Dear
Readers,
These columns began on my area of America Online, called: Judaism
Today: Where Do I Fit? People anonymously
sent me E-Mail, and I began to choose one for a public response
in my Jewish E-Mail of the Week column. The column has become
quite popular and is now syndicated internationally in many
Jewish papers and websites. I hope you find they help you
as you think about the Ethics, Spirituality and Peoplehood
components of the Jewish way of Life. I welcome your
comments... see the end of the column.
Gil
PS
Teachers and others, feel free to copy my columns and forward
them or use them as you see fit. Please see the friendly
copyright notice at the end. |
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IF
MAHATMA GANDHI LED THE PALESTINIANS
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Dear
Gil:
I
had but one lingering thought
concerning your column about your
recent trip to Israel. You indicated
that had the Palestinians been led by
the Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther
King, they would probably have a state
by now.
While
I am Jewish and long for the peace of
Jerusalem, and pray for that daily, I
need to ask you to flesh out that one
sentence. I understand the nonviolence
approach in that I have practiced it
myself upon occasion in the sixties
vs. the Viet Nam war in this country
(USA). However while I in no way can
condone the violence, I try to see the
Palestinian point of view that you
describe in your article when you
quoted General Moshe Dayan that
"Israel won't know peace so long
as Palestinian refugees look over the
fences and see us plowing fields that
once were theirs." Surely the
amount of time that has elapsed since
1948, some 50 years, is a long time to
wait even for Gandhi, No?
L
Dear
L:
Yes,
this is indeed a long time and I am
still waiting to hear serious and
consistent voices of leadership within
the Palestinian world that will speak
honestly of peace and coexistence. It
is easy to identify those voices in
the Jewish and Israeli world. How I
would love to see in the Arab world a
large and vocal equivalent to the
Israeli Peace Now movement.
Instead,
what has been easy to find for the
last 50 years in the Arab world right
up to the present, are voices and mobs
screaming for Jewish blood. For
example, "We will fight until the
end. No more negotiations. Just give
us our guns." This, recently
broadcast from the "Voice of
Palestine" radio station
controlled by Arafat. An article from
the October 25th USA Today gave
example after example of verbatim
broadcasts like this filled with hate
and violent propaganda.
How
about this peace loving gem spewed
forth on Palestinian TV in October:
"Oh brother believers, the
criminals, the terrorists -- are the
Jews . . . They are the ones who must
be butchered and killed, as Allah the
Almighty said: Fight them: Allah will
torture them at your hands . .
.'" While he was at it, the
speaker, Sheik Ahmad Abu Halabiya,
said Christians and Americans should
be killed too.
Not
exactly Mahatma Gandhi's call for
nonviolent protests! The hatred and
incitement that is broadcast on the
airwaves by the Palestinians is also
taught to young children in their
schools, textbooks, children's TV
shows and camps. There are many
vicious examples, but to cite just
one, the New York Times in a front
page August report described that
Arafat had more than 25,000 children
in his "summer camps." In
these special military training camps,
kids were trained in the
"art" of kidnapping,
ambushing and the use of assault
weapons. How wholesome!
Contrast
this with the words of Martin Luther
King, who spoke of having a dream that
"little black boys and black
girls will be able to join hands with
little white boys and white girls and
walk together as sisters and
brothers."
Martin
Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi would
never encourage adults or God forbid,
young children and teens to violence!
I am not saying that all Palestinian
are violent and against peace. What I
am saying is that their leadership
feeds them a steady diet of hate and
calls for jihad...holy war. How
different things would be if their
leadership preached nonviolence.
However,
the Palestinians don't need a Martin
Luther King or Gandhi as a leader,
they simply need a voice of reason. A
leader who realizes that Israel will
not disappear. A leader who
understands that if the Palestinians
are to have a state of their own,
negotiations and compromise are the
only alternative.
But
unfortunately, as George Will wrote in
the Washington Post on October 22,
"Israel's government desperately
wants to end the conflict; the
Palestinian Authority fiercely wants
to win it" The Palestinians have
consistently demonstrate their
unwillingness to end the conflict.
Will points out that in the last 50+
years, Palestinian leadership has
sided with war mongering, evil
dictatorships: first Hitler, then the
communist regime in the former USSR
and now Saddam Hussein. This is not
the road to peace, coexistence or
statehood...a tragedy for all
involved...especially the
Palestinians.
So
here we are 50 years after the
establishment of the state of Israel
-- "el nakba"--"the
catastrophe" as the Palestinians
call it and they continue to suffer.
Their suffering is painful for me to
watch but sadly will not end until
they develop brave leadership like the
late Anwar Sadat of Egypt or King
Hussein of Jordan. These leaders
realized that Israel was their
neighbor and that peace with her must
be pursued and pursued peacefully. The
fact that Yasser Arafat will not model
himself after those courageous leaders
is truly a catastrophe for his people
and a great misfortune for everybody
else in the region as well.
Gil
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© Copyright Gil Mann
These columns can be found at www.beingjewish.org. Not
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