Opinion Why Israel’s first Prime Minister had Gandhi’s portrait in his bedroom
Gandhi’s humanism won't endorse Israel’s aggression or occupation, but it certainly won't endorse the radical, fanatic and violent religious organisations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. There is a way to support the Palestinian cause without endorsing Hamas
The first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion (right), neither found Gandhi anti-Zionist nor even suffering from doublespeak on Jews and Arabs/Palestinians. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) 
The Israel-Hamas war has changed, rapidly, both regional and international dynamics over the last three weeks. Sadly, the use of violence and even terror is not an exception in the long history of this conflict. However, even so, there is something deeply disturbing about the nature of the attack Hamas carried on October 7. The Israeli army in retaliation has caused more than 8,000 deaths in Gaza – such a policy does not help the cause of peace. Many think of this conflict in black-and-white binaries. Which is the “right” side?
Curiously, there is a lot written about Zionism, including how Indian leaders like Gandhi responded to it and how today’s India (the state as well as civil society) is doing so, including in this newspaper.
On October 11, the ‘Explained’ section carried an article that begins writing with a well-known and often-quoted (by those who think Zionism and Israel committed the “original sin”) sentence: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English, or France to the French.” After the British issued the Balfour Declaration in favour of Zionism in 1917, there were strong sentiments on the question of Palestine among those engaged. Gandhi stated his initial views on the matter in an essay, The Jews, in 1938 for Harijan. He was deeply sympathetic to Jewish sentiments and advised them strongly not to take the support of the British for their cause but rather seek “the goodwill of the Arabs”. The quote “Palestine belongs to the Arabs…” is a misleading presentation of Gandhi’s thoughts on Zionism. The first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, neither found Gandhi anti-Zionist nor even suffering from doublespeak on Jews and Arabs/Palestinians.
In a conversation with American journalist and later his biographer, Louis Fischer, Gandhi said in 1946, “The Jews have a good cause. I told Sidney Silverman (Jewish-British parliamentarian) that the Jews have a good case in Palestine. If the Arabs have a claim to Palestine, the Jews have a prior claim”. Gandhi was not afraid of accepting his errors of judgement. He valued reflectivity as an essential means of self-purification and evolution.
Not many would quote his revised position on this issue after the brutal killings of Jews in the Holocaust. What he thought and argued in the 1938 essay had a more profound impact on the popular imagination than his one-on-one conversation with Fischer. In October 2019, the southern city of Kiryat Gat in Israel named a prominent junction as “Mahatma Gandhi Circle”, The Jerusalem Post carried tacit condemnation of this development in an op-ed titled ‘Gandhi was not a Zionist’ by Nissim Moses, the founder and president of the Bene Israel Heritage Museum and Genealogical Research Centre, Mumbai. Moses claimed Gandhi was against the creation of Israel. He suggested the circle should be named after Prime Minister Narender Modi, a true friend of Israel, and he would love even to sponsor 10 circles in his name in Israel.
Ben-Gurion admired Gandhi and found him inspiring. He had Gandhi’s portrait in the bedroom in his home, in Kibbutz Sde Boker (it is located in the south of Israel and luckily escaped the massacre of October 7), where he lived his last years until his death in 1973. Ben-Gurion was not offended by Gandhi’s 1938 essay, in which he ignored Jews’ historical connections to the land of Palestine. He knew that Gandhi supported Jews in 1946. Many Gandhian leaders like Jayaprakash Narayan, Acharya Kripalani, Narayan Desai visited Israel, disagreeing with Nehru’s foreign policy. Gandhi’s idea of simple and modest living, enlightened nationalism, asceticism and reformed Hinduism inspired Ben-Gurion.
His house is now a museum; all visitors, including the Indians, may wonder about Gandhi’s portrait in Ben-Gurion’s bedroom. The popular mind is driven more by the perception that the Indian nationalist leaders were anti-Zionist whereas the reality was different. Even among the people who often write about the history of India-Israel relations, it is not probed why Ben-Gurion would have Gandhi’s photo frame in his bedroom if Gandhi was an “anti-Zionist”. In another instance, going beyond the narrow national interest of Israel, David Be-Gurion did not mind Jawaharlal Nehru’s diplomatic distance and admired him for how he led India with democracy, secular politics and advocacy for global peace.
On June 30, 1958, Ben-Gurion evoked Gandhi while writing a letter to Krishna Hutheesing, the author and youngest sister of Nehru: “I certainly have no doubt that India could make a very great contribution to the strengthening of peace in the world if her representatives were in practice to follow in the paths of Gandhi – not by adopting the spinning wheel, but in approaching every international problem with the same genuinely human approach that was his.”
Gandhi’s humanism won’t endorse Israel’s aggression or occupation, but it certainly won’t endorse the radical, fanatic and violent religious organisations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. There is a way to support the Palestinian cause without endorsing Hamas. I think it is essential that a fresh approach is adopted as opposed to prejudiced perceptions of the Israel-Palestine conflict in India.
The writer is director, Jindal Centre for Israel Studies, Jindal School of International Affairs, O P Jindal Global University
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