late.

If Gandhi were still with us we'd be standing with the Palestinians today. He cannot unfortunately, but his grandson has inherited his grandfather's support for the justness of the Palestinian cause:

Rajmohan Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, visited Bil’in on Sunday and praised the people’s steadfastness, saying, "It is our duty to awaken the international community from its sleep and make them aware of what is happening in Palestine."

That night, the Israeli army came to the home of 27-year-old Yaser Awad Yaseen and presented hm with an order to appear at the Shabak (security force) office, for an unstated reason. And on Friday night, the IDF jeeps rolled through the village in search of 18-year-old Yaser Mahir. Hamde reports, "It had been two and a half weeks since the last night raid, in which Bil’in was declared a closed military area and Israeli and international activists were prohibited from entering the village."

From the Bil’in Popular Committee report:

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi said that the visit of Gandhi and the symbolism represented by a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi who led India’s struggle for liberation from colonialism and racial discrimination and access to independence, to see a particular struggle of the Palestinian people and see the suffering of our people in the rest of the Occupied Palestinian attacks daily extremist settlers and the occupation forces is a significant achievement.

The son of Martin Luther King, Jr. will also visit Bil'in next week in solidarity with the Palestinians. The Israelis know these visits undermine their occupation and tyranny, so for the next six months they intend to enforce a ban on the weekly Friday protest marches. They can try.

But the Palestinians remain steadfast while Israel becomes more and more a pariah state.

And more of the world is waking up to the injustice of Zionism.