"Co-operation with forces of Good and non-co-operation with forces of Evil are the two things we need"
The Conflict between Israel and Palestinians has thrust the world into a deep divide. How to fight Evil is a question both sides ask. It is one to which Gandhi had a simple but powerful answer.
Following the attack of Hamas fighters on Israel the spiral of violence continues to spin. How hard it may be to control it got highlighted during a heated-up interview of an Israeli Member of Parliament with RT Television. The MK threatened Russia, a Nuclear Power, with retaliation.
“But the truly noble know all men as one,
And return with gladness good for evil done.”
— Shamal Bhatt, qouted by Mahatma Gandhi, ‘An Autobiography’
The “Nuclear Holocaust” was a real danger in what has become known as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, even though the term itself became prominent not until 1979 and the Report to the President by the Commission on the Holocaust. Under the leadership of Elie Wiesel the commission presented its recommendations on how to remember the Holocaust. Remembering was considered “an act of generosity, aimed at saving men and women from apathy to evil, if not from evil itself.”
The task of what to do in the event of apparent danger of such evil was not answered by the Commission. It was not requested to do that. Maybe, because such a guidance had already been given 17 years earlier by then President John F. Kennedy, who resisted his Joint Chiefs of Staff’s recommendations to fight the evil of a nuclear threat with the same evil and launch a nuclear strike first.
President Kennedy was assassinated one year later, and even members of his family have said publicly that they reject the official narrative that JFK was killed by a lone gunman. Instead, as Devil’s Chessboard-Author David Talbot suggests, President Kennedy was killed by the CIA, a.k.a “The Deep State”, because Kennedy had repeatedly made it clear that he was ending the war against Vietnam, the Cold War, and the nuclear arms race and was committed to pursue the goal of “general and complete disarmament” and “peace for all time”. Death as punishment for Love of Peace had been a fate which was shared between Kennedy and another great lover of peace, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Mahatma.
Gandhi became the iconic leader of India’s quest for independence from the British Empire. As many know, non-violence became the key for success to “India's freedom struggle against the brute weapons of the British.” Less well known is the fact that Gandhi’s peacefulness was, according to his own words, strongly influenced by The New Testament, “especially the Sermon on the Mount which went straight to my heart.”
Ghandi, however, did not become a Christian. In fact he was deeply critical of “Western Christianity, which he considered “ (…) in its practical working a negation of Christ's Christianity.”
“I cannot conceive Jesus, if he was living in the flesh in our midst, approving of modern Christian organizations, public worship or modern ministry. If Indian Christians will simply cling to The Sermon on the Mount, which was delivered not merely to the peaceful disciples but a groaning world, they would not go wrong, and they would find that no religion is false, and that if they act according to their lights and in the fear of God, they would not need to worry about organizations, forms of worship and ministry. The Pharisees had all that, but Jesus would have none of it, for they were using their office as a cloak for hypocrisy and worse. Co-operation with forces of Good and non-co-operation with forces of Evil are the two things we need for a good and pure life, whether it is called Hindu, Muslim or Christian.”
— Mahatma Gandhi, Complete Works, Vol 21., p. 169
According to P.T. Subrahmanyan, Gandhi found “that, the west ignored the message of the Sermon, and the message of the Sermon has suffered distortion in the West” whilst “it was Gandhi who unearthed the Sermon and showed its practical relevance in relation to the world affairs such as conflict-resolution and peace building.” Whether or not the Gospel was historically true did not matter to Gandhi:
“I may say that I have never been interested in a historical Jesus. I should not care if it was proved by someone that the man called Jesus never lived, and that what was narrated in the Gospels was a figment of the writer's imagination. For the Sermon on the Mount would still be true for me.”
— Mahatma Gandhi, Complete Works, Vol. 48, p.438
This truth was so profound for Gandhi (“God and Truth are one”) that the revelation of passive resistance came to him after reading the Sermon on the Mount in South Africa in 1893.
What is the relevance of these facts in today’s violent crisis in the Middle East (or, for that matter, in Ukraine or in other theaters of violent conflict)?
Given the fact that Gandhi’s path of non-violence was fundamental for the success of India’s independence (which had been the biggest defeat for the British Crown, if not outright then at least since the American Revolution), it may be no surprise that the stoking of violence has been a tool of the ruling Oligarchy ever since. And that those who call for peaceful resistance, truth and love have been killed. It happened to Jesus himself. It happened to Gandhi, to JFK, to Martin Luther King jr, even to John Lennon (“Imagine all the people living life in peace”).
And it happened to Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister, who “abandoned the use of force in favor of negotiations to achieve peace with the Palestinians.” For this he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 together with his Arab counterpart and PLO-leader Yasser Arafat, and Shimon Peres, then Minister of Foreign Affairs in Rabin’s administration.
Plausible Deniability in all of these murders (with the exception of Jesus) is responsible for a low level of understanding on the part of the general public about the surprising “coincidence” that all of these leaders fell victim to “lone gunmen”, rather than having been assassinated for the threat which their peaceful platform posed to the “Military-Industrial Complex” of which President Eisenhower warned in his farewell-speech on January 17th, 1961.
It is this part of the “Deep State” which is pitting populations and groups against each other. This is done by creating radical islam, for example the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 month prior to Soviet Intervention. Out of these groups developed Al-Quaeda and ISIS. Hamas, the Organization behind the Gaza-attacks, has been a creation of the Deep State as well, according to reports. Israel at least helped to create it, and considered it “useful”.
In 2019, Prime Minister Netanyahu authorized the payment of 1bn Dollars to Gaza, “at least half of which reached Hamas, including its military wing.” Openly Hamas was demonized as the enemy. “Covertly, it’s an ally”.
Newspapers in Israel are calling out “an indicted Prime Minister”. Is his role that of a fall guy? What are the consequences of what has happened? Certainly, by now the bloodshed has not stopped, it rather has intensified and spread back to the Palestinian population.
“Never Again” is a pledge that may serve as a conductor of universal human wisdom, if it were to be understood in the spirit of Gandhi and the Sermon on the Mount. Humanity as a whole has been addressed by the pledge to prevent another Holocaust from happening. Without the intent to proselytize, “Gandhi realised that Jesus' 'new law of love' is totally different from that of Moses and his old law ('Tdrah) that, 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' For him, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
Thus, the lesson to take away from this in Gandhi’s view should be the answer to the question of how to respond to evil: Never Again be indifferent to evil. Reject evil, respond with Love.
It is widely known that Gandhi has been criticized for his views on Nazism and the Holocaust, and he was reluctant to support the Homeland for Jews in Palestine. Therefore it is possible that quoting Gandhi in this respect might seem inappropriate. I acknowledge that. However, Gandhi is coming from a different point, a perspective of mutual love. It is central to Jesus of Nazareth’s Sermon on the Mount, but it is contained in many verses and texts of the Old Testament as well (Deuteronomy 32:25, Leviticus 19:18). Therefore it is not per se a question of faith, but one of interpretation and of searching for the Truth. This was recognised by, amongst others, the eminent Philosopher Hayim Greenberg in a memorial address for Gandhi after his death in 1948:
“The Jewish conception of Kiddush ha-Shem (sanctifying the Ineffable Name) signifies not merely readiness for sacrifice, for triumphant death. It is also an urge to keep life holy. Not to preserve sanctity shut away in a special tabernacle, to be opened only at intervals, and then sealed away once more, but to keep the source of sanctity always open, and let it shine forth into the everyday, penetrate the secular, imbue with its essence forces operating in history. What in Hindu religious feeling and in Gandhi`s religiosity is signified by Dharma corresponds to the code, the Shulkhan Arukh, in the Jewish way of life.”
“I shall not now assess to what extent Gandhi succeeded in his experiment. He had long-range vision and the patience of great faith. He planted seeds in the earth whose full fruit may perhaps be gathered generations later. But he gave the world - not only India - a demonstration of how to create a kind of “pipe-line” between the transcendental and the historical, how to fight for holy ends with means that are not in contradiction to the nature of the ends.”
”From the procession which yesterday followed his dead body to the shore of the sacred river, cries were heard: “Victory for Gandhi”. The people of that million-headed mass who uttered those cries knew that a few hours later only a meagre heap of ashes would be left of Gandhi’s body. Yet they believe that “somewhere” he still lives, that his spirit is indestructible, and that that spirit will still achieve great triumphs - in us, through us, for us.”
Disclaimer: Nothing in the above thoughts and ideas is meant to harm anyone’s feelings, belittle their beliefs or insult people dear to them, neither living nor dead. It is not meant to proselytize or convert any person from any religion to another. It is the author’s best attempt to put in writing what it means to live up to the pledge “Never Again!” that was given after the horrors of the Holocaust.