Gandhi's major statement
on the Palestine and the Jewish question came forth in his widely
circulated editorial in the Harijan of 11 November 1938, a time
when intense struggle between the Palestinian Arabs and the immigrant
Jews had been on the anvil in Palestine. His views came in the context
of severe pressure on him, especially from the Zionist quarters,
to issue a statement on the problem. Therefore, he started his piece
by saying that his sympathies are all with the Jews, who as a people
were subjected to inhuman treatment and persecution for a long time.
"But", Gandhi asserted, "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 in the tenacity with which the Jews have
hankered after their 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?"
He thus questioned the very foundational logic of political Zionism.
Gandhi rejected the idea of a Jewish State in the Promised Land
by pointing out that the "Palestine of the Biblical conception
is not a geographical tract." The Zionists, after embarking
upon a policy of colonization of Palestine and after getting British
recognition through the Balfour Declaration of 1917 for "the
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jews,"
tried to elicit maximum international support. The Jewish leaders
were keen to get an approval for Zionism from Gandhi as his international
fame as the leader of a non-violent national struggle against imperialism
would provide great impetus for the Jewish cause. But his position
was one of total disapproval of the Zionist project both for political
and religious reasons. He was against the attempts of the British
mandatory Government in Palestine toeing the Zionist line of imposing
itself on the Palestinians in the name of establishing a Jewish
national home. Gandhi's Harijan editorial is an emphatic assertion
of the rights of the Arabs in Palestine. The following oft-quoted
lines exemplify his position: "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... 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."
Gandhi's response to Zionism and the Palestine question contains
different layers of meaning, ranging from an ethical position to
political realism. What is interesting is that Gandhi, who firmly
believed in the inseparability of religion and politics, had been
consistently and vehemently rejecting the cultural and religious
nationalism of the Zionists.
What follows then is that he was not for religion functioning as
a political ideology; rather, he wanted religion to provide an ethical
dimension to nation-State politics. Such a difference was vital
as far as Gandhi was concerned. A uni-religious justification for
claiming a nation-State, as in the case of Zionism, did not appeal
to him in any substantial sense.
The history of Palestine in the first half of this century has
been characterized by the contention between two kinds of nationalism:
Zionism and Palestinian Arab nationalism-the former striving for
creating a Jewish nation in Palestine by colonizing its land through
massive Jewish immigration and the latter struggling for freedom
of the inhabitants of the land of Palestine from colonial and imperialist
control.
Gandhi, in his role as leader of the national struggle and the
Indian National Congress (the organization embodying that struggle),
had been actively engaged during the 1930s and 1940s in moulding
the perception of the people of India to the nationalist and anti-imperialist
struggles in the Arab world. The 1937 Calcutta meeting of the All
India Congress Committee (AICC) "emphatically protested against
the reign of terror as well as the partition proposals relating
to Palestine" and expressed the solidarity of the Indian people
with the Arab peoples' struggle for national freedom. The Delhi
AICC of September 1938 said in its resolution that Britain should
leave the Jews and the Arabs to amicably settle the issues between
the two parties, and it urged the Jews "not to take shelter
behind British Imperialism." Gandhi wanted the Jews in Palestine
to seek the goodwill of the Arabs by discarding "the help of
the British bayonet."
Gandhi and the Congress thus openly supported Palestinian Arab
nationalism, and Gandhi was more emphatic in the rejection of Zionist
nationalism. The major political driving force in such a position
was the common legacy of anti-imperialist struggle of the Indians
and the Palestinians. Gandhi's views on the Zionist doctrine and
his firm commitment to the Palestinian cause starting from the 1930s
obviously influenced the design of independent India's position
on the Palestine issue.
Gandhi's prescription for the Jews in Germany and the Arabs in
Palestine was non-violent resistance. With regard to the Jewish
problem in Germany, Gandhi noted, "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." His views on Zionism
and his prescription of non-violent action and self-sacrifice to
the Jews in Germany generated reactions ranging from anger to despair.
Famous Jewish pacifists, Martin Buber, Judah Magnes and Hayim Greenberg,
who otherwise admired Gandhi, felt "highly offended by Gandhi's
anti-Zionism" and criticized him for his lack of understanding
of the spirit of Zionism. Martin Buber, in a long reply to Gandhi's
Harijan editorial, remarked, "You are only concerned, Mahatma,
with the "right of possession" on the one side; you do
not consider the right to a piece of free land on the other side
- for those who are hungering for it."
As mentioned earlier, Gandhi refused to view the Zionist "hunger"
for land in Palestine as a right. Gandhi wrote on 7 January 1939
the following in response to an editorial in the Statesman, "I
hold that non-violence is not merely a personal virtue. It is also
a social virtue to be cultivated like the other virtues. Surely
society is largely regulated by the expression of non-violence in
its mutual dealing. What I ask for is an extension of it on a larger,
national and international scale."
Also, it is significant to note that, as far as Gandhi was concerned,
non-violent action was not pacifism or a defensive activity but
a way of waging war. This war without violence also requires discipline,
training and the assessment of the strength and weakness of the
enemy.
According to Paul Power, four factors influenced Gandhi's position
on Zionism:
"First, he was sensitive about the ideas of Muslim Indians
who were anti-Zionists because of their sympathy for Middle Eastern
Arabs opposed to the Jewish National Home; second, he objected to
any Zionist methods inconsistent with his way of non-violence; third,
he found Zionism contrary to his pluralistic nationalism, which
excludes the establishment of any State based solely or mainly on
one religion; and fourth, he apparently believed it imprudent to
complicate his relations with the British, who held the mandate
in Palestine."
Gandhi withstood almost all Zionist attempts at extracting a pro-Zionist
stance from him. G.H. Jansen wrote about the failure of Zionist
lobbying with Gandhi:
"His opposition [to Zionism] remained consistent over a period
of nearly 20 years and remained firm despite skilful and varied
applications to him of that combination of pressure and persuasion
known as lobbying, of which the Zionists are past masters."
Apart from responses to Gandhi's anti-Zionism from Jewish pacifists
such as Buber, Magnes and Greenberg, Jansen points out at least
four separate instances of Zionist attempts to get a favorable statement
from Gandhi. At first, Hermann Kallenbach, Gandhi's Jewish friend
in South Africa, came to India in 1937 and stayed for weeks with
Gandhi trying to convince him of the merits of the Zionist cause.
Then, in the 1930s, as requested by Rabbi Stephen Wise, the American
pacifist John Haynes Holmes, tried "to obtain from Gandhi a
declaration favorable to Zionism". In March 1946, a British
MP from the Labour Party, Sydney Silverman, an advocate of Indian
independence in Britain, attempted to change Gandhi's mind. At the
end of their heated conversation, Gandhi stated that "after
all our talk, I am unable to revise the opinion I gave you in the
beginning." The fourth Zionist attempt to change Gandhi's mind
was by Louis Fischer, Gandhi's famous biographer, to whom Gandhi
reported to have said that "the Jews have a good case."
Later, Gandhi clarified in one of his final pieces on Zionism and
the Palestine question on 14 July 1946 that "I did say some
such thing in the course of a conversation with Mr. Louis Fischer
on the subject." He added, "I do believe that the Jews
have been cruelly wronged by the world."
Gandhi went back to his initial position by categorically stating
that "But in my opinion, they [the Jews] have erred grievously
in seeking to impose themselves on Palestine with the aid of America
and Britain and now with the aid of naked terrorism... Why should
they depend on American money or British arms for forcing themselves
on an unwelcome land? Why should they resort to terrorism to make
good their forcible landing in Palestine?"
There were an influential number of Jews who thought that force,
only force, could ensure the establishment of a Jewish national
home in Palestine. They adopted terrorism as the method to achieve
their national goal. This policy of subjugation of the Palestinians
by Zionist terror was totally rejected by Gandhi in no uncertain
terms.
A few months before his assassination, Gandhi answered the question
"What is the solution to the Palestine problem?" raised
by Don Campbell of Reuters:
"It has become a problem which seems almost insoluble. If
I were a Jew, I would tell them: 'Do not be so silly as to resort
to terrorism...' The Jews should meet the Arabs, make friends with
them and not depend on British aid or American aid, save what descends
from Jehovah."
Dr. Ramakrishnan is a senior lecturer, Mahatma
Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala, India. He presented this paper
on June 13, 1998 at a seminar organized by the Institute of Islamic
and Arab Studies. The seminar was inaugurated by the chairman of
India's National Minorities Commission, Prof. Tahir Mahmoud, who
highlighted the traditional Indian support for the Palestinian struggle
against Zionist Occupation.
The United States walked out of the September
2001 World Conference Against Racism because it included two contentious
issues: Zionism as racism, and reparations for slavery and colonialism.
[Tim Wise, an activist, writer and lecturer based
in Nashville, Tennessee, writes that "it is difficult to deny
that Zionism, in practice if not theory, amounts to ethnic chauvinism,
colonial ethnocentrism, and national oppression."Tim Wise,
"Reflections on Zionism From a Dissident Jew," Media Monitors
Network, September 6, 2001]
["In the last decade the two countries have
built up extensive military collaboration, involving arms sales,
equipment upgrades, the transfer of technology and joint weapons
development programmes. The latest multi-billion dollar defence
agreements are seen as another watershed in the Indo-Israeli strategic
partnership.""Closer ties for India and Israel,"
Jane's Intelligence Digest, August 7, 2001]
