GANDHI ON JEWS, ARABS, AND PALESTINE

 PROPHETIC WORDS FROM MAHATMA GANDHI IN 1938

           "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...  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."

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
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.

But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in
history.  The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have
gone.  And he is doing it with religious zeal.  For he is propounding
a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism in the name of
which any inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded here and
hereafter.  The crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth is being
visited upon his whole race with unbelievable ferocity.  If there
ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for
humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton
persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified.  But
I do not believe in any war.  A discussion of the pros and cons
of such a war is therefore outside my horizon or province.

But if there can be no war against Germany, even for such a crime as is
being committed against the Jews, surely there can be no alliance
with Germany.  How can there be alliance between a nation which claims
to stand for justice and democracy and one which is the declared enemy
of both?  Or is England drifting towards armed dictatorship and all it
means?

Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked
when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading
as humanitarianism.  It is also showing how hideous, terrible and
terrifying it looks in its nakedness. Can the Jews resist this
organized and shameless persecution?  Is there a way to preserve
their self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and
forlorn?  I submit there is. No person who has faith in a living God
need feel helpless or forlorn.  Jehovah of the Jews is a God more
personal than the God of the Christians, the Mussalmans or the Hindus,
though, as a matter of fact in essence, He is common to all and
one without a second and beyond description.  But as the Jews
attribute personality to God and believe that He rules every action
of theirs, they ought not to feel helpless. If I were a Jew and were
born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany
as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to
shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or
to submit to discriminating treatment.  And for doing this, I should
not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would
have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my
example.  If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription
here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering
voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which
no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside
Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to declare
hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner
strength.  The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a
general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the
declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could
be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have
imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that
Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the
tyrant. For to the Godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful
sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing
for the long sleep.

It is hardly necessary for me to point out that it is easier for the
Jews than for the Czechs to follow my prescription. And they have in
the Indian satyagraha campaign in South Africa an exact parallel.
There the Indians occupied precisely the same place that the Jews
occupy in Germany.  The persecution had also a religious tinge.
President Kruger used to say that the white Christians were the
chosen of God and Indians were inferior beings created to serve the
whites.  A fundamental clause in the Transvaal constitution was that
there should be no equality between the whites and coloured races
including Asiatics.  There too the Indians were consigned to ghettos
described as locations.

The other disabilities were almost of the same type as those of the
Jews in Germany. The Indians, a mere handful, resorted to satyagraha
without any backing from the world outside or the Indian
Government. Indeed the British officials tried to dissuade the
satya-grahis from their contemplated step. World opinion and the Indian
Government came to their aid after eight years of fighting. And
that too was by way of diplomatic pressure not of a threat of war.

But the Jews of Germany can offer satyagraha under infinitely better
auspices than the Indians of South Africa. The Jews are a compact,
homogeneous community in Germany.  They are far more gifted than the
Indians of South Africa. And they have organized world opinion behind
them. I am convinced that if someone with courage and vision can
arise among them to lead them in non-violent action, the winter of
their despair can in the twinkling of an eye be turned into the summer
of hope. And what has today become a degrading
 man-hunt can be turned into a calm and determined stand offered
by unarmed men and women possessing the strength of suffering given to
them by Jehovah. It will be then a truly religious resistance offered
against the godless fury of dehumanised man. The German Jews will
score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in the sense
that they will have converted the latter to an appreciation of
human dignity.  They will have rendered service to fellow-Germans
and proved their title to be the real Germans as against those
who are today dragging, however unknowingly, the German name into the
mire.

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. The same God rules the
Arab heart who rules the Jewish heart. They can offer satyagraha in
front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the
Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them.  They will find
the world opinion in their favour in their religious aspiration. 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 Civilisation by Cecil Roth. It
gives a record of what the Jews have done to enrich the world?
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 patronised. 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.

November 20, 1938