IN PHOTOS: Israeli teenagers train with lethal weapons

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that several dozen teenage volunteers have been trained and armed with lethal weapons, including M-16s, and are aiding the Israeli Border Police (Magav). Known as Noar Magav (Border Police Youth), the children and young adults patrol checkpoints and detain Palestinian workers who are attempting to enter Israel without a permit. These photos offer a compelling look at the militarization of Israel's youth

Israeli children and young adults who volunteer in the  government-funded Border Police Youth program take aim.

The Israeli Ministry of Public Security and the Modiin Regional Council, both of which use state funds, finance the Noar Magav (Border Police Youth)

All photos from Slide/Noar Magav; thanks to Ruth Hiller, co-founder of New Profile, a movement that aims to demilitarize Israeli society

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I met Jesus today

I met Jesus today

His name was Palestinian

Issa… Jesus he was called

On the altar of “chosen-ness” he was crucified

Time and time and time again

  *****

His face was Palestinian

Olive, with a hint of agony

Yet

Years of torture fail to conceal the glow

The purity of his soul peeks through

The sparkle in his eyes invites you to dive in

*****

His pain was Palestinian

The colour of his words

Grips your guts

And squeeze… squeeze … squeeze

Until you lose consciousness

You fall on your knees

Begging for forgiveness

*****

His faith was Palestinian

“Their sadism too much to bear

In the street I waited for a car

No way out but to kill myself

Twilight hour the fall of night

The call to prayer woken my heart

Healing balsam caressed my soul

Maybe…. In this life… still…there is something I can do”

*****

His heart was Palestinian

Carved with sorrow

Filled with love

Flames of rage and roars of thunder

Hound his torturer to his grave

*****

His tears were Palestinian

His first crucifixion… he was only fourteen

On the second, he was nineteen

From then on

He was crucified every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year

*****

His dignity was Palestinian

Anguished by his rapists

With his broken back he stood tall 

His wounds run deep… his head held high

He saw the rainbow in the horizon

When all gave up he gave them hope

*****

His smile was Palestinian

It has been said:

“To smile when confronted with most severe oppression

Is an act of Resistance

Rooted

In unparalleled beauty” *

The smile of Issa

Was Palestinian

*****

His resilience was Palestinian

“As he punched me in the face

I felt stronger

As he kicked me in the stomach

I felt stronger

As he slashed my arm

I felt stronger”, he said

*****

His hope was Palestinian

Insha’Allah, ya rab, Alhamdulillah

Bouncy words sprinkled around 

Buds of trust bloom and grow

His broad grin whiffs you to life

His nightmares close their eyes

His tales of horror lie to slumber

When all lost hope he saw a future

I saw Jesus today

Poem by Nahida Izzat

*Qoute by Jonathan Azaziah

Nahida Izzat is a Jerusalem-born Palestinian refugee who has lived in exile for over forty two years, after being forced to leave her homeland at the tender age of seven in 1967, during the six-day war. She has a degree in mathematics, but art is one of her favorite pastimes. She loves hand-made things and so makes dolls, cards, and most of her own clothes. She also writes poetry, participates in written dialogues and believes in building bridges, not walls.

She started writing when her friends insisted she should write about her memories, experiences and feelings as a Palestinian.When she did it all came out sounding—she was told—like poetry! So she self-published two books: I Believe in Miracles and Palestine, The True Story.

Her dream is to return back home to a free and liberated Palestine.

If you like poetry and are intrigued by the notion of helping the Palestinian people and learning more, you can purchase Nahida's books, I Believe in Miracles and Palestine, The True Story by visiting:

I Believe in Miracles: a Collection of Palestinian Poems

ISBN 13: 9780954839109 | ISBN 10: 0954839102


£12.99 paperback Nahida Izzat (2004)


You can write to Nahida : nahidaexiledpalestinian@gmail.com

Courtesey: Nahida Izzat

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External affairs minister to begin New Year with Israel, Palestine visit

New Delhi is beginning its foreign policy initiatives in the New Year on a west Asia note.


External affairs minister SM Krishna is set to meet top leaders of both Israel and Palestine.  The Israel-Palestine conflict has political resonance in India.

Krishna's visit to Israel involves high-stakes. It was in 2000 that an Indian external affairs minister — Jaswant Singh — visited Israel.


Krishna’s two-day trip is expected to give a fresh fillip in the areas of security, defence and counter-terrorism. A host of other issues will be discussed. During his visit on January 9 and 10, both sides will also review the progress of the ongoing negotiations for a free trade agreement.
Agriculture has also been identified as a major area of cooperation. In the past few years, many high-level exchanges in the field of agriculture have taken place.


Krishna will meet PM Benjamin Netanyahu and will have discussion at length with foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. He will also meet the Palestine leadership, including Palestine national authority president Mahmoud Abbas. The meetings in Ramallah are expected to be held after his interactions with the Israeli leadership.


India has been maintaining a delicate balance in its ties with Israel and Palestine that also has domestic implications. While its ties have been growing with Israel, India has also been steadfast in its support for a united state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital "within secure and recognized borders side by side and at peace with Israel."


Addressing the United Nations general assembly last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had spoken of welcoming Palestine as an equal member of the UN.


“Indian support for the Palestine cause is well known and is independent of its ties with Israel. We maintain that for peace and security it is necessary that direct talks between Israel and Palestine resume without any further delay," said a senior government official.
Courtesy: Hindustan Times

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Palestine celebrates New Year

Tourists and Palestinians pack Manger Square
for New Years Eve celebrations on Dec. 31, 2011

BETHLEHEM -- Crowds packed Palestinian squares to celebrate the New Year on Saturday night, amid tentative hopes that 2012 would bring independence to Palestine.

Issa Jamal, 19, told News agency in Bethlehem: "I am looking to the year 2012 as the year of freedom and a Palestinian state."

Tourism in the southern West Bank city was still booming after Christmas celebrations last week. Officials said 3,500 foreign tourists spent New Years Eve in Bethelem. 

Meanwhile President Mahmoud Abbas sounded a note of caution, adressing the celebration of the 47th anniversary of his Fatah movement in Ramallah on Saturday.

Revellers in Bethlehem celebrate New Year 

"This year should be the year of the Palestinian state, but we have no illusions, also because the barriers and obstacles are so many and become more each day with the existence of a (Israeli) government that does not want to have peace," he said.

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Palestinians at the end of 2011

Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS)

Palestinians at the end of 2011

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics presents the following informationabout Palestinians at the end of 2011:

Increase in world population of Palestinians…


The projected number of Palestinians in the world is 11.22 million, of whom 4.23 million are in thePalestinian Territory, 1.37 million in Israel, 4.99 million in Arab countries and around 636 thousand inother countries.

More than one-third of population in Gaza Strip…

The projected number of Palestinians living in the Palestinian Territory at the end of 2011 is 4.2 million, of whom around 2.6 million reside in the West Bank and 1.6 million in the Gaza Strip.
Of every 100 persons in the Palestinian Territory, about 44 are refugees: 42 per 100 in the West Bankand 58 per 100 in the Gaza Strip.

Decline in fertility rate in recent years…

The total fertility rate declined in 2010 to 4.2 births compared with 6 births in 1997. The rate in GazaStrip in 2010 was 4.9 births compared to 3.8 births in the West Bank. These rates have been stable forthe past few years with no significant changes.

Total Fertility Rate in the Palestinian Territory, Selected Years

There has been a decline in the detailed fertility rate, particularly in the early reproductive years (15-24
years)

Age-Specific Fertility Rates in the Palestinian Territory, Selected Years 

Decrease in average household size… 

The average household size in the Palestinian Territory is 5.8 persons in 2011 compared with 6.4 in
1997: 5.6 persons in the West Bank and 6.3 persons in the Gaza Strip.

Average Household Size in the Palestinian Territory by Region, 1997, 2011

Falling crude birth and mortality rates… 

The crude birth rate is 32.8 births for every 1000 of population: in the West Bank the figure is 30.1
compared to 37.1 in Gaza Strip. The rate is expected to decline to 31.9 in 2015.

The crude death rate is 4.0 deaths for every 1000 of population: in the West Bank the figure is 4.1
compared to 3.9 in Gaza Strip. The rate is expected to decline to 3.6 in 2015.

High fertility rate among Palestinians in Jordan … 


The total fertility rate for Palestinians living is Jordan is 3.3 births compared to 2.5 in Syria and 3.2 in
Lebanon

Selected Demographic Indicators by Country of Residence, 2010

Youthful Palestinian population in Israel… 

The number of Palestinians living in Israel is 1.37 million, of whom about 37.5% are aged less than 15
years compared to 3.9% aged 65 years and above.

Higher fertility rate among Palestinians in Israel than among Jews

The total fertility rate in 2010 among Palestinians living in Israel was 3.5 births compared to 3.0 births
among Jews. The average Palestinian household size in Israel is 4.8 persons.  The crude birth rate of
Palestinians in Israel exceeded 26.2 births for every 1000 of the population.

The number of Palestinians in historical Palestine will exceed the number of Jews over time…

The number of Palestinians in historical Palestine totaled 5.6 million at the end of 2011. The number of
Jews living in historical Palestine totaled 5.8 million. Based on estimates of the Israeli Department of
Statistics for 2010, the number of Palestinians and Jews will total about 6.3 million each by the end of
2015, providing current growth rates remain the same. However, the number of Palestinians in
historical Palestine will total 7.2 million compared to 6.8 Jews by the end of 2020.

Number of Palestinian and Jews living in Historical Palestine

Courtesy: Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics

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Gandhi, The Jews And Palestine

A Collection of Articles, Speeches, Letters and Interviews

Compiled by: E. S. Reddy

INTERVIEW TO THE DAILY HERALD, LONDON, BY GANDHI


...Question: What do you think of the proposed revision of the Treaty of Sevres?


Gandhi: I have only hurriedly glanced through the new terms. So far as I can judge, they aim at pacifying Turks and not Indian Mussulmans. The two things have to be recognised as distinct. Khilafat is essentially a religious movement, being idealistic and unconnected with Turkish pacification. It derives its sanction directly from the injunction of the Prophet. Until, therefore, Indian Mussulmans are placated, there can be no peace, and the sine qua non of Mussulman conciliation is that what is termed the Island of Arabia must remain under the exclusive Mussulman control and under the spiritual sovereignty of the Khalifa, whoever he may be for the time being. The prestige of Islam demands rendition of Smyrna and Thrace to Turkey, and evacuation by the Allied Powers of Constantinople, but the existence of Islam demands the total abrogation of mandates taken by Britain and France. No influence, direct or indirect, over the Holy Places of Islam will ever be tolerated by Indian Mussulmans. It follows, therefore, that even Palestine must be under Mussulman control. So far as I am aware, there never has been any difficulty put in the way of Jews and Christians visiting Palestine and performing all their religious rites. No canon, however, of ethics or war can possibly justify the gift by the Allies of Palestine to Jews. It would be a breach of implied faith with Indian Mussulmans in particular and the whole of India in general. Not an Indian soldier would have gone, if Britain on the eve of war had declared even the possibility of any such usurpation, and it is becoming clearer every day that if India is to remain a free partner in a future British Commonwealth, as distinguished from the Empire, the terms of the Khilafat have to be settled more in consultation with the spiritual leaders of Mussulmans than with the political leaders of Turkey.




ARTICLE IN YOUNG INDIA, BY GANDHI, MARCH 23, 1921 


The most thorny part of the question is, therefore, Palestine. Britain has made promises to the Zionists. The latter have, naturally, a sacred sentiment about the place. The Jews, it is contended, must remain a wandering race unless they have obtained possession of Palestine. I do not propose to examine the soundness or otherwise of the doctrine underlying the proposition. All I contend is that they cannot possess Palestine through a trick or a moral breach. Palestine was not a stake in the War. The British Government could not dare have asked a single Muslim soldier to wrest control of Palestine from fellow-Muslims and give it to the Jews. Palestine, as a place of Jewish worship, is a sentiment to be respected and the Jews would have a just cause of complaint against Mussulman idealists if they were to prevent Jews from offering worship as freely as themselves. By no canon of ethics or war, therefore, can Palestine be given to the Jews as a result of the War. Either Zionists must revise their ideal about Palestine, or, if Judaism permits the arbitrariment of war, engage in a "holy war" with the Muslims of the world with the Christians throwing in their influence on their side. But one may hope that the trend of world opinion will make "holy wars" impossible and religious questions or differences will tend more and more towards a peaceful adjustment based upon the strictest moral considerations. But, whether such a happy time ever comes or not, it is clear as daylight that the Khilafat terms to be just must mean the restitution of Jazirat-ul-Arab to complete Muslim control under the spiritual sovereignty of the Caliph. 



NOTES IN YOUNG INDIA, BY GANDHI, APRIL 6, 1921


Do the Muslims claim Palestine, or will they restore it to the Jews who are the original owners?


The Muslims claim Palestine as an integral part of Jazirat-ul-Arab. They are bound to retain its custody, as an injunction of the Prophet. But that does not mean that the Jews and the Christians cannot freely go to Palestine, or even reside there and own property. What non-Muslims cannot do is to acquire sovereign jurisdiction. The Jews cannot receive sovereign rights in a place which has been held for centuries by Muslim powers by right of religious conquest. The Muslim soldiers did not shed their blood in the late War for the purpose of surrendering Palestine out of Muslim control. I would like my Jewish friends to impartially consider the position of the seventy million Muslims of India. As a free nation, can they tolerate what they must regard as a treacherous disposal of their sacred possession?



'GANDHI, POLITICS AND US', BY MARTIN BUBER, 1930 


The Question of Success


While Gandhi lay in prison, shortly after he had received far-reaching plenary powers from the Congress of Ahmedabad (December 1921), and then issued the ultimatum to the Viceroy (February 1922), but a few days afterwards, upon the outbreak of the riots of Chauri Chaura, withdrew it, a high British official expressed himself in the following manner: "He thoroughly frightened us. His programme filled our prisons - but one cannot for ever lock up and lock up, especially when it is a matter of a people of three hundred and nineteen millions. And if they had gone a step further and had refused to pay taxes - who knows where that would have led! What Gandhi undertook was the most powerful of all experiments that the history of the world has known and only fell a little short of succeeding. But in him the insight into human passions was lacking."


That opinion was falsely formulated. What Gandhi `lacked' was not insight into human passions but the readiness to exploit them. Both the actual insight and the lack of readiness are clearly expressed in the withdrawal of the ultimatum. The outbreak of riots he called a warning of God "that there does not yet exist in India that truthful and non-violent atmosphere that alone can justify mass disobedience". The final judgment of the British official does not mean basically that political success is not possible without an insight into human passions, but that political success is not possible without exploitation of human passions. That certainly is not true. But from this starting-point we must inquire further concerning Gandhi's relation to political success. 


When, not ten days after the withdrawal, Gandhi's position met strong opposition at the conference of the All India Congress Committee in Delhi and "in order to avoid a painful discussion", he had to renounce having the designations "truthful" and "non-violent" included in the programmatic resolution, he wrote that he had wanted, now as so often before, to remain in a small minority: "I know that the only thing that the government fears is this monstrous majority that I appear to command. They do not know that I fear it still more than they do themselves. I am literally sick over it. I would feel myself on surer ground if I were spit upon by them." And further, "If I also, perhaps, stood before the prospect of finding myself in a minority of one voice, I humbly believe that I would have the courage to remain in such a hopeless minority. This is for me the only truthful position." That is unquestionably the statement of a truthful man, and I know of nothing in modern Western public life to put by its side, unless it were, for all the difference in its source, the words of the American Thoreau in his classical treatise on the duty of civil disobedience.


But can this also be regarded as the statement of a political man, that is, a man who undertakes to influence the formation of institutions and their operation? In other words: is the statement of Gandhi's that we have quoted a declaration against lies in politics or is it a declaration against politics? Can a political action change institutions, that is a political success, without a majority or a revolutionary-minority mass following, whether by dictation or voluntary assent? Is the aphorism of Schiller and Ibsen concerning the strong man who is most powerful alone or the man who stands alone being the strongest man in the world, not merely morally true, hence true on the plane of personal authentication, but also politically true, that is true on the plane of social realisation? Can this solitary man be politically effective otherwise than by masses "following" him, compelled by his charisma?


But it is just this following without inner transformation that fails to satisfy Gandhi, as shown by his words about his "fear". "In the Ramayana", he writes, "we see that when all was ready for Rama's coronation, Rama was exiled into the wild woods." Now in the Indian epic, after Rama had long refused to accept the rule because the time of the exile first had to be fulfilled, he was finally consecrated king. But that no longer implies a political hope, nothing directly to be realised in the public sphere through public activities, but only a religious one. This hope is not for an ostensible "following", but only for their conversion.


In the memorable paper, "Neither a Saint nor a Politician", Gandhi elucidates his position, "I seem to take part in politics, but this is only because politics today strangles us like the coils of a serpent out of which one cannot slip whatever one tries. I desire, therefore, to wrestle with the serpent." And further, "I have experimented with myself and with my friends in order to introduce religion into politics." Our question once again changes its form; it now reads: Does religion allow itself to be introduced into politics in such a way that a political success can be obtained?


Religion means goal and way, politics implies end and means. The political end is recognisable by the fact that it may be attained - in success - and its attainment is historically recorded. The religious goal remains, even in man's highest experiences of the mortal way, that which simply provides direction; it never enters into historical consummation. The history of the created world, as the religions believing in history acknowledge it, and the history of the human person, as all religions, even those that do not believe in history, acknowledge it, is what takes place on the journey from origin to perfection, and this is registered by other signs than that of success. "The word" is victorious, but otherwise than its bearers hoped for. The Word is not victorious in its purity, but in its corruption; it bears its fruit in the corruptio seminis. Here no success is experienced and recorded; where something of the kind appears in the history of religion, it is no longer religion that prevails, but politics of religion, that is, the opposite of what Gandhi proclaimed: the introduction of politics into religion.


Once again, then: Can political success be attained through religious deed?


That Gandhi's own attitude is religious in the most genuine sense remains beyond doubt. But already when he speaks of "experimenting with friends" the painful question concerning the views of many of these friends obtrudes. Some of his closest followers have declared before the court of justice that, as long as Gandhi proclaims the watchword of non-violence, they will steadfastly hold to it, yet if another word came from his mouth, then they would certainly follow that one; not to mention the broad circle of the movement. "I see", wrote Gandhi after the day of Delhi, "that this our non-violence is only skin-deep... This non-violence appears to me to originate simply in our helplessness... Can genuine voluntary non-violence arise out of this apparently compulsory non-violence of the weak?" These are words that even today, despite Gandhi's great educational effect, retain much of their validity. 


So far as Gandhi acts politically, so far as he takes part in passing parliamentary resolutions, he does not introduce religion into politics, but allies his religion with the politics of others. He cannot wrestle uninterruptedly with the serpent; he must at times get along with it because he is directed to work in the kingdom of the serpent that he set out to destroy. He refuses to exploit human passions, but he is chained as political actor to the "political", to untransformed men. The serpent is, indeed, not only powerful outside, but also within, in the souls of those who long for political success. The way in which Gandhi again and again exercises self-criticism, going into heavy mortification and purification when the inner serpent shows itself too powerful in the movement, is worthy of the purest admiration. But we do not follow him in this; we know that if we consider the tragic character of his greatness, that it is not the tragedy of an inner contradiction, but that of the contradiction between the unconditionality of a spirit and the conditionality of a situation, to which situation, precisely, the masses of his followers, even of the youth belong. This is the tragedy that resists all superficial optimistic attempts to bring about a settlement; the situation will certainly be mastered, but only in the way in which at the close of a Greek tragedy, a theophany (the so-called deus ex machina, in truth ex gratia) resolves the insoluble fate. But that is the very soft, very slow, very roundabout, not at all "successful" step of the deity through history.


In September 1920 Gandhi said and wrote that if the Indian people showed discipline, self-denial, readiness to sacrifice, capacity for order, confidence and courage, then Swaraj - Indian independence - would be attained in a year. Three months later, asked by the correspondent from The Times what he meant by that, he explained that the British people would recognise the strength of the Indian public opinion and at the same time the dreadful injustice that had been done to India in their name, and would forthwith offer a constitution "that will correspond exactly to the wishes of the Indian people". Gandhi ended the conversation with a variation on the prophetic word, "The lion will then rest by the lamb." One could not express more clearly the religious character of that expectation; but if it is taken seriously, the presupposition that Gandhi sets for it implies not merely an attitude of the people but an inner transformation. Gandhi unmistakably rejects the "political", the untransformed, the men who are not changing themselves. "If India", he once wrote later, "wants to become free, it can only do so with God's help. God loves the truthful and the non-violent." But God's love is not measured by success. How God's love works is His affair. One may be certain of the truthfulness and non-violence of the love of God, but not of the attainment of Swaraj in one year. "In one year" is a political word; the religious watchword must read: Some time, perhaps today, perhaps in a century. In religious reality there is no stipulation of time, and victory comes, at times, just when one no longer expects it.


In the last part of the year of expectation, Gandhi wrote that the "miracle" of so rapid an attainment of Swaraj must be "preceded by a miraculous conversion of India to the teaching of non-violence, at least in its limited purpose; that is, as an indispensable precondition for securing India's freedom". But does that not mean conversion to a religious teaching, "at least" in its political form? In religious teaching non-violence remains the way to the goal, even when it rejects it as means to an end. It must, of course, be sufficient for Gandhi as political actor, if the masses accept the right attitude, but conversion means the turning of the being, an innermost change of heart.


Certainly, when a religious man, one who is serious about his religiousness in any situation whatever, functions in the political sphere, religion is introduced into politics. But the way to the religious goal is essentially dissimilar in its conduct of the path, its perspective, its manner of going, its tempo, and, lastly, in the unforeseeableness of attainment and political success. The holy cause of "introducing" the religious reality into politics runs the danger, therefore, that the categories will mingle, that the goal will become an end, the way a means; that man, instead of treading in the path taken by that step of God through history, will run blindly over it. If religion is threatened at one pole by the ice of isolation in which it forfeits a tie with the communal-building human share in the coming of the kingdom, here it is threatened by evaporation in the rapid fire of political activity. Only in the great polis of God will religion and politics be blended into a life of world community, in an eternity wherein neither religion nor politics will any longer exist.


The most natural of all questions, the question concerning success, is religion's ordeal by fire. If religion withdraws from the sphere where this question is asked, it evades its task, despite all hosts and sacraments of incarnation; and if it sinks into that sphere, then it has lost its soul. Gandhi, as no other man of our age, shows us the difficulty of the situation, the depth of its problematic, the manifoldness of the battle fronts, the potency of the contradiction, which is encompassed by paradox and must be endured in every hour.


As I write this, the Mahatma has set out on his march - a far-reaching symbolic counterpart of the flight of the aged Tolstoy. Manifestly this is no political journey, but a pilgrimage, a pilgrimage with political intent. But beneath the political aspect, probably hidden from the consciousness of most of those who accompany him, abides the religious, where the refusal to pay a tax no longer signifies an instrument in the fight against the British regime, but the recourse of the man whom in this world hour it avails to experience factually and through the devotion of self how much is Caesar's.


I do not believe that the independence of India stands at the end of this pilgrimage. But I believe that this pilgrimage will essentially co-determine the nature of the man in an independent India, whenever and however that independence is attained. What would Swaraj amount to if it implied only a transformation of institutions and not a transformation of men also!


Gandhi's work and Indian politics


But if we wish to understand Gandhi's place not only in the history of religiousness and its consequences there but also in that of politics, we must consider the Indian ideal of independence on the basis of its actual and possible contents. This can be most clearly seen, it seems to me, if we compare the programme of the Mahatma with that of his opponent, the great patriot Chitta Ranjan Das.


While Gandhi sat in prison - on December 26, 1922 - Das opened the All India Congress in Gaya with a speech in which, beginning with an homage to the Mahatma, he formulated three postulates.


The first, a tactical one, opposed to the non-cooperation of Gandhi the demand for an "inner" boycott of the British councils into which one should let oneself be delegated and the activities of which one should obstruct. This demand does not leave the province of non-violence; but seeks to give it, instead of a passive content, a direct and active one, one, certainly, whose consequences might possibly be hazardous to the preservation of non-violence.


The second, extra-political plan projected, in opposition to Gandhi, who would only let India proceed through its own efforts, the programme of an Asiatic federation to arouse India and in which India would work. To appreciate this idea, one must realise that in India it means something entirely different from what it would mean in, say, Russia or Japan. Here again non-violence is adhered to; an Asiatic League is intended which will give the West notice of cooperation and declare itself independent. The possible effects on the preservation of non-violence are here, of course, still more hazardous than in the first proposal.


The third and most important constructive programme concerns the inner structure of an independent India. Swaraj, Das explains, can become neither a parliamentary nor a bureaucratic government. To replace the British bureaucracy by an Indian one would be futile. Rather the basic form of the old Indian village community must be recovered. A system of relatively autonomous small communities has to be erected which will be joined to larger, likewise autonomous, communities; these in their turn will be so grouped as to form a unifying central power of predominantly consultative character which would have to exercise authority only in exceptional cases.


This third proposal, which I have felt to be a brotherly response out of Asia to related ideas of a European circle, represents in my eyes a high pinnacle of political man. What is expressed here is the presentiment of the overcoming, through politics itself, of that political degeneration that calls itself politics in modern State centralism; it is an aspiration to a genuine communal life that will reduce the apparatus of the State to the technically necessary minimum.


At the beginning of February 1924 the sick Gandhi was released from prison. In May he openly declared himself against the first of the three designs of Das, that of obstructionist parliamentarianism; in July against the second, that of an Asiatic federation; and at the same time against the third, against the innermost programme. In opposition to this he stated that Swaraj is nothing else than that constitution of India the people might desire at a particular moment. Such a statement is a purely political, democratic-political one, which appears to me, for all that, far poorer in its political substance and content and in political autochthony than Das' basic revolutionary idea.


In November Gandhi concluded the well-known compromises with the Swarajists led by Das that meant a personal but not an essential victory by Gandhi. In June of the following year Das died. Since then there has been no thought of a further development and execution of his programme.


About the tactical controversy I cannot judge. Das' Asiatic scheme is of unmistakable political greatness. I have already said that the dangers both proposals threatened to the cause of non-violence cannot be overlooked. Yet from the standpoint of this cause there is nothing decisive against it. But what concerns us here is the constructive postulate.


Gandhi did not, indeed, strive for just any kind of free India, but for a genuinely Indian society, in which the essence of the people that is to be found in individual souls, teachings, and holy books should acquire body. But such an India cannot be constructed out of amorphous swarms of individuals, held together only by the State; it must be formed out of naturally linked smaller and larger communities, each possessing an autonomy as extensive as possible, where what prevails is no longer the artificial State, which disregards all human reality, but the concrete counselling of one another, deciding with one another, acting with one another in the concrete public sphere; communities in whose structure the people will for the first time constitute itself as such politically. Gandhi has not recognised that here there was a political vision that supplemented his own religious one; he has not admitted that it is of fundamental importance for the Indian cause, too, to ascertain in a practical political sense how much is "Caesar's" - that is, how much belongs to the concentration of power in general - and how much "God's" - that is, politically formulated, how much belongs to the human people living communally in creaturely immediacy.


Gandhi, of course, believes that he is able to secure to the coming Indian society the purity and uniqueness that will preserve it from "civilisation". Already in 1909 he wrote home from South Africa that there is no insurmountable barrier between East and West. There is no such thing as Western civilisation, there is just modern civilisation which is a purely materialistic one; it, not England, governs India. If the British regime were replaced by an Indian one that was grounded in modern culture, India would be no better off. East and West, so Gandhi says, could only really meet when the West had thrown modern civilisation almost entirely overboard. If the East were to accept modern civilisation, the meeting would be only apparent, signifying but an armed truce "such as that between Germany and England, in which both nations live in the hall of death in order not to be devoured by the other". But the way in which Gandhi declares in this, in so many respects clear-sighted, letter that he wishes to protect India, would scarcely preserve the country from the process of industrialisation taking place before our eyes. The spinning-wheel, honoured as a symbol even by sympathetic textile manufacturers, cannot, in fact, be preserved in any realistic way.


"Modern civilisation" is a destiny for mankind which embraces both its highest task and its decisive test. All attempts at reduction, even the most exalted, evade this test.


Modern civilisation in its fundamental nature is not "material". It necessarily appears so only because and in so far as it displays still unconquered material, material not yet permeated by spirit. The problem, in India as everywhere, is one of rescuing and disclosing a human substance, which is equal to animating this civilisation, and which, incarnating the spirit, authenticates itself in it, with it, and through it. The task is, therefore, to shape out of the rescued souls men who will hold their ground. This is Mahatma Gandhi's great work in India; it is not to be accomplished in the tempo of political undertakings and success, but in that of the step of God.


Should politics then be pursued?


The modern Occident rests upon the sanctioned duality of politics and religion. One need only listen to how the politician speaks the word "ethics" and the theologian the word "action". Politics is unenlightened but powerful; religion (in its broadest sense, the superstructure of sacred "values") is the object of all shades of feelings of sacredness but it is not binding.


Through his attempt "to introduce religion into politics" Gandhi has entered the ranks of those who strive to overcome the still continually growing duality of politics and religion. The tragedy he has thereby entered is that peculiar to the prophetic man. This tragedy must be recognised and honoured.


Emil Roniger says in the foreword to Gandhi's Time of Suffering, a book edited by him (in German): "Life allows itself to be permeated by religion - politics does not. A life that was to be permeated by religion would no longer know politics. Only the permeation of life with the yeast of the religious can one day deliver us from the serpent of politics that holds us ensnared with its cold coils." But that means virtually to abandon public life to damnation here and now, to separate the private and the public phases of life, to confirm the spirit in its very incapacity in our time for being translated into conduct, for being made public. This incapacity hinders the development of a new community structure; it deprives mankind, before the decisive test, of the powers that it needs to meet it. Jesus could content himself with the bidding to give the distant Roman emperor just that which was "his", and so to demarcate the limits of the kingdom proper from the State centralism which did not make itself really felt then since it had not absorbed the life of the city-dweller, far less that of the Palestinian in general. The prophets of Israel had to oppose the king in Jerusalem, as the protector of injustice in the land, with the firebrands of religio-political words.


One should, I believe, neither seek politics nor avoid it, one should be neither political nor non-political on principle. Public life is a sphere of life; in its laws and forms it is, in our time, just as deformed as our civilisation in general; today one calls that deformity politics as one calls the deformity of working-life technique. But neither is deformed in its essence; public life, like work, is redeemable.


States and parties have successfully endeavoured to conceal the reality of the public situations through fictions and political fabrications. These fabrications must be torn off the current situation, which demands that one enter into it and exercise responsibility in it and for it. States and the parties have further successfully contrived to hinder the formation of unions and, finally, the comprehensive union of those men who have real convictions (convictions to be realised in one's life), and who could therefore cooperate in real responsibility, to hinder this by illusory unions. In these a minority of men of genuine convictions is coupled with a majority of men of fictitious convictions, ostensibly with the same aim, but one which they do not intend to realise in personal life; thereby the minority is rendered innocuous. He who will remain obedient to the spirit in politics may not forget in any situation that what matters is the coming into being of those genuine unions and finally of that union of man. Nor may he forget that, if his work is to be done in public life, it must be accomplished not above the fray but in it. He has a task to perform within his party if he knows himself strong and free enough to fight in it against the lies of party structures. Even if he succumbs, he has done work that will continue to have effect.


The real evil in politics is the "political means" prevailing there as elsewhere: to win over other men through imposing views on them. But in public life (as elsewhere) it is possible and necessary to employ religious instead of political means; to win others through helping them to open out. He who attempts this may appear weak in the midst of the political tumult. But through working on the kingdom of man, he works on the kingdom of God.


We can only work on the kingdom of God through working on all the spheres of man that are allotted to us. There is no universally valid choice of means to serve the purpose. One cannot say, we must work here and there, this leads to the goal and that does not. We cannot prepare the messianic world, we can only prepare for it. There is no legitimately messianic, no legitimately messianically-intended, politics. But that does not imply that the political sphere may be excluded from the hallowing of all things. The political "serpent" is not essentially evil, it is itself only misled; it, too, ultimately wants to be redeemed. It does not avail to strike at it, it does not avail to turn away from it. It belongs with the creaturely world: we must have to do with it, without inflexible principles, in naked responsibility.


There, too, we can learn from Gandhi; there, too, we cannot simply follow in his steps.


The West cannot and may not abandon "modern civilisation", the East will not be able to shun it. But just the work of mastering these materials, of humanising this materiality, the hallowing of this world, our own world, will lead the two hemispheres together through establishing here and there the covenant of men faithful to the Great Reality. The flaming sword of the cherubim circling the entrance of the Garden of Eden prohibits the way back. But it illumines the way forward. 



INTERVIEW TO THE JEWISH CHRONICLE, BY GANDHI - THE JEWISH CHRONICLE, LONDON, OCTOBER 2, 1931 


I have a world of friends among the Jews. In South Africa I was surrounded by Jews, and I have had a Jewish shorthand writer and typist who was regarded more as a member of the family.


I cannot, however, say that I have made a proper study of the Jewish religion, but I have studied as much as a layman can. I think the Jewish religion is a very fine religion, being so closely allied to Christianity in many respects. For example, the Prophets of the Old Testament are all Jews, and Jesus himself was a Jew.


I visited the Synagogue at Johannesburg during the Festival of the Passover, and you can almost say I was keeping the Passover with my Jewish friends, because I went to their house every night and I heartily enjoyed, what do you call them now?


"Matzos", interjected our representative. 


Yes, matzos. I think matzos are very nice and crisp.


I have, however, attended two or three Jewish services, which I think are very impressive; but my own feeling is that "the heart was lacking". That is to say, the spirit was lacking. They were too ceremonial, although I must say the ceremony was very nice. The Jewish Rabbi was a celebrated scholar, and he delivered a learned discourse, but it did not touch my heart.


My attitude towards Jews is one of great sympathy. I am very much attracted to the Jews, firstly, because of selfish motives, since I have very many Jewish friends; secondly, for a far deeper one - they have got a wonderful spirit of cohesion. That is to say, wherever you find Jews there is a spirit of comradeship among them. Moreover, they are a people with a vision, if I may put it without impertinence, they do not themselves realise.


I am sometimes asked whether I regard Jews as the Chosen People, and I say, well, in a sense, yes. But then all peoples consider themselves to be chosen.


Zionism in its spiritual sense is a lofty aspiration. By spiritual sense I mean they should want to realise the Jerusalem that is within. Zionism meaning reoccupation of Palestine has no attraction for me. I can understand the longing of a Jew to return to Palestine, and he can do so if he can without the help of bayonets, whether his own or those of Britain. In that event he would go to Palestine peacefully and in perfect friendliness with the Arabs. The real Zionism of which I have given you my meaning is the thing to strive for, long for and die for. Zion lies in one`s heart. It is the abode of God. The real Jerusalem is the spiritual Jerusalem. Thus he can realise this Zionism in any part of the world.


Mr. Gandhi added that unfortunately he had not been to Palestine yet, but that he hoped to go there some day.


I should love to go, for I have read so much about the Holy Land. Anti-Semitism is really a remnant of barbarism. I have never been able to understand this antipathy to the Jews. I have read Zangwill`s Children of the Ghetto, and when I read it, I realised what unmerited persecution Jews had already gone through and I felt then as I feel now that this persecution is, if I can again say so in all humility, a reflection upon those who, in the name of Christianity, have persecuted this long-suffering race.


The remedy? My remedy is twofold. One is that those who profess to be Christians should learn the virtue of toleration and charity, and the second is for Jews to rid themselves of the causes for such reproach as may be justly laid at their door.



MR. GANDHI`S MESSAGE: EDITORIAL IN THE JEWISH CHRONICLE, LONDON, OCTOBER 2, 1931


Mr. Gandhi is perhaps one of six of the most powerful leaders living of men today. His opinions, on any subject, although they may be of little real value on some, ought not to be brushed aside inconsiderately. We would, therefore, direct the close attention of our readers to the interview which he gave The Jewish Chronicle and which is recorded in another column. Too much preciseness ought not of course to be attached to his words than to what is said by anyone else who renders to a newspaper an interview recounting his opinions on any subject. And it would be not alone fairer to the Mahatma but would allow us the better to realise his sentiments on the topics upon which he touches, if the gist of what he said rather than the exact words were dwelt upon. Mr. Gandhi tells us that he has many Jewish friends, and he pays us compliments for which we are sure, all will be duly grateful as to the beauty of Judaism, of the Jewish ritual and other things incidental to our faith. This sort of thing, however, does not, in our view or by experience, go very far... We do not for a moment impute anything like anti-Jewish prejudice to Mr. Gandhi. But it is clear from what he says that he regards us as holding what has come to be termed an inferiority complex. We are to be content, he says, that men of light and leading, leaders of people like himself - and Prime Minister - engage Jewish private secretaries. We must be content to be assured of the theoretical beauties of Judaism, and we must not complain when we are told that with all its virtues Judaism reaches not the heart or soul. More remarkable still and most remarkable as coming from Mr. Gandhi, however, and is possible even more remarkable having regard to the circumstances of his presence in this country, we must not think of our rehabilitation of Jews on national lines. We must be satisfied to know that the promotion of the cult of Judaism is possible anywhere. We agree, and so it has been throughout our history, whether we think of our Community in ancient Alexandria or of our people in modern New York. Wherever Jews have settled, there Jewish culture has taken root; there it has had its influence more or less, for better in some respects, for worse in others. That, indeed, has been our contention in regard to the Zionist movement. There was no necessity, therefore... to settle a number of Jews in Palestine in order to maintain Jewish culture. What that settlement, it was hoped,would realise for us, would be the means whereby Jews might gradually, yet surely, re-establish their political position among the nations of the world and take to themselves a status of which for twenty centuries they had been cruelly and unfairly deprived. Does Mr. Gandhi know anything of the Jewish aspiration, when he speaks the real nonsense he does about the cultural power of our people?... As for Mr. Gandhi`s closing words, they could with equal force be applied to every nation, every race, every people on God`s earth. They could be applied, indeed, to every human being throughout Creation. He tells us that Jews should abstain from doing those things that create hatred and breed hostility in others. Then they may reckon on the elimination of hostility in others. Then they may reckon on the elimination of hostility in the form of anti-Semitism and upon the peaceful attitude towards them of their neighbours. We hope that this excellent doctrine will be impressed by Mr. Gandhi upon his own followers. Then at least there will be more of concord, more of happiness, more of harmony on India`s coral strand.



STATEMENT BY DR. STEPHEN WISE, OCTOBER 1931 - FROM THE JEWISH CHRONICLE, LONDON, OCTOBER 30, 1931


[Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Rabbi of the Free Synagogue, and Chairman of the Political Committee of the Zionist Organisation of America, speaking at the Dinner of the Friends of Gandhi in New York, in honour of his sixty-second birthday, made the following statement. As far as can be ascertained, Dr. Wise was referring to the interview with Mr. Gandhi, published in The Jewish Chronicle of October 2nd, a somewhat inaccurate version of which was circulated in America by a news agency. -The Jewish Chronicle.]


Jews throughout the world cannot but help regretting the word of Gandhi spoken concerning Zionism. It is strange to find Gandhi alluding to Zionism as if it might mean the "re-occupation of Palestine", with all of the sinister military meaning which "occupation" and "re-occupation" convey. Is re-occupation to be added to the vocabulary of misunderstanding, which already includes such terms as "landless Arabs", having reference to Arabs who will to dispose of their land holdings at unreasonably high prices to Jewish settlers? Gandhi is right in saying that "Zionism, in its spiritual sense is a lofty aspiration", but such a Zionism, if it remain an aspiration, can little help those Jews who must re-establish themselves in Palestine because the world has, for the most part, shut its doors. It is not easy to understand the paradox of Gandhi, "I understand the longing of the Jew to return to Palestine. He can do so." But Gandhi adds, "provided it is done without the help of bayonets belonging either to Britain or the Jews." The answer might be made that British bayonets freed the Arabs of Palestine and gave to the Arabs of Palestine and neighbouring countries the freedom which they today enjoy. But it is more important to say and Gandhi is so hospitable to truth that he ought to know, and if he does not know, he will wish to know - that there were virtually no British bayonets in Palestine until Arab bayonets perpetrated the massacre of August-September 1929. As for the Jewish settlers in Palestine, no one can sanely and honestly accuse them of resting their case on bayonets. Their title is immemorial, and they have returned to Palestine not to hurt and to wound, but to serve to enrich and to bless the land and all its people. This have they done from every point of view, economically, culturally, morally and spiritually.


Gandhi closes his beautiful message with the thought, "The real Jerusalem is a spiritual Jerusalem. That is true, but what would Gandhi say if that answer were made to him by the British Government respecting India. If "the Jew can realise this Zionism in any part of the world", then the people of India do not need the physical abode of India in which to work out the problems of life and peace. Would that Gandhi knew that what he claims is the suffering and denial of his people in India is the status of the largest number of Jews in the world, that Jews have no desire for military occupation or forcible re-entry into Palestine, that they seek peaceably and, in a very real sense non-resistently, to live and labour and serve and to sacrifice for Palestine, which means to many Jews exactly what India means to Gandhi! There is no loftier nor nobler spiritual enterprise among the sons of men than the undertaking to re-establish Jewish life in Palestine. This purpose should have the furtherance and blessing of Gandhi, as Gandhi`s hope for his people`s freedom has the goodwill of all men who believe in peace and freedom for all peoples. 



A LETTER TO GANDHI, BY HAYIM GREENBERG, 1937 


I don`t know how to address you. Some years ago, I might have called you Mahatma (great soul) - the name with which millions of your people have crowned you. But I know that you have forbidden its use, that in a moment of spiritual protest you declared yourself to be no more than a "scavenger". Nor do I dare call you "teacher". I know of you since the days when Tolstoy addressed his famous "Letter to a Hindu" to you. I have followed your work since 1914; I carry sharply engraved in my memory each step of your martyr`s path - each arrest and trial, each vow, each fast, each triumph and each passing defeat which never shook your faith. I have read, in the languages familiar to me, all that you have written and there has been no social-religious thinker who has exerted so fruitful an influence on me. If, despite the fact that in various periods I have been stirred to the deeps of my soul by your teaching and your life, I am far from being your disciple or follower, the fault is not yours. You know how hard it is to follow you sincerely and completely in India itself, a land where both racial and cultural heritage have created conditions favourable to the growth of your teachings; still harder is it in the lands of the West, particularly for a man of my generation, who grew up in the heroic period of the Russian revolution - an epoch seething with moral conflicts. But it is easy for me to call you "brother", if only because I belong to a people from whose prophets thousands of years ago there flashed the conception of God`s universal fatherhood, as well as of the brotherhood of all whom He created "in his image". Therefore, permit me to use the name of "brother" together with the two names you heard in childhood - Mohandas Karamchand.


But before I take up the purpose of my letter, before I state the request which will perhaps sound like a challenge, allow me to congratulate you on the recent great victory in your struggle for human equality. I have in mind the proclamation of the young Maharajah of Travancore which ended the religious and political disabilities of the great number of untouchables in that region. Without questioning the noble intentions of the progressive ruler of Travancore, and believing that his revolutionary reform sprang from the vigour of his awakened conscience, we know that the Maharajah would have been unable to immortalise his name through that greatest reform in the history of new India, if you had not for years prepared the soil, if you had not, on the one hand, aroused the untouchables themselves to struggle for their human dignity, and on the other, stirred the conscience of thousands of members of the privileged castes. I remember well that throughout those years you were not the only champion of the millions of "unclean". Possibly, Rabindranath Tagore gave more forceful literary expression to the moral revolt against the ancient wall standing in India between man and man. I know of a number of significant figures in your country - men and women - who have gone farther and more directly towards the goal of equality. But we may justly ascribe the great reform which sheds lustre on Travancore primarily to you. All the purely intellectual arguments for the equalisation of the untouchables, all the theological proofs and textual criticism which many progressive Hindus have proffered, pale before your brief words: "I should not like to be born again, but if I am fated to enter the world once more, let it be among the untouchables." Even more influential was the courage you displayed through "direct action", when you adopted a child from among the untouchables and made it a member of your family. This practical example in the breaking down of canonised historical walls proved contagious. Hundreds of others of the highest castes were stirred to a noble defiance which led them to engage publicly in the "base" work to which Pariahs were doomed, in order to expunge the stain of "baseness" through their participation. Your example gave the untouchables self-respect and moral courage; it made them braver and more capable of the bloodless uprisings with which they have several times distinguished themselves. If any concrete proofs were needed to show that not only exceptionally heroic spirits, but also masses of plain, uneducated people are capable, under certain circumstances, of being aggressive without resorting to violence, and that a system of passive resistance may be victorious, the passive fight of the untouchables must be reckoned as among the most persuasive. Of greater historic significance is also the fact that if the two million former untouchables of Travancore may now enter the temples and pray together with members of the higher castes, if they may use the public wells and highways, and send their children to the general schools, the outcome is due to an inner revolution, a spiritual renewal in India itself, rather than to the pressure of European "civilisers". I remember that for years you were unwilling to use English dominion for reforming the inner life of India. You would not have been content with a reform that came from above or from outside. You waited for a welling up of fighting energy in the degraded masses themselves and for a growing sense of repentance among the higher castes. I rejoiced that you have lived to see the first green sprouting on the hard soil you ploughed and sowed. Without English intervention, without outside pressure, Travancore made its revolutionary beginning. I am sure that the example of Travancore will affect all of India, and that the natural rights of the sixty million untouchables will be restored within our generation.


Those of us in Europe and America who were deeply affected by the intolerable plight of the untouchables, have long been troubled by the peculiar theological aspects of the problem. We know that the orthodox Hindus, among them many individuals not motivated by selfish caste considerations, opposed emancipation because of a dogma of the Hindu religion. According to this dogma, the members of the lower castes are being penalised for past sins, "judged by God". If I am not mistaken, orthodox Hindus have attempted through this specific interpretation of the caste system, to solve the problem of theodicy - the same problem of vindicating the ways of God to man which agitated the unknown author of Job. According to this interpretation, the oppressed castes suffer for sins committed in past incarnations. They have returned to the world to expiate a former sin, to purify themselves and perform their period of Karma. In a later incarnation they may be reborn into a higher caste if their virtues warrant this promotion. To emancipate an untouchable therefore interferes with the full cycle of expiation and meddles with the plans of divine Providence. I am in no position to judge to what extent this dogma or traditional concept is an organic part of Hinduism. I cannot tell in what measure those untouchables, who some years ago began turning to Christianity or Islam in order to be free of a religion which discriminated not only socially but metaphysically against a large number of its adherents, were justified in their purpose. I am, therefore, not quite clear as to how orthodox Hindus will reconcile their religious integrity with the emancipation of the untouchables. However, I was happy to chance on a publication of the Central Hindu College of Benares (An Advanced Textbook of Hindu Religion and Ethics) which contained a significant new interpretation of the doctrine of Karma. According to this viewpoint it is a serious error to explain suffering in terms of Karma, and to abstain from aiding a sufferer so as not to interfere with the process of his Karma. Our moral ability to help a man is in itself evidence that the Karma under which he suffers is fulfilled. Furthermore, by refusing to help a fellow-being we commit a sin, and so prepare an evil future Karma for ourselves. It is not the task of the stranger to solve the problems of an ancient, complex religious system belonging to another people, but I think there are trends in modern India which indicate that the complete emancipation of the untouchables will be achieved without a destruction of the Hindu religious system and without artificial reforms of Hindu doctrine. Jews once believed literally in the Biblical "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". The later Talmudical interpretation of the formula to mean material compensation for an eye or a tooth, in no wise weakened religious Judaism; on the contrary, it strengthened it. I imagine that similar organic developments will also take place in the religious life of India.


And now to turn to the practical purpose of my letter. May I remind you that untouchables exist not only in India? Not everywhere in the same numbers, nor of precisely the same status, but nevertheless "untouchables," human beings who are persecuted, insulted, starved and frequently slain only because they belong to a different ethnic group, or serve God in their own fashion. There are still millions of such untouchables in the country from which I write you. You know that though many years have passed since slavery was abolished, the practical emancipation of Negroes in the United States is far from complete. And there are still other millions of "untouchables" scattered over all parts of the globe, in dozens of countries: these are the millions of my tormented fellow-Jews. To uncover one`s wounds and seek sympathy is neither pleasant, nor perhaps even dignified. But no doubt word has reached you of the torment of my people in countries where they have lived hundreds of years, where the first Jews settled long before their present oppressors, and which they enriched with their toil and sweat. After a thousand years of existence in Germany, the remaining 400,000 German Jews find themselves outcast and tormented; their state is made more tragic by the knowledge of the great contribution, both material and spiritual, which they and their ancestors have made to the progress of Germany. Approximately the same thing is happening in Poland and Rumania, and (for the time being) to a less catastrophic degree, in a large number of other countries. Disfranchisement, defencelessness, numerus clausus and numerus nullus in the universities, separate benches and an inferior status for Jewish children in the public schools, economic and social boycott, murders which are not only tolerated but often encouraged, lynchings which anti-Semitic governments do not even trouble to combat, closed doors facing Jews who wish to immigrate into new countries - this is our lot in many parts of the world at the present time. India is remote from Jewish wretchedness. She is taken up with her own great cares and unsolved problems - the destiny of a fifth of the human race - but I am sure that you have heard of what has happened to millions of my fellow-Jews in Europe, North Africa and parts of Asia.


We Jews strive to redeem ourselves from our state of "untouchability". We seek bread, work, freedom and human dignity. These we wish to secure by emerging from that anomalous state to which history has doomed us - the state of homelessness and landlessness. For over fifty years, the best of our youth have been devoting the fullness of their energy toward the recreation of our former national centre in Palestine. We need a country for the millions of persecuted Jews, and this country must be the land which cradled the civilisation we once created there. This need is more than economic or political in its origin. Among those who are returning to their ancient fatherland are not only refugees driven by alien might but pilgrims inspired by historic forces - human beings who seek integrity and harmony in a new life of their own. Judaism is not only a religion, a system of abstract thought, or a series of tenets and commandments. It is also, perhaps primarily, a particular way of life, action and self-expression. Our particular genius, our capacity for self-expression is throttled in us because we live amid alien environments and cultures. We are always adapting ourselves to our stronger neighbours, existing in a state of perpetual mimicry dangerous to our spirit. Zionism is not only a movement for the hungry and persecuted. It draws to itself increasing numbers of courageous Jews even in those countries which are free from brutal anti-Semitism and where Jews are not stigmatised as "unclean". These Jews know - as your great patriot Lajpat once put it - that chains are chains no matter how gilded. You yourself once lived in a strange land, in the small Indian Diaspora of South Africa, and you know how the spiritual energy of a national or racial group which lives as a minority in an alien environment becomes choked. May I, in this connection, quote the lines of the great modern Hebrew poet Hayim N. Bialik, lines which I believe you will not misinterpret as evidence of a materialistic attitude: "Each people has as much heaven over its head as it has land under its feet."


Landless and heavenless, many thousands of my brothers have in recent years returned to the soil of their fathers, laid waste through the neglect of centuries. You in India understand how a land may degenerate and grow barren. One does not have to be an expert in Indian history to know that your country was once richer, more fertile and more civilised than it is today. The excavations in Mohandja Dara have clearly demonstrated that the highly developed civilisation with large cities, industries and comfortable homes existed in your country 3,500 years before Christ. According to the historian Megasthenes, when the armies of Alexander the Great invaded parts of India over 2,200 years ago, they found a people no less civilised and artistic than the Greeks of that time. In Palestine, too, there once existed a higher state of civilisation than we found when our generation began to return. The remnants of terraces on the mountains, the magnificent synagogues excavated in Capernaum and Beth Alpha, the signs of a former irrigation system, all bear witness to this. During the centuries of our absence, war and oppression raging for generations reduced our land to a state of barrenness and decay. This did not dishearten our pioneers. In every spot where they were given the chance, they built again prospering villages and towns. Where the earth was swampy they drained it; where it was barren and parched, they made water spring from hidden deeps. They drove out the curse of malaria. The mountains of Judea and Galilee had been denuded as far back as the Roman wars, but this desolation has been lifted by our youth. In many places which recently were but sand and rock, the green woods of ancient Palestine bloom resurrected. Within a comparatively short space of time we have developed Jewish agriculture and industry making possible a still larger mass immigration of Jews. At the start of our reconstruction work we had psychological as well as physical difficulties. We had the problems resulting from a false conception of manual labour. Once a people of shepherds and farmers and artisans, in the course of our wanderings we had been transformed into a people of tradesmen primarily. We lost contact with nature, lost the habit of healthful and cleansing physical labour, and began to look with unjustified, well-nigh sinful, contempt upon so-called "lower" social functions. Our religious cult of learning unfortunately changed into the cult of a pseudo-aristocracy. Many of us ceased to understand the moral and aesthetic worth of simple labour. You are familiar with the paradoxical ways by which a people arrives at so corrupt a scale of values. You in India will also have to wage a bitter struggle against the social implications of this pseudo-aristocratic scholasticism. We understand the challenge in the title "scavenger" which you assumed. In Palestine and through Palestine we are freeing ourselves from the moral hump which rose on our backs during centuries of unsound development. We have given back to physical labour its dignity and sanctity. We have returned to the truly Jewish, profoundly human concept of our Talmudists who taught that "he who does not teach his son a manual trade is like to one who teaches his son robbery". Through our renewed understanding of the dignity of labour many of us came to understand that all kinds of labour are of equal social worth and are to be equally rewarded. In the same places where the pre-evangelical communities of the Essenes, dedicated to the principle of "mine is thine, and thine is mine", once existed, large villages built on the basis of voluntary communism have arisen. I have been told on several occasions that some groups in India have gathered the impression that our communes are breeding-places of vulgar materialism and atheism. It would take me far beyond the confines of my letter were I to explain why I regard their irreligion as true religion. Let me say but one word. Remember the utterances of your great mystic Ramakrishna who declared that "religion is not for empty stomachs", and of his flaming disciple, Vivekananda, who said that "as long as a single hungry man remains in my land, my sole religion will be to feed him"! Such is the motivation of the "materialism" of our communist experiment in Palestine.


Arab enemies of my people, and, I am convinced, also of their own people, have lately mobilised ignorant and fanatical elements against this Jewish renascence. All impartial observers who have visited Palestine, all honest students of the question, have come to the conclusion that our movement has in no way injured the Arab people, that, on the contrary, the mass of the Arab population has profited socially, economically and culturally from Jewish immigration. If you would care to acquaint yourself with the available data, you would see for yourself that the Arab standard of living has risen significantly due to the peaceful, progressive methods of Jewish reconstruction. In recent history, Zionism is the first instance of colonisation free from imperialist ambition or the desire to rule any part of the population. The present Arab rulers know very well that no danger of Jewish dominion threatens the Arab people through Zionism. However, they fear that the influence of Zionism on the Arab masses will hasten the process of economic and social emancipation in Palestine, and will endanger their selfish caste interests. For this reason, they kindle the savage passions of national hate and religious fanaticism. They have sent poor ignorant wretches to destroy Jewish property, to uproot trees planted by Jews, to set fire to Jewish houses, to murder old and young - men, women and children - to throw bombs into schools and kindergartens, and to shoot down Jewish nurses who tended Arab patients in the hospitals. I am sure that you have heard of the anti-Jewish terror let loose in Palestine for over half a year, and no doubt information has reached you of the Arab leaders` intention to renew this terror and increase its scope so as to attain their goal - the stoppage of further Jewish immigration and the liquidation of Zionism. Whey then, I dare ask you, have you been silent all this while? Why are you still silent?


I know how small a place the Jewish question must occupy in the consciousness of the Indian intellectual. I know how enormous are your own problems and cares. But the drama now being enacted in Palestine has its direct and indirect repercussions in India. A harmful and thoroughly false propaganda against Jews and Zionism is now being conducted in your Mohammedan communities. The none-too-fastidious agents of the present Arab leaders are spreading malicious lies to the effect that Jews are a menace to Mohammedanism, that they propose to destroy or tamper with Mohammedan mosques and holy places. An intense hated of Jews is being fanned among the millions of Mohammedans in India. Please believe me that I think not only of my own people, when I feel duty bound to warn you against the effects of this incendiary propaganda. Jew-hatred is a dangerous poison not only for the hated but for the haters. For the sake of your country and your people as well as my own, I would not wish the bacilli now undermining the moral foundations of so many European countries, to befoul the air of India. I do not understand why you have taken no note of this kindling of religious fanaticism and blind hate among your Mohammedan fellow-Indians, why you have ignored the effects of Arab incitement which became apparent even in the ranks of the Indian National Congress. You are silent. Your disciple, Nehru, is silent. And, unless I am mistaken, only your poet and noble champion of human rights, Madame Naidu, has raised her voice in behalf of my people.


Let your clear and courageous voice be heard - for our sake, for your sake, for the sake of the awakening East to which we return. Do that which is in your power to end the venomous anti-Jewish propaganda amid the millions of Mohammedans in India. When Hindus and Mohammedans make murderous attacks upon each other, you declare a fast in protest against fratricide and false piety. I remember the strict solemnity of your three weeks` fast. I remember also the effect of this particular "dictatorial" measure: the two religious communities made peace under the pressure of your prayer and fast. I am not so naive and egocentric as to assume that you could protest with an equal passion the onslaught on Jewish work and a Jewish future in Palestine. It is not my right to suggest how you should influence Moslem public opinion and particularly the leaders of your National Congress. Do what you can to stop the anti-Jewish agitation for which Islam is being exploited cynically and destructively. I know how greatly you honour Islam and its followers. But all your life you have shown daring and ability to fight against hypocrisy in religious life. As the proven friend of the Moslems, you have a particular right to protest against the particular exploitation of Islam and its institutions for unworthy political ends. 


May I remind you how a European observer characterised the reaction of a Hindu to the usual sermon of a Christian missionary? His first answer was, "Christianity is not true"; his second, "Christianity is now new," and his third rejoinder was, "Christianity is not you". He perceived the truth in Christianity, while realising the untruth in the Christian. The same may be said of Islam and of those who seek to transform a noble doctrine into an instrument for anti-social and anti-religious purposes. You are the man in India who can challenge the unscrupulous Arab agitators with the cry, "Islam is not you".


Will we hear your voice, the voice of Young India?



EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS BY GANDHI TO HERMANN KALLENBACH, JULY 20, AUGUST 16 AND AUGUST 28, 1937 


Letter of July 20, 1937 from Segaon:


"I have read the Palestine Report. It makes sad reading but the Commission could not do anything more. It almost admits the critical blunder a promise to the Arabs and a contrary one to the Jews. Breach of promise became inevitable. I am more than ever convince that the only proper and dignified solution is the one I have suggested now more so than before. My solution admits of no ... If the Jews will rely wholly on the Arab goodwill, they must once for all renounce British protection. I wonder if they will adopt the heroic remedy. More when we meet."


Letter of August 16, 1937 from Wardha:


"What you have done is all right. I had a long talk with Andrews. I do not know what we will be able to do. The more I observe the events happening the more convinced I feel of the correctness of my advice.


"It is likely to be a voice in the wilderness. Nevertheless if you feel as strongly as I do, you will take up the firm & only stand that is likely to do good... in the end. Without that, there will be no happy home for the Jews in Palestine."


Letter of August 28, 1937 from Segaon:


"... I have just read the monograph sent to me at your instance on Zionism. The sender1s name is not given. The statement is very impressive, deeply interesting. And if it is true a settlement between the Jews & the Arabs might not be difficult. I quite clearly see that if you are to play any part in bringing about an honourable settlement, your place is in India. It might be that you might have to go at times to South Africa. You might have to go frequently to Palestine, but much of the work lies in India as I visualise the development of the settlement talks. All this I say irrespective of the domestic arrangement between us as to your coming in December...


"I am conferring with Andrews also as to what he should do in Palestine. But I have not the time to tell you all these things. ... the need to know them. It is enough for you toknow that I am redeemingmy promise to interest myself in the movement."



'THE JEWS', BY GANDHI - FROM HARIJAN, NOVEMBER 26, 1938 


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 inhuman 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. 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 organised 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 satyagrahis is 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 organised 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 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 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-shares 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`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 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.


Segaon, November 20, 1938




REMARKS BY GANDHI DURING DISCUSSION WITH CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES, DECEMBER 1938 


Take the question of the Jews on which I have written. No Jew need feel helpless if he takes the non-violent way. A friend has written me a letter objecting that in that article I have assumed that the Jews have been violent. It is true that the Jews have not been actively violent in their own persons. But they called down upon the Germans the curses of mankind, and they wanted America and England to fight Germany on their behalf. If I hit my adversary, that is of course violence, but to be truly non-violent, I must love him and pray for him even when he hits me. The Jews have not been actively non-violent or, in spite of the misdeeds of the dictators, they would say, "We shall suffer at their hands; they knew no better. But we shall suffer not in the manner in which they want us to suffer." If even one Jew acted thus, he would salve his self-respect and leave an example which, if it became infectious, would save the whole of Jewry and leave a rich heritage to mankind besides. 


'REPLY TO GERMAN CRITICS', BY GANDHI - FROM HARIJAN, DECEMBER 17, 1938


I was not unprepared for the exhibition of wrath from Germany over my article about the German treatment of the Jews. I have myself admitted my ignorance of European politics. But in order to commend my prescription to the Jews for the removal of their many ills, I did not need to have an accurate knowledge of European politics. The main facts about the atrocities are beyond dispute. When the anger over my writing has subsided and comparative calmness has returned, the most wrathful German will find that underlying my writing there was friendliness towards Germany, never any ill will.


Have I not repeatedly said that active non-violence is unadulterated love - fellow-feeling? And if the Jews, instead of being helplessly and of necessity non-violent, adopt active non-violence, i.e., fellow-feeling for the gentile Germans deliberately, they cannot do any harm to the Germans and I am as certain as I am dictating these lines that the stoniest German heart will melt. Great as have been the Jewish contributions to the world`s progress, this supreme act of theirs will be their greatest contribution and war will be a thing of the past.


It passes comprehension why any German should be angry over my utterly innocuous writing. Of course, German critics, as others, might have ridiculed it by saying that it was a visionary`s effort doomed to fail. I therefore welcome this wrath, though wholly unmerited, against my writing. Has my writing gone home? Has the writer felt that my remedy was after all not so ludicrous as it may appear, but that it was eminently practical if only the beauty of suffering without retaliation was realised?


To say that my writing has rendered neither myself, my movement, nor German-Indian relations any service, is surely irrelevant, if not also unworthy, implying as it does a threat; and I should rank myself a coward if, for fear of my country or myself or Indo-German relations being harmed, I hesitated to give what I felt in the innermost recesses of my heart to be cent per cent sound advice.


The Berlin writer has surely enunciated a novel doctrine that people outside Germany may not criticise German action even from friendliest motives. For my part I would certainly welcome the interesting things that Germans or other outsiders may unearth about Indians. I do not need to speak for the British. But if I know the British people at all, they, too, welcome outside criticism, when it is well-formed and free from malice. In this age, when distances have been obliterated, no nation can afford to imitate the fabled frog in the well. Sometimes it is refreshing to see ourselves as others see us. If, therefore, the German critics happen to see this reply, I hope that they will not only revise their opinion about my writing but will also realise the value of outside criticism.


Segaon, December 8, 1938



'SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED', BY GANDHI - FROM HARIJAN, DECEMBER 17, 1938


Friends have sent me two newspaper cuttings criticising my appeal to the Jews. The two critics suggest that in presenting non-violence to the Jews as a remedy against the wrong done to them I have suggested nothing new, and that they have been practising non-violence for the past two thousand years. Obviously, so far as these critics are concerned, I did not make my meaning clear. The Jews, so far as I know, have never practised non-violence as an article of faith or even as a deliberate policy. Indeed, it is a stigma against them that their ancestors crucified Jesus. Are they not supposed to believe in eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth? Have they no violence in their hearts for their oppressors? Do they not want the so-called democratic powers to punish Germany for her persecution and to deliver them from oppression? If they do, there is no non-violence in their hearts. Their non-violence, if it may be so called, is of the helpless and the weak.


What I have pleaded for is renunciation of violence of the heart and consequent active exercise of the force generated by the great renunciation. One of the critics says that favourable public opinion is necessary for the working of non-violence. The writer is evidently thinking of passive resistance conceived as a weapon of the weak. I have drawn a distinction between passive resistance of the weak and active non-violent resistance of the strong. The latter can and does work in the teeth of the fiercest opposition. But it ends in evoking the widest public sympathy. Sufferings of the non-violent have been known to melt the stoniest hearts. I make bold to say that if the Jews can summon to their aid the soul power that comes only from non-violence, Herr Hitler will bow before the courage which he has never yet experienced in any large measure in his dealings with men, and which, when it is exhibited, he will own is infinitely superior to that shown by his best storm troopers. The exhibition of such courage is only possible for those who have a living faith in the God of Truth and Non-violence, i.e., Love.


Of course, the critics can reasonably argue that the non-violence pictured by me is not possible for masses of mankind, it is possible only for the very few highly developed persons. I have combated that view and suggested that, given proper training and proper generalship, non-violence can be practised by masses of mankind.


I see, however, that my remarks are being misunderstood to mean that because I advise non-violent resistance by the persecuted Jews, by inference I expect or would advise non-interference by the democratic Powers on behalf of the Jews. I hardly need to answer this fear. Surely there is no danger of the great Powers refraining from action because of anything I have said. They will, they are bound to, do all they can to free the Jews from the inhuman persecution. My appeal has force in the face of the fact that the great Powers feel unable to help the Jews in an effective manner. Therefore it is that I have offered the prescription which I know to be infallible when taken in the right manner.


The most relevant criticism, however, which I have received is this: How do I expect the Jews to accept my prescription when I know that India, where I am myself working, where I call myself the self-appointed general, has not accepted it in toto. My answer is: "Blessed are they that expect nothing." I belong to the category of the blessed, in this case at least. Having got the prescription and being sure of its efficacy, I felt that I would be wrong if I did not draw attention to it when I saw cases where it could be effectively applied.


Hitherto I have refused to deal with European politics. My general position still remains the same. I presented my remedy almost in suppressed tones in the case of Abyssinia. The cases of the Czechs and the Jews became more vivid to me than the case of the Abyssinians. And I could not restrain myself from writing. Perhaps Dr. Mott was right when he said to me the other day that I must write more and more articles like those on the Czechs and the Jews, if only because they must aid me in the Indian struggle. He said that the West was never more prepared than now to listen to the message of non-violence.


Segaon, December 9, 1938



'IS NON-VIOLENCE INEFFECTIVE?', BY GANDHI - FROM HARIJAN, JANUARY 7, 1939


In dealing with my answer to the criticism that the Jews had been non-violent for 2,000 years, The Statesman says in the course of an editorial:


"The whole world has heard of Pastor Niemoeller and the sufferings of the Lutheran Church; here many Pastors and individual Christians bore themselves bravely before People`s Courts, violence and threats; without retaliation they bore noble witness to the truth. And what change of heart is there in Germany? Buried in prisons and concentration camps are today, and have been for five years, members of the Bible Searchers` Leagues who rejected Nazi militarism as conflicting with Christ`s Gospel of peace. And how many Germans know of them or, if they know, do anything about it?


"Non-violence, whether of the weak or of the strong, seems, except in very special conditions, rather a personal than a social gospel. A man`s salvation may be left to himself; politicians are concerned with causes, creeds and minorities. It is suggested by Mr. Gandhi that Herr Hitler would bow before a courage 'infinitely superior to that shown by his own Storm Troopers`. If that were so, one would have supposed that he would have paid tribute to such men as Herr von Ossietzky. 


"Courage to a Nazi, however, seems a virtue only when displayed by his own supporters: elsewhere it becomes the impudent provocation of Jewish-Marxist canaille. Mr. Gandhi has produced his prescription in view of the inability of the great Powers effectively to move in the matter, an inability we all deplore and would see remedied. His sympathy may do much for the comfort of the Jews, but seems likely to do less for their enlargement. Christ is the supreme example of non-violence and the indignities heaped upon Him at His tortured death proved once and for all that in a worldly and temporal sense it can fail hopelessly."


I do not think that the sufferings of Pastor Niemoeller and others have been in vain. They have preserved their self-respect intact. They have proved that their faith was equal to any suffering. That they have not proved sufficient for melting Herr Hitler`s heart merely shows that it is made of a harder material than stone. But the hardest metal yields to sufficient heat. Even so must the hardest heart melt before sufficiency of the heat of non-violence. And there is no limit to the capacity of non-violence to generate heat.


Every action is a resultant of a multitude of forces even of a contrary nature. There is no waste of energy. So we learn in the books on mechanics. This is equally true of human actions. The difference is that in the one case we generally know the forces at work, and when we do, we can mathematically foretell the resultant. In the case of human actions, they result from a concurrence of forces of most of which we have no knowledge. But our ignorance must not be made to serve the cause of disbelief in the power of these forces. Rather is our ignorance a cause for greater faith. And non-violence being the mightiest force in the world and also the most elusive in its working, it demands the greatest exercise of faith. Even as we believe in God in faith, so have we to believe in non-violence in faith.


Herr Hitler is but one man enjoying no more than the average span of life. He would be a spent force if he had not the backing of his people. I do not despair of his responding to human suffering even though caused by him. But I must refuse to believe that the Germans as a nation have no heart or markedly less than the other nations of the earth. They will some day or other rebel against their own adored hero, if he does not wake up betimes. And when he or they do, we shall find that the sufferings of the Pastor and his fellow-workers had not a little to do with the awakening.


An armed conflict may bring disaster to German arms; it cannot change the German heart even as the last defeat did not. It produced a Hitler vowed to wreak vengeance on the victors. And what a vengeance it is! My answer, therefore, must be the answer that Stephenson gave to his fellow-workers who had despaired of ever filling the deep pit that made the first railway possible. He asked his co-workers of little faith to have more faith and go on filling the pit. It was not bottomless, it must be filled. Even so I do not despair because Herr Hitler`s or the German heart has not yet melted. On the contrary I plead for more suffering and still more till the melting has become visible to the naked eye. And even as the Pastor has covered himself with glory, a single Jew bravely standing up and refusing to bow to Hitler`s decrees will cover himself with glory and lead the way to the deliverance of the fellow Jews.


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 dealings. What I ask for is an extension of it on a larger, national and international scale.


I was unprepared to find the view expressed by The Statesman writer that the example of Christ proved once and for all that in a worldly and temporal sense it can fail hopelessly!! Though I cannot claim to be Christian in the sectarian sense, the example of Jesus` suffering is a factor in the composition of my undying faith in non-violence which rules all my actions, worldly and temporal. And I know that there are hundreds of Christians who believe likewise. Jesus lived and died in vain if he did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal Law of Love.


On the train to Bardoli, January 2, 1939



JUDAISM AND NON-VIOLENCE: LETTER TO GANDHI BY A JEWISH FRIEND IN PALESTINE, JANUARY 1939 - FROM HARIJAN, JANUARY 28, 1939


I have been realising more and more that there is, as matter of fact, no contradiction between your Satyagraha or non-violence and true Judaism. On the contrary, all the teachings, views and behaviour of the Jewish people's ancestors, especially from about 2000 years ago, were just like yours, almost in all details.


The main error that most non-Jewish thinkers commit - among them I have even to count the great philosopher Schopenhauer - is when they imagine that the Old Testament and the Pentateuch constitute Judaism. They seem to forget that like all ancient races the Jews have passed through a long historical development of which the Old Testament was the early stage, and that during this development Judaism has reached as high a level as other great religions such as Christianity and Buddhism.


The Pentateuch, for example, says, "If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again." (Ex. 23-4); and later, to quote the Testament, "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink;" or, "Rejoice not when thine enemy faileth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth."


Then again there are later scriptures of Judaism, as wide as the ocean, of which non-Jews seem to be unaware e.g. the Mishna and its commentary and the Talmud. These are filled with passages expressing ideas which can compete with those in other religions. Hillel said to a Gentile who had come to learn God's law. "Do not do to your next what you do not wish to be done to yourself. This is God's law - all the remaining is only a commentary to it." And Bruria, the noble wife of Rabbi Meir, advised her husband to pray for the conversion of his enemies and not for their extinction.


Love for animals also finds an important place in these scriptures. Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi once said to a calf which escaped from a butcher and came to him, "Go back to the butcher because it is for this purpose that thou hast been created." And for this sin God punished him with a terrible disease from which the Rabbi was not delivered until he showed his mercy on a small insect which the maid servant had thrown away.


In fact, Jesus Christ has added nothing new to Judaism. He has expressed more intensively the spirit and traditions out of which he himself had grown.


Concerning the very grave problem of Palestine. I must, to my great shame, admit that your dislike for the Zionist movement, so long as 99 percent of modern Jews care only for the material building up of this country and desire political and military power over it for this end is perfectly justified. Such entirely ignore the spiritual upbuilding of the Holy Land and the sublime religious ideals of social justice and righteousness with which the visions of our great prophets have always associated Zion and Jerusalem.


About 40 years ago a prominent Hebrew writer and philosopher, Ahad Haam, greatly blamed Jewish new-comers to Palestine for their imperious behaviour towards their Arab cousins, and prophesied that some day there was bound to come a day of revenge. Ahad Haam resisted all political Zionism and only viewed Palestine as the spiritual and cultural centre of the Jewish Race. Similarly Rabbi A.I. Cook emphasised that no return home of Israel to Zion was conceivable without a preceding revival of the true spirit of the people.


In spite, however, of the apparent victory of violence and cruelty, there is a movement among Jews as among all nations for a spiritual renaissance. There is such an organisation of which I am a member in Palestine, specially bound to the views of the two great men, Ahad Haam and Rabbi Cook, mentioned above, and I am sure the way shown by them will redeem us in course of time. You will see that our programme includes nothing contradictory to the principles of your holy Satyagraha.



No Apology, by Gandhi - From Harijan, February 18, 1939


I have two letters from Jewish friends protesting against a remark of mine in a dialogue reported in Harijan over the Jewish question. Here is one of the letters:


"My attention has been called to a paragraph in Harijan of December 24th, 1938, in which you are reported to have said that 'The Jews called down upon the Germans the curses of mankind, and they wanted America and England to fight Germany on their behalf.` I can hardly doubt that you have been misreported, for there is nothing that could possibly justify such a statement. But as the paragraph much distressed me, I should be glad to receive from you a word of reassurance."


I am sorry to say that I cannot give the reassurance required. For I did make the remark put into my mouth by Shri Pyarelal. Hardly a paper comes to me from the West which does not describe the agony of the Jews who demand retribution by the democratic Powers for German atrocities. Nor do I see anything wrong in the attitude. The Jews are not angels. My point was they were not non-violent in the sense meant by me. Their non-violence had and has no love in it. It is passive. They do not resist because they know that they cannot resist with any degree of success. In their place, unless there were active non-violence in me, I should certainly call down upon my persecutors the curses of Heaven. It is not contended by my correspondents that the German Jews do not want the big Powers like England, America and France to prevent the atrocities, if need be, even by war against Germany. I happen to have a Jewish friend living with me. He has an intellectual belief in non-violence. But he says he cannot pray for Hitler. He is so full of anger over the German atrocities that he cannot speak of them with restraint. I do not quarrel with him over his anger. He wants to be non-violent, but the sufferings of fellow Jews are too much for him to bear. What is true of him is true of thousands of Jews who have no thought even of "loving the enemy". With them as with millions "revenge is sweet, to forgive is divine."


Segaon, February 5, 1939



LETTER FROM MARTIN BUBER TO GANDHI, FEBRUARY 24, 1939


Jerusalem, February 24, 1939


My dear Mahatma Gandhi,


He who is unhappy lends a deaf ear when idle tongues discuss his fate among themselves. But when a voice that he has long known and honoured, a great voice and an earnest one, pierces the vain clamour and calls him by name, he is all attention. Here is a voice, he thinks, that can but give good counsel and genuine comfort, for he who speaks knows what suffering is; he knows that the sufferer is more in need of comfort than of counsel; and he has both the wisdom to counsel rightly and that simple union of faith and love which alone is the open sesame to true comforting. But what he hears - containing though it does elements of a noble and most praiseworthy conception, such as he expects from this speaker - is yet barren of all application to his peculiar circumstances. These words are in truth not applicable to him at all. They are inspired by most praiseworthy general principles, but the listener is aware that the speaker has cast not a single glance at the situation of him whom he is addressing, that he neither sees him nor knows him and the straits under which he labours. Moreover, intermingled with the counsel and the comfort, a third voice makes itself heard, drowning both the others, the voice of reproach. It is not that the sufferer disdains to accept reproach in this hour from the man he honours. On the contrary, if only there were mingled with the good counsel and the true comfort a word of just reproach, giving to the former a meaning and a reason, he would recognise in the speaker the bearer of a message. But the accusation voiced is another altogether from that which he hears in the storm of events and in the hard beating of his own heart: it is almost the opposite of this. He weighs it and examines it - no, it is not a just one! And the armour of his silence is pierced. The friendly appeal achieves what the enemy`s storming has failed to do; he must answer. He exclaims, "Let the lords of the ice inferno affix my name to a cunningly constructed scarecrow; this is the logical outcome of their own nature and the nature of their relations to me." But you, the man of goodwill, do you not know that you must see him whom you address, in his place and circumstance, in the throes of his destiny?


Jews are being persecuted, robbed, maltreated, tortured, murdered. And you, Mahatma Gandhi, say that their position in the country where they suffer all this is an exact parallel to the position of Indians in South Africa at the time you inaugurated your famous "Force of Truth" or "Strength of the Soul" (Satyagraha) campaign. There the Indians occupied precisely the same place, and the persecution there also had a religious tinge. There also the constitution denied equality of rights to the white and the black race including the Asiatics; there also the Indians were assigned to ghettos, and the other disqualifications were, at all events, almost of the same type as those of the Jews in Germany. I read and re-read these sentences in your article without being able to understand. Although I know them well, I re-read your South African speeches and writings, and called to mind, with all the attention and imagination at my command, every complaint you made therein, and I did likewise with the accounts of your friends and pupils at that time. But all this did not help me to understand what you say about us. In the first of your speeches with which I am acquainted, that of 1896, you quoted two particular incidents to the accompaniment of hisses from your audience: first, that a band of Europeans had set fire to an Indian village shop, causing some damage; and, second, that another band had thrown burning rockets into an urban shop. If I oppose to this the thousands on thousands of Jewish shops destroyed and burned out, you will perhaps answer that the difference is only one of quantity and that the proceedings were of almost the same type. But, Mahatma, are you not aware of the burning of synagogues and scrolls of the Law? Do you know nothing of all the sacred property of the community - some of it of great antiquity - that has been destroyed in the flames? I am not aware that Boers and Englishmen in South Africa ever injured anything sacred to the Indians. I find only one other concrete complaint quoted in that speech, namely, that three Indian schoolteachers, who were found walking in the streets after 9.00 p.m. contrary to orders, were arrested and only acquitted later on. That is the only incident of the kind you bring forward. Now do you know or do you not know, Mahatma, what a concentration camp is like and what goes on there? Do you know of the torments in the concentration camp, of its methods of slow and quick slaughter? I cannot assume that you know of this; for then this tragi-comic utterance "of almost the same type" could scarcely have crossed your lips. Indians were despised and despicably treated in South Africa. But they were not deprived of rights, they were not outlawed, they were not hostages to a hoped-for change in the behaviour of foreign Powers. And do you think perhaps that a Jew in Germany could pronounce in public one single sentence of a speech such as yours without being knocked down? Of what significance is it to point to a certain something in common when such differences are overlooked?


It does not seem to me convincing when you base your advice to us to observe satyagraha in Germany on these similarities of circumstance. In the five years I myself spent under the present regime, I observed many instances of genuine satyagraha among the Jews, instances showing a strength of spirit in which there was no question of bartering their rights or of being bowed down, and where neither force nor cunning was used to escape the consequences of their behaviour. Such actions, however, exerted apparently not the slightest influence on their opponents. All honour indeed to those who displayed such strength of soul! But I cannot recognise herein a watchword for the general behaviour of German Jews that might seem suited to exert an influence on the oppressed or on the world. An effective stand in the form of non-violence may be taken against unfeeling human beings in the hope of gradually bringing them to their senses; but a diabolic universal steamroller cannot thus be withstood. There is a certain situation in which no "satyagraha" of the power of the truth can result from the "satyagraha" of the strength of the spirit. The word satyagraha signifies testimony. Testimony without acknowledgment, ineffective, unobserved martyrdom, a martyrdom cast to the winds - that is the fate of innumerable Jews in Germany. God alone accepts their testimony' God "seals" it, as is said in our prayers. But no maximum for suitable behaviour can be deduced from that. Such martyrdom is a deed - but who would venture to demand it?


But your comparison of the position of the Jews in Germany with that of the Indians in South Africa compels me to draw your attention to a yet more essential difference. True, I can well believe that you were aware of this difference, great as it is, when you drew the exact parallel. It is obvious that, when you think back to your time in South Africa, it is a matter of course for you that, then as now, you always had this great Mother India. That fact was and still is so taken for granted that apparently you are entirely unaware of the fundamental differences existing between nations having such a mother (it need not necessarily be such a great mother, it may be a tiny motherkin, but yet a mother, a mother`s bosom and a mother`s heart) and a nation that is orphaned, or to whom one says, in speaking of his country, "This is no more your mother!"


When you were in South Africa, Mahatma, 150,000 Indians lived there. But in India there were far more than 200 million! And this fact nourished the souls of the 150,000, whether they were conscious of it or not; they drew then, as you ask the Jews now, whether they want a double home where they can remain at will? You say to the Jews: If Palestine is their home, they must accustom themselves to the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled. Did you also say to the Indians in South Africa that if India is their home, they must accustom themselves to the idea of being compelled to return to India? Or did you tell them that India was not their home? And if - though indeed it is inconceivable that such a thing could come to pass - the hundreds of millions of Indians were to be scattered tomorrow over the face of the earth, and if the day after tomorrow another nation were to establish itself in India and the Jews were to declare that there was yet room for the establishment of a national home for the Indians, thus giving to their diaspora a strong organic concentration and a living centre, should a Jewish Gandhi - assuming there could be such - then answer them, as you answered the Jews, that "this cry for the national home affords a plausible justification for your expulsion"? Or should he teach them, as you teach the Jews, that the India of the Vedic conception is not a geographical tract, but that it is in your hearts? A land about which a sacred book speaks to the sons of the land is never merely in their hearts; a land can never become a mere symbol. It is in the hearts because it is the prophetic image of a promise to mankind. But it would be a vain metaphor if Mount Zion did not actually exist. This land is called "holy", but this is not the holiness of an idea; it is the holiness of a piece of earth. That which is merely an idea and nothing more cannot become holy, but a piece of earth can become holy just as a mother`s womb can become holy. 


Dispersion is bearable. It can even be purposeful if somewhere there is ingathering, a growing home centre, a piece of earth where one is in the midst of an ingathering and not in dispersion and from where the spirit of ingathering may work its way out to all the places of the dispersion. When there is this, there is also a striving, common life, the life of a community that dares to live today because it hopes to live tomorrow. But when this growing centre, this increasing process of ingathering is lacking, dispersion becomes dismemberment. On this criterion, the question of our Jewish destiny in indissolubly bound up with the possibility of ingathering, and this in Palestine.


You ask, "Why should they not, like other nations of the earth, make that country where they are born and where they earn their livelihood their home?" Because their destiny is different from that of all other nations of the earth. It is a destiny that in truth and justice should not be imposed on any nation on earth. For their destiny is dispersion - not the dispersion of a fraction and the preservation of the main substance, as in the case of other nations. It is dispersion without the living heart and center, and every nation has a right to demand the possession of a living heart. It is different, because a hundred adopted homes without one original and natural one render a nation sick and miserable. It is different, because, although the wellbeing and the achievement of the individual may flourish on stepmother soil, the nation as such must languish. And just as you, Mahatma, wish that not only should all Indians be able to live and work, but that also Indian substance, Indian wisdom, and Indian truth should prosper and be fruitful, so do we wish this for the Jews. For you, there is no need to be aware that the Indian substance could not prosper without the Indian`s attachment to the mother soil and without his ingathering there. But we know what is essential. We know it because it is just this that is denied us or was, at least, up to the generation that has just begun to work at the redemption of the mother soil.


But this is not all. Because for us, for the Jews who think as I do, painfully urgent as it is, it is indeed not the decisive factor. You say, Mahatma Gandhi, that a sanction is "sought in the Bible" to support the cry for a national home, which "does not make much appeal to you". No - this is not so. We do not open the Bible and seek sanction there. The opposite it true: the promises of return, of re-establishment, which have nourished the yearning hope of hundreds of generations, give those of today an elementary stimulus, recognised by few in its full meaning but effective also in the lives of many who do not believe in the message of the Bible. Still, this too is not the determining factor for us who, although we do not see divine revelation in every sentence of Holy Scriptures, yet trust in the spirit that inspired their speakers. What is decisive for us is not the promise of the Land - but the command, whose fulfilment is bound up with the land, with the existence of a free Jewish community in this country. For the Bible tells us - and our inmost knowledge testifies to it - that once, more than three thousand years ago, our entry into this land was in the consciousness of a mission from above to set up a just way of life through the generations of our people, such a way of life as can be realised not by individuals in the sphere of their private existence but only by a nation in the establishment of its society: communal ownership of the land, regularly recurrent levelling of social distinctions, guarantee of the independence of each individual, mutual help, a common Sabbath embracing serf and beast as beings with equal claim, a sabbatical year whereby, letting the soil rest, everybody is admitted to the free enjoyment of its fruits. These are not practical laws thought out by wise men; they are measures that the leaders of the nation, apparently themselves taken by surprise and overpowered, have found to be the set task and condition for taking possession of the land. No other nation has ever been faced at the beginning of its career with such a mission. Here is something that allows of no forgetting, and from which there is no release. At that time, we did not carry out what was imposed upon us. We went into exile with our task unperformed. But the command remained with us, and it has become more urgent than ever. We need our own soil in order to fulfil it. We need the freedom of ordering our own life. No attempt can be made on foreign soil and under foreign statute. The soil and the freedom for fulfilment may not be denied us. We are not covetous, Mahatma; our one desire is that at last we may obey.


Now, you may well ask whether I speak for the Jewish people when I say "we". I speak only for those who feel themselves entrusted with the mission of fulfilling the command of justice delivered to Israel of the Bible. Were it but a handful - these constitute the pith of the nation, and the future of the people depends on them. For the ancient mission of the nation lives on in them as the cotyledon in the core of the fruit. In this connexion, I must tell you that you are mistaken when you assume that in general the Jews of today believe in God and derive from their faith guidance for their conduct. Jewry of today is in the throes of a serious crisis in the matter of faith. It seems to me that the lack of faith of present-day humanity, its inability truly to believe in God, finds its concentrated expression in this crisis of Jewry. Here, all is darker, more fraught with danger, more fateful than anywhere else in the world. Nor is this crisis resolved here in Palestine; indeed, we recognise its severity here even more than elsewhere among Jews. But at the same time we realise that here alone can it be resolved. There is no solution to be found in the life of isolated and abandoned individuals, although one may hope that the spark of faith will be kindled in their great need. The true solution can issue only from the life of a community that begins to carry out the will of God, often without being aware of doing so, without believing that God exists and this is his will. It may be found in this life of the community if believing people support it who neither direct nor demand, neither urge nor preach, but who share the life, who help, wait, and are ready for the moment when it will be their turn to give the true answer to the inquirer. This is the innermost truth of the Jewish life in the Land; perhaps it may be of significance for the solution of the crisis of faith, not only for Jewry but for all humanity. The contact of this people with this land is not only a matter of sacred ancient history; we sense here a secret still more hidden.


You, Mahatma Gandhi, who know of the connexion between tradition and future, should not associate yourself with those who pass over our cause without understanding or sympathy.


But you say - and I consider it to be the most significant of all the things you tell us - that Palestine belongs to the Arabs and that it is therefore "wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs".


Here I must add a personal note in order to make clear to you on what premises I desire to consider this matter.


I belong to a group of people who, from the time when Britain conquered Palestine, have not ceased to strive for the achievement of genuine peace between Jew and Arab.


By genuine peace, we inferred and still infer that both peoples should together develop the Land without one imposing his will on the other. In view of the international usages of our generation, this appeared to us to be very difficult but not impossible. We were and still are well aware that in this unusual - even unexampled - case, it is a question of seeking new ways of understanding and cordial agreement between the nations. Here again, we stood and still stand under the sway of a commandment.


We considered it a fundamental point that in this case two vital claims are opposed to each other, two claims of a different nature and a different origin, which cannot be pitted one against the other and between which no objective decision can be made as to which is just or unjust. We considered and still consider it our duty to understand and to honour the claim that is opposed to ours and to endeavour to reconcile both claims. We cannot renounce the Jewish claim; something even higher than the life of our people is bound up with the Land, namely, the work that is their divine mission. But we have been and still are convinced that it must be possible to find some form of agreement between this claim and the other; for we love this land and we believe in its future, and, seeing that such love and such faith are surely present on the other side as well, a union in the common service of the Land must be within the range of the possible. Where there is faith and love, a solution may be found even to what appears to be a tragic contradiction.


In order to carry out a task of such extreme difficulty - and recognising that we have to overcome an internal resistance on the Jewish side, as foolish as it is natural - we are in need of the support of well- meaning persons of all nations, and we had hope of it. But now you come and settle the whole existential dilemma with the simple formula: "Palestine belongs to the Arabs." 


What do you mean by saying that a land belongs to a population? Evidently you do not intend only to describe a state of affairs by your formula, but to declare a certain right. You obviously mean to say that a people, being settled on the land, has such an absolute claim to the possession of this land that whoever settles in it without the permission of this people has committed a robbery. But by what means did the Arabs attain the right of ownership in Palestine? Surely by conquest and, in fact, a conquest by settlement. You therefore admit that, this being so, it constitutes for them an exclusive right of possession; whereas the subsequent conquests of the Mamelukes and the Turks, which were not conquests with a view to settlement, do not constitute such in your opinion, but leave the former conquering nation in rightful ownership. Thus, settlement by force of conquest justifies for you a right of ownership of Palestine, whereas a settlement such as the Jewish one - whose methods, it is true, though not always doing full justice to Arab ways of life, were, even in the most objectionable cases, far removed from those of conquest - do not in your opinion justify any participation in this right of possession. These are the consequences that result from your statement in the form of an axiom that a land belongs to its population. In an epoch of migration of nations, you would first support the right of ownership of the nation that is threatened with dispossession or extermination. But once this was achieved, you would be compelled - not at once, but after the elapse of a suitable number of generations - to admit that the land belongs to the usurper.


Possibly the time is not far removed when - perhaps after a catastrophe whose extent we cannot yet estimate - the representatives of humanity will have to come to some agreement on the re-establishment of relations among peoples, nations and countries, on the colonisation of thinly populated territories as well as on a communal distribution of the necessary raw materials and on a logical intensification of the cultivation of the globe, in order to prevent a new, enormously extended migration of nations which would threaten to destroy mankind. Is then the dogma of "possession," of the inalienable right of ownership, of the sacred status quo to be held up against the men who dare to save the situation? For surely we are witnesses of how the feeling, penetrating deep into the heart of national life, that this dogma must be opposed is disastrously misused. But do not those representatives of the most powerful States share the guilt of this misuse, who consider every questioning of the dogma as a sacrilege?


And what if it is not the nations who migrate, but one nation? And what if this migrating nation should yearn toward its ancient home, where there is still room for a considerable section of it, enough to form a center side by side with the people to whom the land now "belongs"? And what if this wandering nation, to whom the land once belonged, likewise on the basis of a settlement by force of conquest - and which was once driven out of it by mere force of domination - should now strive to occupy a free part of the land, or a part that might become free without encroaching on the living space of others, in order at last to acquire again for itself a national home - a home where its people could live as a nation? Then you come, Mahatma Gandhi, and help to draw the barriers and to declare, "Hands off! This land does not belong to you!" Instead of helping to establish a genuine peace, giving us what we need without taking from the Arabs what they need, on the basis of a fair adjustment as to what they would really make use of and what might be admitted to satisfy our requirements!


Such an adjustment of the required living space for all is possible if it is brought into line with an all-embracing intensification of the cultivation of the whole soil in Palestine. In the present, helplessly primitive state of fellah agriculture, the amount of land needed to produce nourishment for a family is ever so much larger than it otherwise would be. Is it right to cling to ancient forms of agriculture, which have become meaningless, to neglect the potential productivity of the soil, in order to prevent the immigration of new settlers without prejudice to the old? I repeat: without prejudice. This should be the basis of the agreement for which we are striving.


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. But there is another of whom you do not inquire and who in justice, i.e., on the basis of the whole perceptible reality, would have to be asked. This other is the soil itself. Ask the soil what the Arabs have done for her in thirteen hundred years and what we have done for her in fifty! Would her answer not be weighty testimony in a just discussion as to whom this land "belongs"?


It seems to me that God does not give any one portion of the earth away so that its owner may say, as God does in the Holy Scriptures: "Mine is the land". Even to the conqueror who has settled on it, the conquered land is, in my opinion, only loaned - and God waits to see what he will make of it. 


I am told, however, that I should not respect the cultivated soil and despise the desert. I am told that the desert is willing to wait for the work of her children. We who are burdened with civilisation are not recognised by her anymore as her children. I have a veneration of the desert, but I do not believe in her absolute resistance, for I believe in the great marriage between man (adam) and earth (adama). This land recognises us, for it is fruitful through us, and through its fruit-bearing for us it recognises us. Our settlers do not come here as do the colonists from the Occident, with natives to do their work for them; they themselves set their shoulders to the plough, and they spend their strength and their blood to make the land fruitful. But it is not only for ourselves that we desire its fertility. The Jewish peasants have begun to teach their brothers, the Arab peasants, to cultivate the land more intensively. We desire to teach them further; together with them, we want to cultivate the land - to "serve" it, as the Hebrew has it. The more fertile this soil becomes, the more space there will be for us and for them. We have no desire to dispossess them; we want to live with them. We do not want to rule; we want to serve with them.


You once said, Mahatma, that politics enmeshes us nowadays as with serpent`s coils from which there is no escape, however hard one may try. You said you desired, therefore, to wrestle with the serpent. Here is the serpent in the fullness of its power! Jews and Arabs both have a claim to this land, but these claims are in fact reconcilable as long as they are restricted to the measure that life itself allots, and as long as they are limited by the desire for conciliation - that is, if they are translated into the language of the needs of living people for themselves and their children. But instead of this, they are turned through the serpent`s influence into claims of principle and politics, and are represented with all the ruthlessness that politics instills into those who are led by it. Life with all its realities and possibilities disappears, as does the desire for truth and peace; nothing is known and sensed but the political slogan alone. The serpent conquers not only the spirit but also life. Who would wrestle with it?


In the midst of your arguments, Mahatma, there is a fine word which we gratefully accept. We should seek, you say, to convert the heart of the Arab. Well, then - help us to do so! Among us also there are many foolish hearts to convert - hearts that have fallen prey to that nationalist egotism which only admits its own claims. We hope to achieve this ourselves. But for the other task of conversion, we need your help. Instead, your admonition is addressed only to the Jews, because they allow British bayonets to defend them against the bomb throwers. Your attitude to the latter is much more reserved. You say you wish the Arabs had chosen the way of non-violence, but, according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, there is nothing to be said against their behaviour. How is it possible that, in this case, you should give credence - if only in a limited form - to the accepted canons, whereas you have never done so before! You reproach us that, having no army of our own, we consent to the British army preventing an occasional blind murder. But, in view of the accepted canons, you cast a lenient eye on those who carry murder into our ranks every day without even noticing who is hit. Were you to look down on all, Mahatma, on what is done and what is not done on both sides - on the just and the unjust on both sides - would you not admit that we certainly are not least in need of your help?


We began to settle again in the Land thirty-five years before the "shadow of the British gun" was cast upon it. We did not seek this shadow; it appeared and remained here to guard British interests and not ours. We do not want force. But after the resolutions of Delhi, at the beginning of March 1922, you yourself, Mahatma Gandhi, wrote: "Have I not repeatedly said that I would have India become free even by violence rather than that she should remain in bondage?" This was a very important pronouncement on your part; you asserted thereby that non-violence is for you a faith and not a political principle - and that the desire for the freedom of India is even stronger in you than your faith. And for this, I love you. We do not want force. We have not proclaimed, as did Jesus, the son of our people, and as you do, the teaching of non-violence, because we believe that a man must sometimes use force to save himself or even more his children. But from time immemorial we have proclaimed the teaching of justice and peace; we have taught and we have learned that peace is the aim of all the world and that justice is the way to attain it. Thus, we cannot desire to use force. No one who counts himself in the ranks of Israel can desire to use force.


But, you say, our non-violence is that of the helpless and the weak. This is not in accordance with the true state of affairs. You do not know or you do not consider what strength of soul, what satyagraha has been needed for us to restrain ourselves here after years of ceaseless deeds of blind violence perpetrated against us, our wives, and our children, and not to answer with like deeds of blind violence. And on the other hand, you, Mahatma, wrote in 1922: "I see that our non-violence is skin deep.... This non-violence seems to be due merely to our helplessness... Can true voluntary non-violence come out of this seemingly forced non-violence of the weak?" When I read those words at that time, my reverence for you took birth - a reverence so great that even your injustice toward us cannot destroy it.


You say it is a stigma against us that our ancestors crucified Jesus. I do not know whether that actually happened, but I consider it possible. I consider it just as possible as that the Indian people under different circumstances should condemn you to death - if your teachings were more strictly opposed to their own tendencies ("India," you say, "is by nature nonviolent"). Nations not infrequently swallow up the greatness to which they have given birth. Now, can one assert, without contradiction, that such action constitutes a stigma! I would not deny however, that although I should not have been among the crucifiers of Jesus, I should also not have been among his supporters. For I cannot help withstanding evil when I see that it is about to destroy the good. I am forced to withstand the evil in the world just as the evil within myself. I can only strive not to have to do so by force. I do not want force. But if there is no other way of preventing the evil destroying the good, I trust I shall use force and give myself up into God`s hands.


"India," you say, "is by nature nonviolent." It was not always so. The Mahabharata is an epos of warlike, disciplined force. In the greatest of its poems, the Bhagavad Gita, it is told how Arjuna decides on the battlefield that he will not commit the sin of killing his relations who are opposed to him, and he lets fall his bow and arrow. But the god reproaches him, saying that such action is unmanly and shameful; there is nothing better for a knight in arms than a just fight.


Is that the truth? If I am to confess what is truth to me, I must say: There is nothing better for a man than to deal justly - unless it be to love. We should be able even to fight for justice - but to fight lovingly.


I have been very slow in writing this letter to you, Mahatma. I made repeated pauses - sometimes days elapsed between short paragraphs - in order to test my knowledge and my way of thinking. Day and night I took myself to task, searching whether I had not in any one point overstepped the measure of self-preservation allotted and even prescribed by God to a human community, and whether I had not fallen into the grievous error of collective egotism. Friends and my own conscience have helped to keep me straight whenever danger threatened. Weeks have now passed since then, and the time has come, when negotiations are proceeding in the capital of the British Empire on the Jewish-Arab problem - and when, it is said, a decision is to be made. 


But the true decision in this matter can come only from within and not from without.


I therefore take the liberty of closing this letter without waiting for the result in London.


Sincerely yours,
Martin Buber



LETTER FROM JUDAH L. MAGNES TO GANDHI, FEBRUARY 26, 1939 


Dear Mr. Gandhi,


What you have said recently about the Jews is the one statement I have yet seen which needs to be grappled with fundamentally. Your statement is a challenge, particularly to those of us who have imagined ourselves your disciples.


I am sure you must be right in asserting that the Jews of Germany can offer Satyagraha to the "godless fury of their dehumanised oppressors".


But how and when? You do not give the answer. You may say that you are not sufficiently acquainted with the German persecution to outline the practical technique of Satyagraha for use by the German Jews. But one of the great things about you and your doctrine has been that you have always emphasised the chance of practical success if Satyagraha be offered. Yet to the German Jews you have not given the practical advice which only your unique experience could offer, and I wonder if it is helpful merely in general terms to call upon the Jews of Germany to offer Satyagraha. I have heard that many a Jew of Germany has asked himself how and when Satyagraha must be offered, without finding the answer. Conditions in Germany are radically different from those that have prevailed in South Africa and in India. Those of us who are outside Germany must, I submit, think through most carefully the advice we proffer the unfortunates who are caught in the claws of the Hitler beast.


If you take the sentences of your statement as to what you would do were you a German Jew, you will find, I believe, that not only one German Jew, as you require, has had "courage and vision", but many whose names are known and many more who have borne witness to their faith without their names being known.


"I would claim Germany as my home". There has never been a community more passionately attached to its home than the German Jews to Germany. The thousands of exiles now to be found everywhere are so thoroughly German mentally, psychologically, in their speech, manners, prejudices, their outlook, that we wonder how many generations it may take before this is uprooted. The history of the Jews in Germany goes back to at least Roman times and though the Jews throughout their history there have been massacred and driven out on diverse occasions, one thing or the other has always brought them back there.


"I would challenge him to shoot me or to cast me into the dungeon". Many Jews - hundreds, thousands - have been shot. Hundreds, thousands have been cast into the dungeon. What more can Satyagraha give them? I ask this question in humility, for I am sure that you can give a constructive answer.


"I would not wait for fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example". But the question is how can Jews in Germany offer civil resistance? The slightest sign of resistance means killing or concentration camps or being done away with otherwise. It is usually in the dead of night that they are spirited away. No one, except their terrified families, is the wiser. It makes not even a ripple on the surface of German life. The streets are the same, business goes on as usual, the casual visitor sees nothing. Contrast this with a single hunger strike in an American or English prison, and the public commotion that this arouses. Contrast this with one of your fasts, or with your salt march to the sea, or a visit to the Viceroy, when the whole world is permitted to hang upon your words and be witness to your acts. Has not this been possible largely because, despite all the excesses of its imperialism, England is after all a democracy with a Parliament and a considerable measure of free speech? I wonder if even you would find the way to public opinion in totalitarian Germany, where life is snuffed out like a candle, and no one sees or knows that the light is out.


"If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescriptions here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now". Surely you do not mean that those Jews who are able to get out of Germany are as badly off as those who must remain? You call attention to the unbelievable ferocity visited upon all the Jews because of the crime of "one obviously mad but intrepid youth". But the attempt at civil resistance on the part of even one Jew in Germany, let alone the community, would be regarded as an infinitely greater crime and would probably be followed by a repetition of this unbelievable ferocity, or worse.


"And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy". I wonder that no one has drawn your attention to the fact that those German Jews who are faithful to Judaism - and they are the majority - have in large measure the inner strength and joy that comes from suffering for their ideals. It is those unfortunate "non-Aryans", who have a trace of Jewish blood but who have been brought up as German Christians, who are most to be pitied. They are made to suffer, and they do not know why. Many of them have been raised to despise Jews and Judaism, and now this despised people, this scorned religion is, in their eyes, the cause of their suffering. What a tragedy for them.


But as to the Jews - I do not know if there is a deeper and more widespread history of martyrdom. You can read the story of it in any Jewish history book, or, if you wish a convenient account, in the Jewish Encyclopedia published in New York a generation ago. To take Germany alone, you may be interested in one document that has come down to us from the middle ages. It is called the Memorbuch of Nuernberg - Nuernberg of the Nuernberg laws, whose synagogue has just been torn down and a 15th century covering of a Scroll of the Law stolen and presented recently to the city's arch-fiend.


The Memorbuch gives a list of the places where massacres took place in Germany during the Crusades from 1096 to 1298. There are some fifty of these massacres entered chronologically. There is a further entry of some 65 large pages containing dates and places with the names of those martyred from 1096 to 1349. Take what happened in this very Nuernberg on Friday the 22nd of Ab 5058 of the Jewish calendar, the 1st August 1298 of the Christian calendar. We find the names of 628 men, women and children, whole families, old and young, strong and sick, rabbis and scholars, rich and poor, slaughtered on that day - burned, drowned, put to the sword, strangled, broken on the wheel and on the rack. In some places the elders killed the young, and then put an end to their own lives.


In Spain and Portugal where Jews were given the chance of conversion to Christianity, what usually happened in a stricken town was, that about a third converted, and a third succeeded in escaping, and always at least a third accepted their agony with the praise of God and his Unity on their lips. Our Hebrew literature is in many ways a literature of martyrdom. Our Talmud, which covers a period of about 1000 years, is a literature that grew up in large measure under oppression, exile and martyrdom, and it contains discussions, traditions and rules bearing upon our duty to accept martyrdom rather than yield to "idolatry, immorality, or the spilling of blood". The Hebrew liturgy throbs with elegies in which poets and teachers commemorate the martyrs of one generation after another.


If ever a people was a people of non-violence through century after century, it was the Jews. I think they need learn but little from anyone in faithfulness to their God and in their readiness to suffer while they sanctify His Name.


What is new and great about you has seemed to me this, that you have exalted non-violence into the dominant principle of all of life, both religious, social and political, and that you have made it into a practical technique both of communing with the Divine and of battling for a newer world of justice and mercy and of respect for the human personality of even the most insignificant outcast. What you could give to help the Jew add to his precious contribution to mankind, "the surpassing contribution of non-violent action", is not as much the exhortation to suffer voluntarily, as the practical technique of Satyagraha.


You would have the right to say that some Jew should do this. But we have no one comparable to you as religious and political leader.


There are, as I am aware, other elements besides non-violence in Satyagraha. There is non-cooperation, and the renunciation of property, and the disdain of death.


The Jews are a people who exalt life, and they can hardly be said to disdain death. Lev. 18, 5 says: "my judgements which if a man do he shall live in them", and the interpretation adds as a principle of Jewish life "and not die through them". For this reason I have often wondered if we are fit subjects for Satyagraha. And as to property, it is but natural that Jews should want to take along with them a minimum of their property from Germany or elsewhere so as not to fall a burden upon others. It would, I am sure, give you satisfaction to see how large numbers of refugees, who in Germany were used to wealth, comfort, culture, have without too much complaint and very often cheerfully buckled down to a new life in Palestine and elsewhere, many of them in the fields or in menial employment in the cities.


It is in the matter of non-cooperation that I have a question of importance to put to you.


A plan is being worked out between the Evian Refugee Committee and the German Government which appears to be nothing short of devilish. The details are not yet known. But it seems to amount to this: The German Government is to confiscate all German Jewish property and in exchange for increased foreign trade and foreign currency they will permit a limited number of Jews to leave Germany annually for the next several years. The scheme involves the sale of millions of pounds of debentures to be issued by a Refugee or Emigration Bank that is to be created. Whether Governments are to subscribe to these debentures, I do not know. But certainly the whole Jewish world will be called upon to do so.


Here is the dilemma: If one does not subscribe, no Jews will be able to escape from this prison of torture called Germany. If one does subscribe one will be cooperating with that Government, and be dealing in Jewish flesh and blood in a most modern and up-to-date slave market. I see before me here in Jerusalem a child who is happy now that he is away from the torment there, and his brother, or parent, or grandparent. One of the oldest of Jewish sayings is: "Who saves a single soul in Israel is as if he had saved a whole world". Not to save a living soul? And yet to cooperate with the powers of evil and darkness? Have you an answer?


You touch upon a vital phase of the whole subject when you say that "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 and province."


But it is on "the pros and cons of such a war" that I would ask your guidance. The question gives me no rest, and I am sure there are many like myself. Like you I do not believe in any war. I have pledged myself never to take part in a war. I spoke up for pacifism in America during the world war alongside of many whose names are known to you. That war brought the "peace" of Versailles and the Hitlerism of today. But my pacifism, as I imagine the pacifism of many others, is passing through a pitiless crisis. I ask myself: Suppose America, England, France are dragged into a war with the Hitler bestiality, what am I to do and what am I to teach? This war may destroy a large part of the life of the youth of the world and force those who remain alive to lead the lives of savages. Yet I know I would pray with all my heart for the defeat of the Hitler inhumanity; and am I then to stand aside and let others do the fighting? During the last war I prayed for a peace without defeat or victory.


The answer given by Romain Rolland in his little book Par la revolution la paix (1935), seems to be, that while he himself as an individual continues to refuse to bear arms, he will do everything he can to help his side (in this case, Russia) to win the war. That is hardly a satisfying answer.


I ask myself how I might feel if I were not a Jew. Is the Hitler iniquity really as profound as I imagine? I recall that during the last war the arguments against Germany were much the same as these of today. I took no stock in those arguments then. Perhaps it is the torture of my own people that enrages me unduly? Yet it is my conviction that, being a Jew, my sense of outrage at injustice may, perhaps, be a bit more alive than the average and therefore more aware of the evils that the Hitler frenzy is bringing upon all mankind. The Jew, scattered as he is, is an outpost, bearing the brunt earlier of an action against mankind, and bearing it longest. For a dozen reasons he is a convenient scapegoat. I say this in order to make the point that if the Jew is thoroughly aroused about an evil such as the Hitler madness, his excitement and indignation are apt to be based not only on personal hurt but on a more or less authentic appraisal of the evil that must be met.


If you will take the trouble of looking at the little pamphlet I am sending, Fellowship in War (1936), you will see that I have an ineradicable belief that no war whatsoever can be a righteous war. The war tomorrow for the "democracies" or for some other noble slogan will be just as unrighteous or as fatuous as was the "war to save democracy" yesterday. Moreover, to carry on the war the democracies will perforce become totalitarian. Not even a war against the ghastly Hitler savagery can be called righteous, for we all of us have sinned, conquerors and conquered alike, and it is because of our sins, because of our lack of generosity and the spirit of conciliation and renunciation, that the Hitler beast has been enabled to raise its head. Even on the pages of the Nuernberg Memorbuch we find the words "Because of our many sins" this and that massacre took place. There can be no war for something good. That is a contradiction in terms. The good is to be achieved through totally different means.


But a war against something evil? If the Hitler cruelty launches a war against you, what would you do, what will you do? Can you refrain from making a choice? It is a choice of evils - a choice between the capitalisms, the imperialisms, the militarisms of the western democracies and between the Hitler religion. Can one hesitate as to which is the lesser of these two evils? Is not a choice therefore imperative? I am all too painfully conscious that I am beginning to admit that if Hitler hurls his war upon us we must resist. For us it would thus become, not a righteous war, nor, to use your term, a justifiable war, but a necessary war, not for something good, but, because no other choice is left us, against the greater evil. Or do you know of some other choice?


I have already written you an inordinately long letter, but I must abuse your patience further and refer to Palestine, I hope in not too lengthy a way.


I am burdening you with a further pamphlet of mine called Like all the Nations?. May I refer you to pages 14 and 15, and then to pages 29-32. You will see that on page 31, I say that we must overcome all obstacles in Palestine "through all the weapons of civilisation except bayonets .. brotherly, friendly weapons", and on page 32 the Jew "should not either will or believe in or want a Jewish Home that can be maintained in the long run only against the violent opposition of the Arab and Moslem peoples." There are other Jews who hold the same views and who regard the Mandate as suspect because, as you say, "the Mandate has no sanction but that of the last war". In an address in New York in May 1919, I said: "Palestine is, so they say, to be given to the Jewish people. To my mind, no peace conference has the right to give any land to any people even though it be the land of Israel to the People of Israel. If self-determination be a true principle for other peoples, it is just as true for the Jewish people... If we are to be true democrats we must be true democrats in Jewish life as well. Our new beginnings in Palestine are burdened by this gift." (page 60 of the above pamphlet).


But the attachment of Israel to Palestine is as old as the Bible, and there has been no period of history in which this attachment has not expressed itself, and, as we know more and more clearly from archaeological excavations and the recovery of lost documents, there has never been a time when Jewish settlements were utterly absent from the Holy Land.


Jewish life will always be lacking in an essential constituent, if Judaism and the Jewish people have no spiritual and intellectual Centre in Palestine. It is true they can exist without it, as history shows, but they have never ceased experiencing the deep need for such a Centre and of trying to establish it in Palestine on innumerable occasions. Such a spiritual and religious Centre must, for the Jewish people, take on the qualities of a National Home. The Jewish people are not like the Catholic Church for whom the ecclesia is the supreme authority. Judaism is peculiar in this, that it derives its final authority out of the life, the sufferings, the aspirations, the accumulated traditions, the God-consciousness of a people composed of ordinary everyday, hard-working human beings. It is for this reason that the Jewish Centre cannot be composed only of priests and scholars. The Jewish Centre to fulfill its true functions should be endowed with all the problems and possibilities that life itself imposes, and, as no one knows better than yourself, life expresses itself in many forms, political and social, as well as religious and spiritual.


It is, I think, in recognition of all of this that 52 nations accepted the doctrine that the Jews are in Palestine as of "right" and not just on sufferance. Do you not think that all of this, added to the barbarous treatment meted out to the Jews in all too many places, constitutes a kind of "right" at least as valid as the other varieties of "rights"?


But essential as this Centre, or National Home, seems to be, in the opinion of many, for Judaism and the Jews, I think you would find great numbers of Jews agreeing with you that "it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs".


The question is, what is meant by reduce, and are the Arabs being reduced?


You say that "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English".


"Mine is the land" (Lev. 25, 23) saith the Lord.


May I point out at least two ways in which Palestine does not "belong" to the Arabs as England does to the English?


Usually a land "belongs" to that people which has conquered it. That is an ugly fact. The Jews conquered the land long ago. They lost it to conquerors, who themselves lost it, and eventually the Arabs conquered it. But the Arabs lost it to the Crusaders, and they again to the Arabs, and they to the Mongols and to the Mameluks, and they to the Turks, from whom it was conquered by the Allied Powers, primarily by England. The Arabs do not therefore possess political sovereignty from conquest, and the land does not "belong" to them in this sense.


Palestine does "belong" to the Arabs in the sense that they have been in the land in large numbers since the Moslem conquest, that most (by no means all) of those working the land are Arabs, and most (by no means all) of those owning the land are Arab landholders (a comparatively small number), and Arabic is the chief spoken language.


But Palestine is different from England also in this, that it is a sacred land for three monotheistic religions, and in this, that a people, the Jews, who became a people in Palestine and whose great classic, the basis of whose life, the Bible, was produced there, have never throughout all the centuries forgotten the land and ceased to yearn for it.


That is a unique fact of no mean importance.


The basic problem is, as you put it, the need for the Jews of settling in Palestine "with the goodwill of the Arabs", and not "under the shadow of the British gun".


I would not be honest if I conveyed the impression to you that in my opinion my people have always gone at this in the right way. They have done wonderful things in building up the land. They have planned intelligently and with high social ideals. They have borne sufferings and hardships willingly. They love the land and they have rescued it from further decay. They have revived the Hebrew tongue. In this sense the land also "belongs" to them. But I am sure that it has been the tragic pressure of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe that has made my people impatient and often intolerant. The tragedy of the Jewish wanderer and refugee did not begin with Germany. We have had this problem with us always, and it was one of the chief reasons for the rise of modern Zionism. And now with the German barbarities, and what is impending in Poland and elsewhere, the pressure for space and a Home has grown to be almost unbearable.


During the past three years when the Jewish community here has been under continual attack, it is a fact that the Jewish community has been non-violent. Our young men and women are hot-blooded as are others. But there are very few recorded cases of attack on their part and there have been no ascertained reprisals. This self-restraint, this Havlaga, as it is called, can be ascribed to many factors. But, as the never ceasing discussion of Havlaga shows, a deep ethical passion has been the predominant factor in this non-violence.


I wonder therefore if the question of the Jews offering "Satyagraha in front of the Arabs" arises in Palestine. The Jewish youth has had organised self-defence units which are now, for the most part, merged with the constituted forces of the country. As far as I am aware, you do not advocate the abolition of police or military forces anywhere. The record shows that in no single instance have the legalised Jewish forces in Palestine committed an act of aggression. I should like to know if you think that the Jewish settlements should have remained, or should now be, unarmed, and that when bands come into a town like Tiberias and murder and mutilate babes in their mothers' arms, they should offer "themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them". As I have understood Satyagraha, it must, in order to be effective, be offered in front of Constituted Authority, and not in front of roving bandits.


Will you not speak to the Arabs in terms of Satyagraha? That would also have a profound influence upon the Jews.


Great as is the need for finding a refuge in Palestine for persecuted Jews, and great as are the possibilities of spiritual and intellectual, social and political achievements in the Jewish National Home, there are very many who agree with you that we must not "reduce" the Arabs. If I understand what you mean by the word "reduce" I would give it as my opinion, after many years of residence in Palestine, that the Arabs have not been reduced. But that does not at all absolve the Jews from the primary duty and the vital necessity of "seeking to convert the Arab heart". Perhaps you could help us in this through suggestions?


Sincerely Yours,


J. L. MAGNES.


Jerusalem, February 26, 1939


P.S. You may be interested in a third pamphlet containing a recent address at the Hebrew University on the Jews of Bologna, Italy, particularly from page 8 onwards.



AN ANSWER TO GANDHI, BY HAYIM GREENBERG, 1939 


In his article concerning the Jewish question, a statement for which certain elements in Jewry have long waited with impatience, the spiritual leader of Young India directs against us two important accusations. He blames us for not exhibiting the heroism of militant pacifism in those lands where Jews are persecuted, and especially in Germany. On the other hand, he accuses us of following an aggressively nationalist - almost imperialist - policy in Palestine and of a desire to deprive the Arabs of their fatherland.


Gandhi`s first accusation is quite natural and is in complete harmony with his entire world outlook. His temperament does not tolerate passivity and his ethical-religious convictions dictate to him the duty of heroic and active resistance according to the principle of Satyagraha.


The motivating idea of Satyagraha is not, as some claim, a practical strategy which Gandhi "made to order" to meet the concrete demands of the Indian situation. Long ago he advocated it as a universal ideal which could be applied by all the oppressed and injured everywhere and independently of the specific historical situation. Personally, I feel that the individual and group struggles according to the plan of Satyagraha - aside from its moral-religious implications - have proved to be practical and effective. The truth of the Satyagraha teaching - which in another form has been expressed by Jesus and other Jewish teachers many generations ago - is in my eyes as self-evident as a mathematical axiom. But I must admit to myself in order to apply Gandhi`s method of struggle, it is necessary to accept it not only on a purely intellectual plane; it is also imperative that it be assimilated emotionally, that it should be believed in with all the force of one`s being. Such faith the Jews of Germany do not possess. Faith in the principle of Satyagraha is a matter of special predisposition which, for numerous reasons, the German Jews have not developed. The civilisation in which German Jews have lived for so many generations, and to the creation of which they have so energetically and ably contributed, has not prepared them for the "pathos" of Satyagraha. As a result, they are now defenceless, The accepted defence methods of the European-American world cannot be applied by the German Jews. They cannot resort to passive resistance because they lack the heroism, the faith and the specific imaginative powers which alone can stimulate such heroism. When Gandhi accuses German Jews of lacking that mentality which, in his estimation, is the only truly heroic mentality, I am ready to concur with him, but with one reservation which he also must accept - that this accusation should also be levelled against the millions of non-Jewish Germans who wear the yoke of the Hitler regime with impotent hatred and show no more affinity for Satyagraha methods than do the Jews; against the millions of Italians who for years have breathed the contaminated air of their own tyranny; against the tens of millions of Russians who have exhausted their strength in civil war and do not find their way to the Gandhi method of resisting the Red despotism; against hundreds of millions of Chinese who by their military resistance aid the Japanese aggressors to ravage their country instead of following the path of non-cooperation.


It is true that one may demand - as Gandhi does - that Jews, and particularly the Jews of Germany, should be the "pioneers" of new forms of social struggle in the Western world and should be the first to embrace the practice of Satyagraha. Gandhi wishes that we should set an example to the non-Jewish Germans, that we should point the way to a spiritual crusade against their wicked government. He may have a sound reason for believing that the incomparable suffering and degradation to which German Jews are subjected "compels" them to act more heroically and to be more "adventurous" spiritually than their neighbours. I do not question the idea implicit in Gandhi`s demand, that there is a mutual relationship between the intensity of suffering and the intensity of the moral reaction to suffering. But there is no reason to assume that when suffering and insults transgress certain bounds it is quite natural that the reaction should be a feeling of futility and despair instead of that heroism which Gandhi suggests. This is especially true when the group concerned is historically and psychologically not prepared for such a catastrophe and therefore looks upon it as a sudden and unexpected occurrence. The prophet of Young India has in this instance exhibited an unusual lack of psychological understanding.


Gandhi should also have understood that it is far less simple to preach Satyagraha to German Jews than it is to Indian masses, even to the lowest caste of "untouchables". We all know the evils of English rule and administration in India. But one should be wary of drawing comparisons between the situation of the Indian masses today, or even twenty years ago, and the position of the German Jews today. Throughout the years that the Indian National Congress conducted its struggle for emancipation, there existed in India scores of legal newspapers and journals which voiced the needs and the political demands of the people. The British government never questioned the right of the oppressed population to live, to work and to earn their bread; it did not even question their right to hold responsible government positions. The most brutal British administration bore in mind that it had to deal with 350 million people living compactly in one area. Together with Gandhi it understood that, to use his (Gandhi`s) own words, "If we Indians could only spit in unison, we would form a puddle big enough to drown 300,000 Englishmen" - the entire number of Englishmen who live in India and govern it. When Satyagraha is practised by an organised group that is backed by such an immense population it becomes a force that the scattered half million German Jews cannot even dream of. Let me cite the words of one of Gandhi`s disciples and colleagues who, just before he was sent to prison, declared: "We can thank our lucky stars that we are fighting the British and not someone else, for the British have something in them to which we can appeal." The same British judge who sentenced Gandhi to prison found it possible and unpunishable to declare, after pronouncing sentence, that it was the law which sends Gandhi to prison but that he personally looks upon him as "a great patriot and a great leader"; that "even those who differed from Gandhi look upon him as a man of high ideals and of noble and even saintly life." At the same time one of the most prominent British missionaries compared Gandhi`s trial to the trials of Jesus and Socrates, and the English Bishop of Madras declared to the entire world: "Frankly I confess, although it deeply grieves me to say it, that I see in Mr. Gandhi the patient sufferer for the cause of righteousness and mercy, a truer representative of the crucified Saviour than the men who have thrown him into prison and yet call themselves by the name of Christ."


Only recently I met an Englishman, an ex-army officer in India (now a member of Parliament), who had been brave enough to refuse to carry out the command to arrest Gandhi, with the full knowledge of the punishment prescribed for such insubordination. That punishment was not meted out. Even during the days of General Dyer`s brutal administration in India there did not reign that bestiality and "moral anesthesia" which characterise the Germany of today. A Jewish Gandhi in Germany, should one arise could `function' for about five minutes - until the first Gestapo agent would lead him, not to a concentration camp, but directly to the gallows.


Gandhi demands heroism from the Indians; he demands of the German Jews a measure of super-heroism unexampled in history. Gandhi`s comparison of the situation of the Indians to that of the German Jews contains an element of unfairness which crept in against his will and against his intentions.


But if Gandhi demands that we practise super-heroism in Germany, he requests that in Palestine we should renounce the most elementary rights which every people may and should claim. When he asks why we do not "like the other peoples of the earth" make our home in the land where we are born and where we earn our livelihood he indicates that he has not pondered the unusual drama of the paradoxical Jewish history. Jews have been dispersed for many generations, and it could not be an accident that after sojourning in so many lands and with so many peoples they have not become so rooted in those countries that these should cease being "stepmother lands". Gandhi should have known of the numerous attempts the Jews have made throughout the ages to transform lands of refuge into true homes, beginning with Babylonia and the Hellenic city of Alexandria in Egypt. The contribution of the Jews to the economic growth and the cultural blossoming of those countries is sufficient proof of this attempt to become rooted which has so frequently ended in failure. Gandhi`s question rings like a veiled accusation; it sounds as if we have purposely refused to become rooted in any country but Palestine. If it should be true that we have condemned ourselves to remain eternal strangers, then such an unusual phenomenon in human history should have evoked Gandhi`s wonder and he should have asked whether the Jews do not bear within themselves unrealised forces which can only manifest themselves in a Jewish territorial environment where these may come to fruition.


But Gandhi refuses to recognise our right to a distinct territorial settlement, a right which is enjoyed, almost without exception, by all the peoples of the world. Were it not so, he would see the Palestine problem in an altogether different political and moral light. For when he says that "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 Homeland" he forgets that if national honour is at stake (this is the burden of his statement, and he knows full well that one may not repeat the discredited allegations of economic or cultural harm that Jews supposedly caused to Arabs) he should also have thought of Jewish honour. Either it is dishonourable to be a minority in a country or it is merely a question of fictitious prestige for which he can have no sympathy. If only pseudo-honour is involved, why should he be concerned lest the "proud Arabs" be deprived of the enjoyment of an inflated pride? But if real national honour is at stake, why should the Arabs enjoy it throughout the length and breadth of the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Egypt (an area almost as large as the European continent) while the Jews should be deprived of this honour even in an area which occupies about one percent of the above-mentioned lands, an area to which they have historical claims and the natural right they acquired during two generations of diligent work, initiative, heroism and suffering?


I do not claim that so-called historical rights possess absolute validity. It if is true, for instance, that Gypsies came to Europe from a certain section of India and that section is now completely settled, no intelligent being would claim that the Gypsies have a right to build their national home in that area. They could do so only through the expulsion of the present population. Jewish historical rights to Palestine are of an altogether different nature. The country is underpopulated and inadequately cultivated; it contains room for several times the number of people that now reside in it. For Jews Palestine is the cradle and the "laboratory" of their civilisation and their spiritual bond with the country was not broken at any time during their history. For the Arabs Palestine is, in a certain sense, an "accidental" geographical unit for which they do not even have a name. To this day Palestine is only "South Syria" to the Arabs.


Need anything more be added to explain Jewish rights to Palestine? In eastern Europe an anecdote is current (an anecdote the implications of which are altogether too frequently overlooked) concerning a thief whom the judge chided in the following words: "Don`t you know that it is forbidden to take anything that belongs to others"? But the thief posed an intellectual dilemma before the judge. "What shall I do," he asked the judge, "since at the time of my birth everything already belonged to other people?" Absolute poverty, in a world filled with riches, confers a natural right upon those whom fate mistreated to demand their share, first of all at the expense of those who possess too much, more than they need or can use. One may not say to Jews: "The world is already divided up; some received more and others less but there is nothing left for you and no one is obliged to share with you, even though he possesses fields which he cannot or does not wish to cultivate, or factories where the machines are left to rust in inaction, simply because at one time he succeeded in obtaining these possessions by force or through trickery." Gandhi does not realise that he has erred in sanctioning the "absolute" nature of private property and its inviolability. Group ownership of territories is also a form of private ownership which should be subjected to control and regulation by a broader human or international principle. Although he is not a Socialist in the accepted meaning of the term, Gandhi is aware that the property relationships between individual members of society will have to be modified in some way in order to attain a minimum of justice. Earnest and logical consideration should have led him to the conclusion that the same criterion of justice - the assurance of the necessary minimum to every creature that is stamped with "the image of God" - must also be applied to entire nations, races and tribes. Another non-Socialist and non-internationalist (in the modern sense of the terms), Benjamin Franklin, several generations ago admirably expressed this simple idea in a letter to Robert Morris. He said: "All property except the savage`s temporary cabin, his bow, and other little acquisitions absolutely necessary for his subsistence, seems to me the creature of public convention. Hence, the public has the right of regulating descents, and all other conveyances of property, and even of limiting the quantity and the uses of it. All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual and the propagation of the species, is his natural right which none may justly deprive him of; but all property superfluous to such purposes is the property of the public, who, by their laws, have created it, and who may therefore, by other laws, dispose of it, when ever the welfare of the public shall demand such disposition. He that does not like civil society on these terms, let him retire and live among savages. He can have no right to the benefits of society, who will not pay his club toward the support of it."


Had Gandhi taken the trouble to consider this elementary truth in relation to present-day reality, he would also not have written in such a tone of near-disdain about the Mandate. From a purely legalistic point of view, it may be possible to agree with him that "the mandates have no sanction but that of the last war". This does not mean, however, that the basic idea of the mandates, and even the mandatory system as it has been practised during the past twenty years, was born from the war. The idea underlying the mandates which, according to the constitution of the League of Nations, should be applied in territories where the population is not ready for self-government or where local interests must be subordinated to more important considerations of an international character, is potentially of great humanitarian significance. It is a prelude to that "civil society" of which Franklin wrote in the eighteenth century; it is a way to a more rational and just collective-international control of the world`s wealth. I am not unaware of the shortcomings with which the League of Nations is weighed down nor of its sad fate during recent years which also brought misfortune to all humanity. But whoever observed closely the activities of the League in the administration of mandated territories - naturally excluding those areas mandated to Japan, a country which cynically mocked League control even when its representatives were still sitting at Geneva - must admit that the mandatory system is a step forward when compared with the uncontrolled colonial regimes of the past and the present. The fact that a mandatory government is responsible to the Permanent Mandates Commission, in which the majority of the members represent governments possessing neither mandates or colonial possessions, is in itself an advance in the direction of internationalism and the humanisation of the world.


It is regrettable that Gandhi approached our problem without that fundamental earnestness and passionate search for truth which are so characteristic of his usual treatment of problems. He therefore missed the deeper implications of the Mandates system. He therefore also failed to grasp the unequalled tragedy of Jewish existence. This is the reason why he can justify the phenomenon of five Arab States demanding in London the establishment of a sixth one on the eve of the founding of two other sovereign Arab governments in Syria and Lebanon, while at the same time sanctioning the denial of refuge to Jews in their old home. This also explains his stand that Arabs must nowhere be reduced to the status of a minority while tens of millions of Russians, Poles, Czechs, Germans, Irish and Italians live in dozens of countries as ethnic minorities and while Jews live as a persecuted minority on the entire globe.


With all my respect for the Mahatma (I doubt if there is another man living who evokes within me such a moral awareness of his loftiness), I cannot help feeling that in the present instance he has betrayed his inner nature. I cannot avoid the suspicion that so far as the Palestine problem is concerned, Gandhi allowed himself to be influenced by the anti-Zionist propaganda being conducted among fanatic pan-Islamists. His understandable and praiseworthy desire for a united front with the Mohammedans, apparently misguided and blinded him to significant realities and deprived him of that analytical clarity which is a part of his moral being. Years ago he was, for the same reason, misguided into supporting the agitation for the re-establishment of the Khalifate, an institution that is at such variance with his general views. Gandhi was wrong then; he is also mistaken in the present instance, and the source of these mistakes seems to be the same.


I know that this is a serious accusation - at any rate a serious suspicion. But when it comes from a Jew, such an accusation does not indicate a lack of veneration. Hero worship among Jews is traditionally circumscribed. We venerate Moses, our first prophet and liberator. But we do not forget that also he was sinful - so sinful that God denied him entry into the Promised Land and his earthly remains were interred on the solitary height of Mount Nebo.



The Jewish Question, by Gandhi - From Harijan, May 22, 1939


The Managing Editor of Jewish Frontier, published at 275 Seventh Avenue, New York City, was good enough to send me a copy of the March number of the magazine with the request that I should deal with its reply to my article on the Jews in Germany and Palestine. The reply is very ably written. I wish I had space for reproducing the whole of it. The reader will, however, find the main argument reproduced in this issue of Harijan.


Let me say that I did not write the article as a critic. I wrote it at the pressing request of Jewish friends and correspondents. As I decided to write, I could not do so in any other manner.


But I did not entertain the hope when I wrote it that the Jews would be at once converted to my view. I should have been satisfied if even one Jew had been fully convinced and converted.


Nor did I write the article only for today. I flatter myself with the belief that some of my writings will survive me and will be of service to the causes for which they have been written. I have no sense of disappointment that my writing had not to my knowledge converted a single Jew.


Having read the reply more than once, I must say that I see no reason to change the opinion I expressed in my article. It is highly probable that, as the writer says, "a Jewish Gandhi in Germany, should one arise, could function for about five minutes and would be promptly taken to the guillotine". But that will not disprove my case or shake my belief in the efficacy of ahimsa. I can conceive the necessity of the immolation of hundreds, if not thousands, to appease the hunger of dictators who have no belief in ahimsa. Indeed the maxim is that ahimsa is the most efficacious in front of the great himsa. Its quality is really tested only in such cases. Sufferers need not see the result during their lifetime. They must have faith that if their cult survives, the result is a certainty. The method of violence gives no greater guarantee than that of non-violence. It gives infinitely less. For the faith of the votary of ahimsa is lacking.


The writer contends that I approached the Jewish problem "without that fundamental earnestness and passionate search for truth which are so characteristic of his usual treatment of problems". All I can say is that to my knowledge there was lack neither of earnestness nor of passion for truth when I wrote the article. The second charge of the writer is more serious. He thinks that my zeal for Hindu-Muslim unity made me partial to the Arab presentation of the case, especially as that side was naturally emphasised in India. I have often said that I would not sell truth for the sake of India`s deliverance. Much less would I do so for winning Muslim friendship. The writer thinks that I am wrong on the Jewish question as I was wrong on the Khilafat question. Even at this distance of time I have no regret whatsoever for having taken up the Khilafat cause. I know that my persistence does not prove the correctness of my attitude. Only it is necessary for everyone concerned to know where I stand today about my action in 1919-20.


I am painfully conscious of the fact that this writing of mine will give no satisfaction either to the Editor of Jewish Frontier or to my many Jewish friends. Nevertheless, I wish with all my heart that somehow or other the persecution of the Jews in Germany will end and that the question in Palestine will be settled to the satisfaction of all the parties concerned.


Rajkot, May 22, 1939



Withdrawn, by Gandhi - From Harijan, May 27, 1939


In Harijan of December 24 there is a long report of my talk with missionary friends from Tambaram on non-violence and the world crisis. When during the talk I took the illustration of the Jews, I am reported to have said:


"It is true that the Jews have not been actively violent in their own persons. But they called down upon the Germans the curses of mankind, and they wanted America and England to fight Germany on their behalf."


On reading the last sentence a dear friend wrote to me a fiery letter and challenged me to produce my authority for my remark. He said that I had been hasty in making the statement. I did not realise the importance of the rebuke. I did, however, want to produce support for my statement. I put Pyarelal and later Mahadev on the search. It is not always an easy task to find support for impressions one carries when speaking or writing. Meanwhile I received a letter from Lord Samuel supporting the contradiction of the friend referred to above. Whilst I was having the search made I got the following letter from Sir Philip Hartog:


"May I take the opportunity of saying that I agree with what my friends Mr. Polak and Lord Samuel tell me they have written to you about the attitude of the German Jewish refugees, of whom I have myself seen hundreds since 1933? I have never heard one of them express publicly or privately the desire for a war of vengeance against Germany. Indeed such a war would bring further misery to the hundreds of thousands of Jews still in Germany as well as untold suffering to millions of other innocent men and women." 


I put greater diligence in my search. The searchers were not able to lay hands on any conclusive writing. The manager of Harijan put himself in correspondence with the Editor of the Jewish Tribune, Bombay, who sent the following characteristic reply:


"This is not the first time that I have come across the imputation made against Jews that they urge countries like England and America to go to war against Germany on account of its persecution of Jews. Jews have never urged the democracies to wage war against Germany on account of its persecution of the Jews. This is a mischievous lie that must be nailed to the counter. If there is a war, Jews will suffer more than the rest of the population. This is a fact gleaned from the pages of history. And the Jew is a great lover and advocate of peace. I hope you will refute any such allegation that is made against them."


In the face of the foregoing weighty contradictions now enforced by the Editor of the Jewish Tribune and of the fact that I cannot lay my hands on anything on the strength of which I made the challenged observation, I must withdraw it without any reservation. I only hope that my observation has not harmed any single Jew. I know that I incurred the wrath of many German friends for what I said in all good faith.


Rajkot, May 22, 1939



Nazism in its Nakedness, by Gandhi - From Harijan, August 6, 1940


A Dutch friend writes: 


"You will perhaps be able to remember me having made a drawing of you at Romain Rolland`s in 1931... I am a Dutchman and lived for many years in Germany, where I had built up a living as an artist. Nazism, which gained hold in Germany seven years ago, caused me many conscientious doubts...


"It is just one year ago since I left my house in Munich to spend some time in Holland... On 10th May, by the use of every possible subtle trick, Holland was overpowered. After four days of the most ruthless bombing we fled to England and are now on our way to Java, the country of my birth, where I hope to find work...


"Hitler aims at nothing less than the destruction of all moral values, and in the bulk of German youth he has already attained that end.


"Your article in Harijan about the Jewish problem in Germany particularly interested me since I had many Jewish friends there. You say in it that, if ever a war were justified, it is this one against Germany. In the same article, however, you write that, if you were a Jew, you would attempt to soften the hearts of the Nazis by non-violence. Recently you also advised Britain and the British people to surrender their beautiful island to the German invader, without resistance by force, and to conquer him afterwards by non-violence. There is probably no man in the whole history who has a better knowledge of the practice of non-violence than yourself. Your views have awakened veneration and love for you in millions of hearts not only in India but in the outside world as well...


"Through Nazism, the German youth has lost all individuality of thought and feeling. The great mass of young people has lost its heart and is degraded to the level of a machine. The German conduct of the war is absolutely mechanical; machines are driven by robot men who have no qualms of conscience about crushing under their tanks the bodies of women and children, bombing open towns, killing hundreds of thousands of women and children, and on occasion using them as a screen for their advance, or distributing poisoned food. These are all facts, the truth of which I can vouch for. I have spoken with many of your followers about the possibility of applying non-violence against Germany. A friend of mine, whose work it is to cross-examine German prisoners of war in England, was deeply shocked by the spiritual narrowness and heartlessness of these young men, and agreed with me that non-violence could not be applied with any success against such robots..."


The friend has sent his name and address. But I withhold both for fear of harm coming to him through unnecessary publicity. The letter must be valued on its own intrinsic merits.


What, however, concerns me is not to so much his characterisation of Nazism as his belief that non-violent action may have no effect on Hitler or the Germans whom he has turned into so many robots. Non-violent action, if it is adequate, must influence Hitler and easily the duped Germans. No man can be turned into a permanent machine. Immediately the dead weight of authority is lifted from his head, he begins to function normally. To lay down any such general proposition as my friend has, betrays ignorance of the working of non-violence. The British Government can take no risks, can make no experiments in which they have not even a workable faith. But if ever an opportunity could be given to me, in spite of my physical limitations, I should not hesitate to try what would appear to be impossible. For in ahimsa it is not the votary who acts in his own strength. Strength comes from God. If, therefore, the way is opened for me to go, he will give me the physical endurance and clothe my word with the needed power. Anyway all through my life I have acted in that faith. Never have I attributed any independent strength to myself. This may be considered by men who do not believe in a higher power than themselves as a drawback and a helpless state. I must admit that limitation of ahimsa, if it be accounted as such.


Sevagram, August 6, 1940



The Jew and the Arab: Discussion with Mr. Silverman and Mr. Honick, March 1946, report by Pyarelal - From Louis Fischer papers 


"The Jewish National Home" was the theme of a conversation that Messrs. [Sydney] Silverman, M.P., and Honick, the President of the World Jewish Congress and the head of its organisational side, had with Gandhi during the week. Their object in coming to India was to canvass support for the cause of the "Jewish National Home" in Palestine. They were perturbed over the Congress Working Committee's resolution on the question and were anxious to gain Gandhi's support. The theme was not altogether new to Gandhi as at the instance of the late Mr. Kallenbach he had made a fair study of it. He had gone through all the literature that the former had furnished him. With Mr. Kallenbach it had become a passion. He had identified himself with the Zionist cause and had dedicated to it a good bit of his fortune. Naturally Gandhi had tried to take as favourable a view of it as his friendship with Mr. Kallenbach demanded. In the end he had given what he considered to be his best advice to Mr. Kallenbach who had communicated it to Dr. Wise.


"Well, I am half a Jew myself," said Gandhi laughing as he greeted his visitors. And when they looked puzzled he described to them his intimate friendship with Mr. Kallenbach who was his inseparable companion in almost all he did in South Africa and Messrs. Polak and Ritch, not to mention several others. "You have my sympathy," he continued, "But you have come to the wrong person. I work within my limitations. I may not, therefore, be able to go far with you in view of your methods which I hold to be wrong."


There were two sides to the question, they explained. There was a small section of terrorist hotheads. What they did was altogether wrong. But there was another thing, not formally legal either but which he could perhaps understand and even sympathise with. "If a crazy vessel bringing Jewish refugees comes to the Palestinian shore," remarked Mr. Silverman with some warmth. "I for one would rather help in getting them ashore than help those who want to shoot them down."


'I could sympathise and even appreciate that, being a civil resister myself," replied Gandhi. "I sympathised with Poland when they offered resistance to the Germans against overwhelming odds. But that is not what you want from me. What I would say to you therefore is that unless you can gain the ear of the Indian Mussalmans and their active support, I am afraid there is nothing that can be done in India. I will not be of much use to you. I gave my advice to Mr. Kallenbach and he appreciated it too. But he could not utter the right word. It would have meant going into the wilderness. But you try along your lines. You will get the support of Beni Israel and the Jews in India. For instance there is David Sassoon."


"Oh no. Money makers do not help us," replied Mr. Silverman. "All the land in Palestine was purchased out of the Jewish National Fund which is made of small contributions of the poor out of their hard-earned savings. As a matter of fact one thing with which we are reproached is that there is a condition attached to the sale of the land purchased out of this Fund to the effect that no Arab labour can be employed on it. We want to create a Jewish peasantry attached to the soil. We do not want to exploit Arab labour. That should appeal to you. May we take it that you sympathise with our aspiration to establish a national home for the Jews. We are the only nation on earth without a country."


Gandhi: "Is not even English opinion divided over that issue?"


Mr. Silverman: "No, there is a difference as to the method, none over the principle. Recently Mr. Bevin speaking in the House of Commons declared himself in favour of establishing a Jewish Home. The word 'national' was omitted. In reply to a letter which I addressed to him later he explained that 'Jewish Home' was only an abbreviation for 'Jewish National Home.' In his reply he quoted the preamble of the Balfour declaration and reiterated that the British Government continued to adhere to the policy laid down in that declaration."


Gandhi: "Let me try to understand the question. Why do you want a national home in Palestine?"


Mr. Silverman: "Two reasons. Firstly, because six and a half lakhs of Jews are already settled there. We cannot throw them away and begin anew. Secondly because there is nowhere else we can go to."


Gandhi: "Are there not waste spaces enough in the world to receive you?"


Mr. Silverman: "Palestine itself was a waste space when we went there. We are cynical enough to say 'that is how we got it in 1917.' No one else wanted it. Now that we have developed it they want to turn us out. What guarantee is there that it will not be the same elsewhere too? Canada, England, the South Americas, Australia - it is the same story everywhere. We are treated as unwelcome strangers."


"Excuse my ignorance," rejoined Gandhi, "May I ask what the attitude of Russia is towards the Jews?"


"They have devised a formula for the minorities which they have applied to us too. Yiddish language is recognised in Russia as the medium of education for the Jews. They enjoy full citizenship rights. Russia is perhaps the only country where preaching of race hatred is penalised."


"Now suppose," asked Gandhi, "Russia absorbed all the Jews, would it solve your problem?"


"No more than the existing freedom of the Jews to settle down in the United States," replied the friends. "Whilst the Jews have made their contribution to humanity's progress wherever they have gone, it is not distinctive of the Jewish race. Practically half the world today is more or less influenced by the thought which the Jews sent forth when they were a nation in Palestine. Moreover Russia would not countenance a mass immigration of the Jews. On that issue its attitude is just like that of any other country."


"Then you mean to say you are not a nation but are trying to become one. What about the Arabs?"


"We are like an uprooted plant living a distorted existence. We want to regain what we have lost. The Arabs stand to lose nothing thereby. We can settle with the Arab population. There is no difference between the Arab labourer and the Jewish. The trouble is created by the Arab League and the seething politics of the Middle East."


Gandhi: "Then you want to convert the Arab majority into a minority?"


Messrs. Silverman and Honick admitted that the status of the Arabs was affected to that extent and injustice done to them. But they maintained that even if they lost their status in Palestine there would still be five independent kingdoms left which they can call their own and with the addition of Syria and Lebanon at no distant date there will be seven. But if we lose Palestine, we have nothing left to us. That is our plea. It means 5% of injustice to the Arabs to avoid a denial of all justice to the Jews."


"So the Arabs do stand to lose something?" 


"Something which they never had."


"Before the Jewish immigration into Palestine began in 1917?"


"Yes, but under Turkish rule."


"So you want the Arabs to sacrifice something which you want for yourself?"


"We only want them to make a little sacrifice so that justice might be done to the general situation."


"May I ask one thing," finally said Gandhi. "Cannot you control the hotheads?"


"We can," they replied, "and we did keep them under control. They would be again under control if we could tell them that the policy of establishing a national home for the Jews outlined in the Balfour declaration would be given effect to. You know how difficult it is to ask the youths to be calm and collected when five and three millions in Europe have been massacred."


"1 admit it is a very difficult and intricate situation," replied Gandhi. "But as I have already said, I have my limitations. I can only hope that a just solution may be found which will give satisfaction to the Jews. But after all our talk I am unable to revise the opinion I gave you in the beginning. You should see the Congress President and Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah too and try to gain their sympathy. Unless you can get the active support of the Muslims nothing is possible in a substantial way in India."


"It is well nigh impossible," they remarked.


"I do not minimise the difficulty," replied Gandhi, "but I won't say it is impossible."


"Would Mr. Jinnah listen? He won't."


"He may."


"Perhaps he may by the same token which he demands a Pakistan." 


"You can tell him that also," said Gandhi, and they all had a hearty laugh.


Pyarelal


Poona, March 8, 1946



Jews and Palestine, by Gandhi - From Harijan, July 21, 1946


Hitherto I have refrained practically from saying anything in public regarding the Jew-Arab controversy. I have done so for good reasons. That does not mean any want of interest in the question, but it does mean that I do not consider myself sufficiently equipped with knowledge for the purpose. For the some reason I have tried to evade many world events. Without airing my views on them, I have enough irons in the fire. But four lines of a newspaper column have done the trick and evoked a letter from a friend who has sent me a cutting which I would have missed but for the friend drawing my attention to it. It is true that I did say some such thing in the course of a long conversation with Mr. Louis Fischer on the subject. I do believe that the Jews have been cruelly wronged by the world. "Ghetto" is, so far as I am aware, the name given to Jewish locations in many parts of Europe. But for their heartless persecution, probably no question of return to Palestine would ever have arisen. The world should have been their home, if only for the sake of their distinguished contribution to it. 


But, in my opinion, they 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. Their citizenship of the world should have and would have made them honoured guests of any country. Their thrift, their varied talent, their great industry should have made them welcome anywhere. It is a blot on the Christian world that they have been singled out, owing to a wrong reading of the New Testament, for prejudice against them. "If an individual Jew does a wrong, the whole Jewish world is to blame for it." If an individual Jew like Einstein makes a great discovery or another composes unsurpassable music, the merit goes to the authors and not to the community to which they belong.


No wonder that my sympathy goes out to the Jews in their unenviably sad plight. But one would have thought adversity would teach them lessons of peace. Why should they depend upon 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? If they were to adopt the matchless weapon of non-violence whose use their best Prophets have taught and which Jesus the Jew who gladly wore the crown of thorns bequeathed to a groaning world, their case would be the world`s and I have no doubt that among the many things that the Jews have given to the world, this would be the best and the brightest. It is twice blessed. It will make them happy and rich in the true sense of the word and it will be a soothing balm to the aching world.


Panchagani, July 14, 1946



Message to the Arabs, by Gandhi - From The Hindu, May 1, 1947


The Jews are a persecuted people worthy of world sympathy and India sympathises with them. They are energetic, intelligent and progressive. The Arabs are a great people with a great history and therefore if they provide refuge for the Jews without the mediation of any nation, it will be in their tradition of generosity.



Interview to Reuter, by Gandhi - From Harijan, May 18, 1947 


What is the solution to the Palestine problem?


It has become a problem which is almost insoluble. If I were a Jew, I would tell them: "Don`t be so silly as to resort to terrorism, because you simply damage your own case which otherwise would be a proper case." If it is just political hankering then I think there is no value in it. Why should they hanker after Palestine? They are a great race and have great gifts. I have lived with the Jews many years in South Africa. If it is a religious longing then surely terrorism has no place. They should meet the Arabs, make friends with them, and not depend on British aid or American aid or any aid, save what descends from Jehovah.




Answer to Question by United Press of America, by Gandhi - From The Bombay Chronicle, June 2, 1947


What do you feel is the most acceptable solution to the Palestine problem?


The abandonment wholly by the Jews of terrorism and other forms of violence. 



Address delivered by Hayim Greenberg at a memorial meeting for Gandhi in New York, February 1, 1948


Millions of people in India believe in the transmigration of souls. It is not for me to judge what measure of truth such a belief contains. It is a belief that is characteristic of more than one religion, and is not entirely foreign to that religious civilisation in which I, as a Jew, was brought up. Gandhi believed in reincarnation, and more than once he was asked by some of his followers whose reincarnation he was. Who had been, so to speak, re-embodied in him. Some regarded him as the cyclic reincarnation of Buddha; others - in the Occident - were inclined to the view that the Nazarene had reappeared in his person. I should say that both were mistaken. If one must seek a prototype of Gandhi in the distant past, I should rather see in him the reincarnation of the Indian Emperor Asoka.


My knowledge of India is very inadequate, yet I am certain that in your great country there have been, and still are today men who, in a certain sense, deserve the title "saint" more than did Gandhi. Gandhi was not a sadhu, an ascetic who goes into retreat from the tumult of social life and lives in silent retirement, in prayer and in pure, undisturbed "contemplation", somewhere in the Himalayas. He did not follow the path of Buddha`s lonely individualism, and although the New Testament left a deep impression on him, his life was not an Imitatio Christi.


From a certain point of view, his spiritual physiognomy was more akin to the Jewish prophets than to Buddha or Jesus. His conscience revolted against that "cosmic snobbery" which places itself outside and above history, beyond the stream of social change. For saintliness too can be egoistic, devoid of responsibility, sinful. The saint who would live outside society, in a world of pure contemplation, in constant communion with transcendental truths, undisturbed by concrete sufferings of concrete human beings, by the fate of billions of fellow men, of nations, of races, arrogates to himself a privileged position, a luxury which is sinful in its essence. Though he live in state of poverty and chronic hunger like a Buddhist monk, though he be naked and barefoot and without shelter like a Franciscan in days of old - he is sinful simply by virtue of having built a huge pyramid and seated himself, with a carefree, mystical megalomania, on the sharp point of that pyramid. "Saintly" detachment from suffering - even from the most "common", "physiological" suffering of fellow-men and fellow-creatures - is a passive form of cruelty, something tantamount to sacrilege. That sin of indifference and aloofness, Gandhi sought always to avoid; he determined to be "less holy" than he would have wished to be or that he could have been. How often he must have longed for retirement, for solitary prayer, solitary meditation, and mystical experience. However, he never indulged in this "extravagance" for any lengthy period of time - at any rate, never at the expense of what he considered his duty and his debt to India.


Buddha possessed exaltation without loving-kindness - how can I compare him to Gandhi, in whose soul loving-kindness was the foremost drive? Jesus of Nazareth (insofar as we know him) was possessed by a stream of ecstatic vagrancy, which took as its pattern the "carefree" birds of the air and the lilies of the field - how can I compare to him Gandhi, the perpetual co-sufferer and co-martyr? For Buddha, "Caesar" simply did not exist. He withdrew so far into the lonely trails of the Himalayan altitudes that he became completely unaware of him. For the Nazarene, "Caesar" was a strongly entrenched and hated reality; he therefore decided to ignore him: Give unto Caesar what is Caesar`s (or what Caesar claims as his due), and let him leave you in peace, so that you may be "free" to live in the invisible Kingdom of Heaven. Gandhi did not ignore Caesar. He did not seek to "bribe" him or pay him a "ransom". His passionate aim was to destroy tyranny, to unseat Caesar from his throne - but with Gandhi`s own "un-Caesarian" weapons. Instead of being a sadhu, he became a social crusader.


I remarked earlier that if there really are reincarnations, Gandhi was more probably a reincarnation of Asoka, of that Indian Emperor who, three centuries before the Christian era, sought to embody his vision of the Kingdom of Heaven through historical realisation, in a new social creation, in legislation, in the framework of a state. That epoch in the history of India is - for me, at least - a very obscure chapter, and I do not know to what extent that sovereign-genius succeeded in clothing his dream in flesh and bones. Yet I know what Asoka aimed at: to establish a state in which there would be no contradiction between "the measure of law" and "the measure of mercy", to use Hebrew terms, where law itself would be suffused with mercy. Upon ahimsa, upon the three-thousand-year-old ideal which sprang up in a unique form in India, upon the principle of not-killing, not-injuring, not-causing-pain, upon the idea of an all-embracing loving-kindness, he sought to build up the constitution and the mechanism of the state. And it is in this "paradoxical" way that Gandhi also set out to make his life`s journey in our generation.


The tragedy of our age - and not of our age alone - is the thick wall which we ourselves have erected between the transcendental world and the process of history, between ends and means, between what some of us experience as eternal and the everyday stream of life, between religion, ethics and aesthetics on one hand, and politics (in the broadest sense of the word), on the other hand. It is that wall which Gandhi sought to destroy. He knew, perhaps more grievously than others in our generation, that that wall cannot entirely be removed. The absolute and the relative will never be able to merge and become one. He believed however, that everyday acts and deeds can be suffused with elements of the Absolute, and that it is impossible to live and bear a world in which holiness is a sort of remote and isolated "reservation" that is beyond contact with the broad highways of life.


Such a view is not foreign to Jewish religious tradition. Despite the long chronicle of suffering and humiliation in Jewish history, we have until now triumphed through our martyrdom. For two thousand years, Jews have practised ahimsa. Some call it "passive resistance", but in reality it has nothing to do with passivity or acquiescence. Jewish passive resistance against enemies and oppressors who were immeasurably stronger physically than we were, constituted activity in the highest degree: Self-concentration upon a truth; fixed determination not to renounce that truth, not to betray it for untruth (or what we regarded as untruth), not to capitulate even when we faced physical annihilation, the gallows, burning at the stake - all this is a far higher and more intense degree of vitality, of doing, battling and combatting, than the use of weapons and physical force.


The Jewish conception of Kiddush ha-Shem (sanctifying the Ineffable Name) signifies not merely readiness for sacrifice, for triumphant death. It is also an urge to keep life holy. Not to preserve sanctity shut away in a special tabernacle, to be opened only at intervals, and then sealed away once more, but to keep the source of sanctity always open, and let it shine forth into the everyday, penetrate the secular, imbue with its essence forces operating in history. What in Hindu religious feeling and in Gandhi`s religiosity is signified by Dharma corresponds to the code, the Shulkhan Arukh, in the Jewish way of life.


I shall not now assess to what extent Gandhi succeeded in his experiment. He had long-range vision and the patience of great faith. He planted seeds in the earth whose full fruit may perhaps be gathered generations later. But he gave the world - not only India - a demonstration of how to create a kind of "pipe-line" between the transcendental and the historical, how to fight for holy ends with means that are not in contradiction to the nature of the ends.


From the procession which yesterday followed his dead body to the shore of the sacred river, cries were heard: "Victory for Gandhi". The people of that million-headed mass who uttered those cries knew that a few hours later only a meagre heap of ashes would be left of Gandhi`s body. Yet they believe that "somewhere" he still lives, that his spirit is indestructible, and that that spirit will still achieve great triumphs - in us, through us, for us. 


Courtesy: Gandhi Serve Foundation

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