GANDHI ON THE CREATION OF ISRAEL
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.
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 a 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. They should seek to convert the Arab heart.... (November 1938)
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I know McDermott has been helping India with various nuclear and trade issues, but this seems ridiculous. Obama is inspired by nonviolence? Just ask the people of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. And this was a roll-call vote! Why don't they vote on sending McDermott to Israel to talk about Gandhi and nonviolence.
Link to Original: http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite.nsf/0/1A9A956796C11B446525755A005726D4?OpenDocument
Lalit K Jha
Washington, Feb 11 (PTI) The US House of Representative today unanimously passed a resolution recognising the influence Mahatma Gandhi had on Martin Luther King Jr, the great civil rights leader of America who has been a source of inspiration to President Barack Obama.
Passed by a roll call vote of 406 to 0, with 26 abstaining, the resolution commemorates the 50th anniversary of King's visit to India in 1959.
It was introduced by Congressman John Lewis and co-sponsored by five other lawmakers -- John Conyers, Jim McDermott, Robert C Scott, Henry Johnson and Adam B Schiff.
The resolution urged all Americans to commemorate King's trip to India in 1959 to know more about Mahatma Gandhi and the influence his study of Gandhian philosophy had in shaping the US Civil Rights Movement, in creating political climate necessary to pass legislation to expand civil rights and voting rights for all Americans.
Observing that the great American leader was tremendously influenced by the non-violence philosophy of Gandhi, the resolution says King encountered this during his study of Gandhi, and was further inspired by him during his first trip to India. King successfully used this in the struggle for civil rights and voting rights, it says. PTI
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