“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”
Those are the words of Mahatma Gandhi, words that I thought of as I walked by the bronze sculpture of Gandhi on a path just to the south of the Canadian Human Rights Museum, on 85 Israel Asper Way as I attended the grand opening of the museum on Sept 19.
Gandhi is widely seen as one of the greatest champions of human rights, having helped lead India to independence while promoting non-violent political action.
But most Jews in our community may not know what Gandhi, whose name is on the roadway leading to the Canadian Human Rights Museum, had to say about the Jewish homeland as noted above.
Would Israel Asper, the visionary behind the creation of the CMHR, have agreed with the words of Mahatma Gandhi when it came to the topic of the establishment of the State of Israel? I think not. According to the Gandi quote above, the establishment of the State of Israel, as waves of displaced Jewish persons who had survived the Holocaust arrived on the shores of the Mediterranean, was no less than a "crime against humanity."
Since Gandhi did not believe in war, he did not believe in going to war against Germany even during the Holocaust.
"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," Gandhi wrote.
According to Gandhi, Jews were to continue to insist that Germany was their homeland even during the Nazi period.
"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 might, 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 were bound to follow my example..".
Gandhi maintained that the Jews should not attempt to form a homeland in historic Palestine:
"And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it in 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 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 favor 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."
When I walked by the Gandhi sculpture, I also thought of the words of Gandhi’s grandson, Arun, a writer and peace activist, who used to run the MK Gandhi Institute of Peace and Non-Violence at the University of Rochester, New York
He wrote in 2008 “On Faith”, a Washington Post-Newsweek blog that Jewish identity "has been locked into the Holocaust experience — a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of (how) a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends."
"The Holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful. … The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on, the regret turns into anger."
Arun Gandhi also blamed “Israel and the Jews” for being the biggest players in creating “a culture of violence,” and wrote that this "Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity." Describing Israel as "a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs,"
Arun Gandi asked whehter it would "not be better to befriend those who hate you ?"
"Apparently in the modern world so determined to live by the bomb, this is an alien concept," he wrote.
"You don't befriend anyone, you dominate them. We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of violence is eventually going to destroy humanity."
These remarks about Israel and Jews being "the biggest players" in a global culture of violence got Gandhi removed as president of the peace center he started in 1991.
"I think it's shameful that a peace institute would be headed up by a bigot," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, an international group that opposes anti-Semitism. "One would hope that the grandson of such an illustrious human being would be more sensitive to Jewish history."
(For more on this see http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3499184,00.html )
