Gandhi, Palestine and peace
While responding to Ashikur Rahman's letter on "Mahatma Gandhi" Mahmood Elahi from Ottawa writes in DS (5th Oct):
“The brutality of Hamas toward fellow Palestinians shows that it is essentially a terrorist outfit which will not hesitate to kill fellow Palestinians belonging to a rival camp. This means that even if Israel vacates the West Bank as it has done in Gaza, a new bloodletting will erupt among Hamas and Fatah for control of the Palestinian state. Moreover, if the Palestinians cannot live peacefully with each other, it will be futile to think that a Palestinian state and Jewish state can live peacefully side by side”.
To me it seems that Elahi is meticulously echoing what neo-colonialist politicians or journalists from Europe/North America say forgetting that people under oppression and unjust treatment do lots of things that are brutal and inhuman. Hamas members certainly are not blood thirsty animals, they are human beings like Barak Obama, Mr. Elahi and me and it is the illegal Zionists occupation of their land with money and direct and indirect help from the Neo-colonialists that made them terrorists and suicide-bombers.
Let Mr. Elahi tell us what right the American, Russian, Polish or Canadian Jews have to be in Palestinian land by evicting people from their hearth and home? Am I asking the same question as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked many times?
An honest and good human being including many Jews will agree with Ahmadinejad and me that Zionists have “NO RIGHT” to occupy Palestinian land evicting the rightful owners from their hearth and home. Palestinian people should not pay for the German and European mistreatment of the Jews and the holocaust. We cannot do much against this crime but I expected that a Bangladeshi born Elahi could understand the simple fact that made some Palestinian people terrorists. His quotation from a member of the Canadian Hindu Congress that “Palestinians are a violent people and incapable to act non-violently” is outrageous, disgraceful and utterly a silly statement. Such remark could be made only by an uncanny racist.
I suggest Mr. Elahi approach that racist and ask him to apologize to Palestinian people around the globe for making such horrendous comments. He should read R. C. Mazumder's “Bangladesher Ithihas (History of Bengal”, Part IV, Chapter V, page nos. 107-235, General Printers and Publishers Private Limited, Calcutta and learn how Gandhi's non-violence philosophy worked and was practised in Bengal since Lord Curzon's days and even today in many parts of India.
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