Rajmohan Gandhi Calls For Justice and Patience in Palestine and Israel
by: Dave Belden on April 8th, 2010 | 8 Comments »
One of Mahatma Gandhi’s grandsons, and his recent biographer, visits the West Bank:
Dr Mustafa Barghouthi gave Prof Rajmohan Gandhi a tour of the West Bank city of Hebron. (Photo: Lazar Simeonov)
‘The range of Palestinian non-violent activity against occupation,’ said Prof Gandhi, is also ‘larger, and richer in creativity, than I had imagined. The work being done by Palestinians for strengthening civil society – through educational and public health programs – is also much stronger than I had realized. ‘Many Palestinians I have met seem to hold both weapons in their hands – in one hand the weapon of non-violent resistance and in the other the weapon of constructive work.’
Then on to Israel. “The recovery after the Holocaust of the Jewish people,” Prof. Gandhi told the Israeli President Shimon Peres, “is one of the noblest, most stirring chapters in the story of humankind. I pray for another chapter in this story, a chapter where justice is provided to the Palestinians.”
Gandhi is an author, whose biography of his grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi, was recently reviewed in Tikkun by Michael Nagler, and a professor at the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has had a long association with the movement I was raised in (and for which I volunteered in India for six months before going to college, when Gandhi was directing the movement there). It is currently called Initiatives of Change. Gandhi is now president of its international organization, and is currently leading a world tour promoting dialogue: latest stop, Palestine and Israel.
Dr Mustafa Barghouthi of the Palestinian National Initiative, which views itself as a “democratic third force” in Palestinian politics, hosted Gandhi and his group in the West Bank.
At a packed public meeting in Ramallah, to which people came from many parts of the West Bank, Prof Gandhi spoke of his grandfather’s strategies and of one of the Mahatma’s closest colleagues Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan who had said that the word that appears in the Qur’an more often than almost any other is ‘patience’.
Prof Gandhi offered his audience a few ‘suggestions’. ‘Firstly, be patient. Second, never give up your faith in victory. The Soviet Union crumbled, apartheid in South Africa crumbled, the occupation of Palestine will also crumble. Then also, be appreciative of one another. Instead of blaming a colleague for what is not done, appreciate what is done. Live to make the other person great. Then your team will become stronger, your cause will prosper, and your greatness will also be seen. But if your concern is to make yourself great, your team will weaken.
‘Fourth, continue the constructive work. Build the Palestinian home. Make everything you do of the highest quality. Fifth, continue to laugh amidst hardship. Next, enlarge the nonviolent struggle. And lastly, strengthen the friendship and partnership of Palestine’s Muslims and Christians. Let Palestine become an example of a country where the rights of all minorities are fully respected.’
But this was not a one sided approach, as the quote from his comments to Peres indicates. And this:
Prof Gandhi paid tribute to ‘the many in Israel, and the many Americans of Jewish origin, who fight for Palestinian rights’.
‘On Easter Sunday, I had the amazing privilege of being in two sacred places, the place of worship in Hebron at the grave of Abraham, and the place of worship in Bethlehem where Jesus was born. In both places I prayed silently for two things: for the liberation of Palestine and for the well-being of my Jewish friends in Israel and in the USA.’
It was a great pleasure for me to read this report. I haven’t kept up with Gandhi’s views in recent years. The call for non-violence and patience, the empathy for both sides, the advice to resist blaming one’s colleagues and to “Live to make the other person great,” was all very familiar to me from the movement as a whole. But the degree of emphasis on justice was new, at least to my understanding of Initiatives of Change, and a most welcome balancing message. Apology, forgiveness and a determination to treat each other better: those were always the themes, rather than justice. I have been critical of the movement on this issue, most recently on this blog here. One of my lifelong desires, not that I have been good at doing much about it, has been to see the Left’s passion for justice be informed adequately by spiritual and personal transformation practices. It looks as if my natal movement, that I left a long time ago, has been traveling towards the same goal.
Thank you for this wonderful post, Dave. I love the idea of “weapons” of non-violence and constructive work. Too many people think that non-violence means passiveness, simply accepting what is. Not true. Nonviolence is an active reaction to violence and oppression, more powerful in the long run than violence. But, as Gandhi said, you have to be patient — plus, you have to be willing to face violence from those who oppose you, even death. That’s the part that so many people are afraid to accept.
“”The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.”-Mohandas K. Gandhi 1945.
His grandson has nothing to say that needs hearing.
I was not familiar with the quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi above. It is true that Gandhi advocated self-sacrifice, but the readers who are revolted by that suggestion, and there are many, never take the context into account. The context was that resistance to Hitler was so late in coming that the dictator thought he was invincible and could perpetrate any horrors, with millions chipping in. In other words, the Jews no longer had a choice between violent and nonviolent resistance. They could not offer the former because they were utterly helpless to do so (though in various pockets of Europe they did eventually fight back, with great courage) and they could not offer the latter b/c they had never heard of it. So given the options open to them at that time the only choice they had was to run about in fear trying vainly to escape or to meet death bravely. OF THOSE TWO CHOICES Gandhi advocated the latter. The quote still seems like a great exaggeration to me (I will look it up when I get a chance), but even if accurate it is perfectly understandable under the circumstances.
I want to tell Messy that my grandmother — whom I loved dearly — was racist. My mother taught me the right things about race, namely that we should all have the same opportunities, but when I brought home my first black boyfriend, she freaked out. And one of the things I have been involved in anti-racist work. So, even if Mohandas Gandhi’s quote were to be taken at face value — which Michael’s contextualizing seems to undermine — I don’t think you can assume that his grandson has the same perspective as he did. In fact, his quoted words above seem to indicate that he doesn’t have the same perspective as the quote you cite.
And Dave, I love these healing words that you’ve allowed us to witness.
And Craig, I agree with what you say, but I have difficulty with the word “weapon.” We need to change our vocabulary to reflect our non-violence.
thanks for this posting–we need all the reminders we can get that non-violence is the most loving & constantly available choice we can make, whether in words or actions.
During one of my 7 trips to Israel Palestine since 2005, I visited Jenin camp and met with underground Fatah. I was given a copy the Palestinian Liberation Movement’s new logo that replaced the former.
The first depicted two hands holding two guns; to two hands-with one hand holding one gun and the other hand holding an olive branch in memory of Arafat’s pledge at the UN, “Don’t let me drop this olive branch, don’t let me drop this olive branch, don’t let me drop this olive branch!”
“The Long Winding Way to My Interview with Members of the Underground Fatah Resistance Movement” @
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=589&Itemid=169
Non violence has to be across the board. It also has to have real meaning. Israel has been hunkered down since their inception. The violence of every attack on Israel throughout those years tells the story and sets up the narrative. A few acts of non violence in a sea of violence simply cannot be heard. When every bomb stops. When palestinians schools stop teaching hatred. When terrorists behave like good people. When every Arab nation acknowledges Israel’s right to exist and when the Muslim religion itself is no longer interpretated for death to the infidels. Then peace can occur.
You ask for justice from Israel. The palestinians have been unjustly treated by their Arab brothers who kicked them out of their countries leaving them to fend for themselves. It is a known fact that palestinians are far safer under Israeli occupation then under their own self rule because of the corruption and brutality of their leaders. People try and make believe they know what is best for the palestinians imposing their own system of justice upon them from outside without really taking into account the entire situation. Without these wars there is no palestinian problem only people living together peacefully. It is the formetting of war and hatred that feeds this situation. The land is Israel’s from long ago and now that Israel has the capability of defending itself it will do so despite those who believe they can impose their own vision on a people whose vision has been from long ago. Modern theories of fairness are doomed by the naivete of their proponents who never really can understand the Jewish people. This is the case especially with Jews who try to be just a little bit Jewish or fashionably Jewish but end up becoming so assimilated trying to be this or that or to appeal to this religion or that religion they have lost the essence of Judaism. That essence is Israel, whole, undivided and in the coming days expanding…
THOSE WITH HONOR WILL SPEAK OUT NOW AGAINST THE FASCIST
DRIVE FOR WAR WITH IRAN.
The stink from chairman Ron Lauder’s American Jewish
Congress ad promoting war with Iran does not emanate from his
being a perfume mogul.
It is the moral stench. The American Jewish Congress
has a NAME — they fought fascism in the 1930s. My father, Jacob
Chaitkin, was the legal counsel for their boycott against Nazi
Germany, a fight against terrific odds.
This Likud moneybag Lauder puts that good old NAME
at the service of an outright fascist drive for war.
Those who have a sense of the shame of it, will speak out
plainly now.
Anton Chaitkin
History Editor for Lyndon LaRouche’s magazine, Executive Intelligence Review