5 / Russell & Palestine
In my discussions about the conflict in Palestine, the argument that comes up most often is that the problem is the terrorism and violence by Palestinians, and Muslims in general. My counter-argument always is that this is the secondary cause - the primary cause is the disenfranchisement of the Palestinians. Bertrand Russell commented on the issue nicely as far back as 1970.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (18 May
1872–2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, historian, logician,
mathematician, advocate for social reform, pacifist and atheist. Although
usually regarded as English, as he spent the majority of his life in England,
he was born and raised in Wales.
A prolific writer, Russell was a populariser of philosophy
and a commentator on a large variety of topics. Continuing a family tradition
in political affairs, he was a prominent anti-war activist, championing free
trade between nations and anti-imperialism.
He wrote the essay On Denoting and was co-author (with
Alfred North Whitehead) of Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground
mathematics on the laws of logic. Both works have had a considerable influence
on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics and analytic philosophy.
In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature,
"in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he
champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."
On 31 January 1970 Russell issued a statement which
condemned Israeli aggression in the Middle East and called for Israeli
withdrawal from territory occupied in 1967. The statement said that:
“The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their
country was ‘given’ by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a
new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people
were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers
increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of
wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to
the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at
the heart of the continuing conflict.
No people anywhere in the world would
accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require
the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would
tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an
essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.
We are
frequently told that we must sympathise with Israel because of the suffering of
the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. What Israel is doing today cannot
be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the
present is gross hypocrisy.”
(with research from Wikipedia)