Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Gandhi, Buber and the Politics of Palestine

The New York Times has an interesting but minimally informed piece this morning on Gandhi’s advice concerning the Jewish settlement, and ultimate seizure, of Palestine. It brings up the Indian sage’s exchange of views with Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher and educator who fled Germany in the 30s and became an advocate for the kibbutz as a model of social and spiritual development. Buber was undoubtedly right that nonviolent resistance was an absurd strategy against the Third Reich. This was an enemy that openly embraced force and terror; there was no “soul” to appeal to.

I will leave it to others to complain about the way the article passes over the long history of nonviolent resistance in the occupied territories. What I missed was the great flash of insight that, if my memory is correct, jumps off the page toward the end of Buber’s Paths in Utopia. (I don’t have my copy with me.) After extolling the kibbutz as a model of egalitarian economic and community life fit for human regeneration in a dark time, Buber emphasizes that “inside” and “outside” social relations are inextricably linked. It will be impossible, he says, for Jews to retain the liberatory aspects of their social order if their relationship with Arabs is one of domination and exclusion. You can’t practice mutuality in one direction and exploitation in another: the psychological wall crumbles. This follows immediately, of course, from the point of view he expressed in I and Thou (Ich und Du), which insists on the universality of all truly engaged human interactions.

Buber endorsed a binational state because, for him, not only social justice, but also a community in full consciousness, was indivisible.

7 comments:

Jimbo said...

I was raised traditionally RC but even as a teenager was alienated by the misogynistic, authoritarian nature of the Church hierarchy. I grew up in a predominantly Jewish section of Pittsburgh and so, in any event, was exposed to other viewpoints. In college, I encountered Martin Buber among other philosophers and his humanism and ability to connect philosophy to the human condition was so perfect. I didn't know about his connection to the kibbutz movement and his view about Israel though it fits. His philosophy is more relevant than ever today.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Peter,

So, while I agree with the general sentiment here and have always admired Buber, I have a question for you, being a bit historically fussy, as it were. When you use the term "Occupied Palestine," which of the following are you including in that?

1) the area from the Jordan River to the widely recognized legal boundary of Israel, known in most media as the "West Bank," labeled "Judea and Samaria" by religious Zionists, and as "Cisjordan" during periods of the British Mandate of Palestine.

2) Gaza, which was the core of the Biblical "Philistia," or "Pelesht" in Hebrew, or "p-r-s-t" in the ancient Egyptian, with its population supposedly the "Sea Peoples," thought to speak an Indo-European language, although today its inhabitants speak Arabic and call themselves "Filistineen," which is now the Arabic word for what in English are called "Palestinians."

3) That portion of the generally legally accepted state of Israel that would not have been a part of Israel if the Arabs had accepted the 1947 UN Resolution to create two states out of the portion of the British Mandate of Palestine west of the Jordan River, the part east of it becoming the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

4) The portion of Israel that would have been in Israel under the 1947 UN Partition.

As a final note I observe that the word "Palestine" was first used by Herodotus, and the Romans extended the territory it covered in the second century CE to cover what had been the Province of Judea, but became the "Province of Palestine." This name continued to be generally used, with fluctuating borders until the Crusaders called it the "Kingdom of Jerusalem." Under the Ottomans after 1516 the name "Palestine" formally disappeared, and 100 years ago most of it was officially the Sanjak of Jerusalem within the Province of Syria of the Ottoman Empire.

The British would take it in WW I, establishing the Mandate of Palestine in 1922, after having made promises both to establish a "Jewish Homeland" there in the Balfour Declaration, while also as part of the activities of Lawrence of Arabia making promises in the MacMahon Correspondence to the Hashemites, then tne local rulers of the Province of Mecca so as to pull them away from the Turks in the Arab Revolt, that the British would make no decision about the territory without consulting with the Hashemites, who would later be given the kingdoms of Jordan and Iraq (overthrown there in 1958), after they were kicked out of Mecca by Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdul Rahman ibn Faisal al Sa'ud in 1924, who founded the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Peter,

So, while I agree with the general sentiment here and have always admired Buber, I have a question for you, being a bit historically fussy, as it were. When you use the term "Occupied Palestine," which of the following are you including in that?

1) the area from the Jordan River to the widely recognized legal boundary of Israel, known in most media as the "West Bank," labeled "Judea and Samaria" by religious Zionists, and as "Cisjordan" during periods of the British Mandate of Palestine.

2) Gaza, which was the core of the Biblical "Philistia," or "Pelesht" in Hebrew, or "p-r-s-t" in the ancient Egyptian, with its population supposedly the "Sea Peoples," thought to speak an Indo-European language, although today its inhabitants speak Arabic and call themselves "Filistineen," which is now the Arabic word for what in English are called "Palestinians."

3) That portion of the generally legally accepted state of Israel that would not have been a part of Israel if the Arabs had accepted the 1947 UN Resolution to create two states out of the portion of the British Mandate of Palestine west of the Jordan River, the part east of it becoming the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

4) The portion of Israel that would have been in Israel under the 1947 UN Partition.

As a final note I observe that the word "Palestine" was first used by Herodotus, and the Romans extended the territory it covered in the second century CE to cover what had been the Province of Judea, but became the "Province of Palestine." This name continued to be generally used, with fluctuating borders until the Crusaders called it the "Kingdom of Jerusalem." Under the Ottomans after 1516 the name "Palestine" formally disappeared, and 100 years ago most of it was officially the Sanjak of Jerusalem within the Province of Syria of the Ottoman Empire.

The British would take it in WW I, establishing the Mandate of Palestine in 1922, after having made promises both to establish a "Jewish Homeland" there in the Balfour Declaration, while also as part of the activities of Lawrence of Arabia making promises in the MacMahon Correspondence to the Hashemites, then tne local rulers of the Province of Mecca so as to pull them away from the Turks in the Arab Revolt, that the British would make no decision about the territory without consulting with the Hashemites, who would later be given the kingdoms of Jordan and Iraq (overthrown there in 1958), after they were kicked out of Mecca by Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdul Rahman ibn Faisal al Sa'ud in 1924, who founded the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

I apologize for the repeat, due to a weird glitch. The question is triggered by old discussions with a friend from Madison who has recently turned up. He did not know you, Peter, but did know a "Phil Dorman." Any relation?

Peter Dorman said...

Barkley,

To begin with, I have to admit I am not very knowledgeable about this history. I'm sure there have been many population shifts over the centuries, but I don't what they were.

With that out of the way, I can still get up on my soapbox and say that nationalist conceptions of people and territory are recent and of necessity over-simplifying. There is an inherent arbitrariness to all nations, and the correspondence between "nation" and "people" has always been achieved only by systematic ethnic cleansing. If there is an exception to this principle, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

This means I would not look to the history of settlement to justify one or another map of "true" nationhood.

Meanwhile, FWIW, I just finished writing an official UN document that uses the term "Occupied Arab Territories" for the West Bank and Gaza. This is the required lingo. "Palestinian" can be used to describe ethnicity, but "Palestine" as a territory is too contested.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Peter,

Thanks for the clarification. Presumably these officially designated "Occupied Arab Territories" consist of items 1) and 2) on my list.

It should be noted that there was a third part of the Mandate of Palestine, territory east of the Jordan River, the "Transjordan," which became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in the late 1940s, with President Truman recognizing the independence of Israel and Jordan simultaneously on the same day in 1948. During the 1948 war, Jordan took control of the former Cisjordan, up to the ceasefire line that became the widely accepted legal boundary of Israel, and formally annexed it, although this was barely reocgnized by any other nation at all.

Nevertheless, even today, it is Jordan that cares for the Islamic holy places, the Dome of the Rock and the al Aqsa Mosque (in front of whose entrance the first king of Jordan was assassinated by a Palestinian nationalist in 1951), in what they call the "Haram es Sharif" (sacred quarter), and the Israelis and most Americans call the "Temple Mount," whose lower western side is the Western ("Wailing") Wall, within the southeastern quarter, known as the "Jewish Quarter," of the Old City of Jersusalem, within what is generally called "East Jerusalem," and which the Israelis formally annexed after the 1967 war, although that has not been recognized by any nation so far, to the best of my knowledge, this being one of most difficult flashpoints of disagreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians in their ultimate negotiations over boundaries for any possible two-state solution.

Jimbo said...

Normally, Haram es Sherif is translated as "noble sanctuary", haram having a sequestered, even forbidden, connotation, as is well known."Quarter" is not a correct translation.

That said, the Filistinia peoples who are not (now) tribally homogeneous co-existed with the Israelis before the Diaspora and then during the late Ottoman Era. So a lot of the erudite discussion about borders essentially misses the point that, until the Balfour Declaration era and even well after there really haven't been borders and the illegal Israeli settlements simply reinforcement the centuries old lack of borders and de facto economic integration, including all the smuggling from Sinai (oh and hello, the Bedouin).