Peace should not be held as a goal, for peace is the means and the only path to the goal. That which cannot be accomplished through peace should not be pursued. If liberation and justice are the goals, violence will not build them, it will only destroy them. In other words, only peace can give birth to liberation and justice. In this context, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and people must end forthwith, and the Palestinian resort to terrorism as a method of struggle must also be forfeited forthwith.
In light of current events, it is essential to establish a clear context. Disconnecting a text from its context offers the perfect excuse for a dishonest pretext. Likewise, disconnecting a fact from its context creates the opportunity to teach dangerous calumnies. In 1936, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber wrote an extended letter to Mahatma Gandhi on the subject of Zionism and the Jewish right to return and resettle their ancestral homeland.
The Mahatma did not get a chance to respond, as sadly and woefully, he was assassinated not long after receipt of the letter. Gandhi has previously written that Jews should apply ahimsa and let themselves be slaughtered by the Nazis rather than self-defend by means of violence. It took a few years of witnessing the tragic horrors of the holocaust before Gandhi wrote of the “satanic fury” unleashed on Jews by the evil Nazis. For Buber, Gandhi remained a beloved guide and inspiration. Five years after the end of World War II and the slaughter of six million Jews, the Jewish State of Israel was established in what the colonial powers, since Rome through the Ottomans and British, have named Palestine. In the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) and the Christian Bible (the New Testament), the land of Moses, the Prophets and Christ, was variously known as Canaan, kingdom of Judea and kingdom of Israel.
Buber had argued throughout the entire war and beyond that rather than establishing an ethnic Jewish state, the whole of Palestine should become a joint secular and democratic bi-national republic of Jews and Arabs. At the time, not many Jews or Arabs subscribed to that idea, and the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, was approved by a United Nations resolution in 1947.
India and Pakistan became a model for how to attempt to resolve in practical terms two distinct and uncompromising adversarial national claims. The Jewish government at the time accepted the UN partition resolution, but the Arab side rejected it and war ensued. After the 1948 “war of independence” ended, what the Palestinians refer to as “the nakbha,” the armistice lines stayed in place until 1967. As a result of the war, a large number of Palestinians became refugees and still are until the present times.
After so many wars, can there finally be a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian people? A large number of Arab and Muslim nations have already made peace with Israel and more seem to be heading in that direction. But this is of the essence to understand—in 1996, Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was recognised by the UN as the one legitimate representative of the Palestinian People, signed a peace treaty with Israel. The PLO recognised the state of Israel. At that time, the hope for a Palestinian state alongside Israel was revived and celebrated by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians. However, after Arafat’s demise, the PLO was challenged by a new Palestinian radical Islamist organization. That was the birth of Hamas and their takeover of the Gaza Strip away from the PLO’s rule. Hamas inscribed in its foundational charter that Palestine is Muslim land and therefore no Jewish state can or will be allowed to exist. Hamas refused to sign on to the PLO’s peace agreement with Israel and has continued since to engage in armed attacks and other acts of terrorism. The Hamas government in Gaza draws its power mainly from the support of other radical Muslim sources, primarily Iran.
The terrorist attack of Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, should not be seen as a continuation of the struggle of dissident factions within the Palestinian people against the state of Israel, for the scope of Hamas's terrorist incursion into Israel was a radical departure of the norms of conflict and resistance.
The Palestinian people are rightfully frustrated, angry and suffering, and their hope for independence seems farther away every day. There is indeed a right to resist, but there is no right to rape women, kidnap elderly ladies, kill a mother, father and their three little children, shoot at a crowd of dancing concertgoers and take babies as hostages.
There is no right to murder 1,000 civilians in civilian towns and venues. That was the ISIS war machine, never the Palestinian. Of course, Israel’s violent repression of Palestinians in the occupied territories is likewise reprehensible, but after October 7, the moral equivalence has been shattered.
From Mahatma Gandhi, we learned that never should a crime against humanity be considered a tool of resistance. Always and forever we must distinguish between a particular cause and the methods it utilises—whatever the cause might be, whatever the grievances against another country, party or institution, the way of fighting determines whether the fighter is right or wrong, whether the fighter is a true resistor or a practising Fascist. Hamas is wrong, and after October 7, its continued existence is a victory for Fascism everywhere.
Those of us who support the cause of peace, that is, two states for two peoples, must support the vanquishing of Hamas, its financiers and suppliers. And at the other side of the border, those of us who yearn for peace and democracy must hasten the end of the right-wing, fundamentalist and messianic government of Israel.
National liberation and terrorism are irreconcilable opposites. Those struggling for revolution must uphold revolutionary values during the struggle as they would after victory. Terrorism is the weapon of choice of Fascism and of pseudo-religious fundamentalism. In short, terrorism is the sworn enemy of national liberation, decolonisation and revolution.
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Those of us who support the rights of the Palestinian people to a sovereign nation of their own, and wish that nation to be established alongside the sovereign nation of Israel, must unequivocally condemn and loathe the latest round of terrorist murders and kidnappings of civilians inflicted by Hamas on the people of southern Israel. May peace prevail now and forever.
