This post's title comes from a wonderful article by Israeli Nobel Peace Prize candidate Jeff Halper. He proposes a thought-provoking analogy between Gandhi's non-cooperation movement in colonial India and the Palestinian people's election of the non-cooperating Hamas.
According to my Internet search, only a single newspaper in the world -- The Toronto Star -- has dared to publish this article.
2 comments:
There are clear parallels between the situation in Israel+The Occupied Territories and South Africa+Imperial India where Gandhi was active. There are also important differences.
However the article begs the question of what the substantial difference is between Gandhi's movement and the political leadership of the Palestinians. The answer is pretty obvious. While Gandhi pursued a policy of non-violence this has not been the case for the Palestinian struggle and certainly not for Hamas. You can see this as a difference of tactics or you can see it is a difference of principle, but either way it appears to the outside observer that it's not working very well for the Palestinians.
The strength of the Gandhi tactics was that it enabled him to occupy the moral high ground. Although his followers clearly suffered in the campaigns they were (at least in India) successful in the end. It is tough ask a people to take on them the burden of being non-violent in the face of violence, and yet it appears that the Palestinian policy of meeting violence with violence has resulted in a lot of suffering for their people, perhaps even more than the nonviolent approach would have. This includes the ill-advised war of 1967, the consequences of which are still with us.
I really like ur blog and I had the chance to read a lot of it...
and maybe borrowed an articled from it lol!
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