Gandhi on Palestine

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