The Right Thing To Do
Sir,

I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to Palestine. It was the right thing to do. I've heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I was a small child. I've visited the memorials in Washington, DC and Jerusalem dedicated to Jewish lives lost and I've cried at the recognition to what level of atrocity mankind is capable of sinking. Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be held against the survivors of Hitler's holocaust. These fragments of humanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personal survival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a co-religionist of the victims of the European Holocaust does not grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of humanity. "Never again" as a motto, rings hollow when it means "never again to us alone."

My generation was raised being led to believe that the biblical land was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverished palestinians living
with their camels and eking out a living in the sand. The arrival of the Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit to these desert dwellers. Golda Mier even assured us that there "is no Palestinian problem."

We know now this picture wasn't as it was painted. Palestine was a land filed with people who called it home. There were thriving towns and villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews,Christians and Muslims.

In fact, prior to the occupation, Jews represented a mere 7 percent of the population and owned 3 percent of the land. Taking the blinders off for a moment, I see a second atrocity perpetuated by the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive to the suffering of others. These people knew what it felt like to be ordered out of your home at gun point and forced to march into the night to unknown destinations or face execution on the spot. The people who displaced the Palestinians knew first hand what it means to watch your home in flames, to surrender everything dear to your heart at a moment's notice. Bulldozers levelled hundreds of villages, along with the remains of the village inhabitants, the old and the young. This was nothing new to the world.

Poland is a vast graveyard of the Jews of Europe. Israel is the final resting place of the massacred Palestinian people. A short distance from the memorial to the Jewish children lost to the holocaust in Europe there is a levelled parking lot. Under this parking lot is what's left of a once flourishing village and the bodies of men, women and children whose only crime was taking up needed space and not leaving graciously. This particular burial marker reads:"Public Parking". I've talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian who hasn't lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor a Palestinian who cannot name a relative or friend languishing under inhumane conditions in an Israeli prison. Time and time again, Israel is cited for human rights violations to no avail. On a recent trip to israel, I visited the refugee camps inhabited by a people who have waited 52 years in these 'temporary' camps to go home. Every Palestinian grandparent can tell you the name of their village, their street, and where the olive trees were planted.

Their grandchildren may never have been home, but they can tell you where their great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well stood.

The press has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian terrorist. But, the victims who rose up against human indignity in the Warsaw Ghetto are called heroes. Those who lost their lives are called martyrs. The Palestinian who tosses a rock in desperation is a terrorist. Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricate sprinkler systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers in their new condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire in the midst of a Palestinian community where there was not adequate water to drink and the surrounding fields were sandy and dry. University professor Moshe Zimmerman reported in the Jerusalem Post (April 30, 1995), "The [Jewish] children of Hebron are just like Hitler's youth."

We Jews are suing for restitution, lost wages, compensation for homes, land, slave labour and back wages in Europe. Am I a traitor of a Jew for supporting the right of return of the palestinian refugees to their birthplace and compensation for what was taken that cannot be returned?

The Jewish dead cannot be brought back to life and neither can the Palestinian massacred be resurrected. David Ben Gurion said, "Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves...politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves...The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country..." Palestine is a land that has been occupied and emptied of its people.

It's cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated and replaced by tidy Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the first thing eradicated by the occupiers. The history of the indigenous people (only 52 years old) has been all but eradicated as though they never existed. And all this has been hailed by the world as a miraculous act of God.
We must recognise that Israel's existence is not even a question of legality so much as it is an illegal fait accompli realised through the use of force while supported by the Western powers. The UN missions directed at Israel in attempting to correct its violations of have thus far been futile.

In Hertzl's "The Jewish State," the father of Zionism said, "...We must investigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means of every modern expedient." I guess I agree with Ehud Barak (3 June 1998) when he said,"If I were a Palestinian, I'd also join a terror group." I'd go a step further perhaps.

Rather than throwing little stones in desperation, I'd hurtle a boulder. Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows that this was no war; that this was not G-d's restitution of the holy land to it's rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was and continues to be perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn't come up with the arms and money to defend themselves against the western powers bent upon their demise as a people.

We cannot continue to say, "But what were we to do?" Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. I wholly support the rally of the right of return of the Palestinian people.
Judith Stone
Meadowrock1@aol.com 7th November 2000
Judith Stone was raised as an American Zionist and travelled to Israel several times in her early years. She was born of a Jewish Russian immigrant father, whose own parents were murdered attempting to flee the pogroms in Eastern Europe, leaving six orphaned children. She “abhors the stupidity of our species, in that we never seem to learn the lessons of history. Given the chance, we will repeat, ad nuaseam, the same errors that ruined individual lives and were the downfall of societies throughout history.”

Prophetic Words

Prophetic words from Mahatma Gandhi in 1938, that were forwarded to us by Ghassan F. Nimry

“Palestine belongs to Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France belongs to the French. It is wrong and in-human to impose the Jews on the Arabs...Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home." 
Several letters have been received by me asking me to declare my views about the Arab-Jew question in Palestine and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. It is not without hesitation that I venture to offer my views on this very difficult question. 
My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions.

Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invokes 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 such 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 Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France belongs to the French. It is wrong and in human to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. 

The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colourable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews. 
But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone. And he is doing it with religious zeal. For he is propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism in the name of which any inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded here and hereafter. The crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth is being visited upon his whole race with unbelievable ferocity. If there ever could be 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 any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism does not hamper it. 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 and 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 as 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 and inner strength and joy, which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even of 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 the 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 God fearing, 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 pint 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 the 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 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. 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 could be in the twinkling of an eye could 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 as against those who are today dragging, however unknowingly the German name in to the mine. 

And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it the wrong way. The Palestine of the biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or, the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs.

They should seek to convert the Arab heart. The same God rules the Arab heart who rules the Jewish heart. They can offer satyagraha in front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them. They will find the world opinion in their favour in their religious aspiration. There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them.

I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non- violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable 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 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? etc. Given the will, the Jew can refuse to be treated as the outcaste of the West, to be despised or 

They can add to their many contributions the surpassing contribution of non-violent action.

Mahatma Ghandi November 20th 1938