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| Martin Buber, född i Wien 1878, död i Jerusalem 1965. |
Hitler hade redan den 30 januari 1939 sagt: "Om den internationella finansjudendomen, inom och utom Europa, än en gång skulle lyckas störta folken in i ett världskrig, då blir resultatet inte en bolsjevisering av jorden och judenhetens seger, utan tvärtom den judiska rasens förintelse i Europa!”
Kunde någon tvivla på situationens allvar när Buber en knapp månad efter det uttalandet skrev till Gandhi?
Buber levde redan då i Palestina, och i det långa öppna brev han skrev till Gandhi fanns bland annat nedanstående viktiga avsnitt om relationen mellan ”ägandet” av ett land och de faktiska människor som levde där, judar och araber. Buber hade svårt att förstå att Gandhi kunde jämföra judarnas situation i Tyskland, med förintelsen runt hörnet och den våldsamma judefientliga Hitlerregimen, med indiernas situation i Sydafrika. Han fann heller inte att Gandhi förstod varför judar levde i Palestina, och han skrev bland annat:
In order to carry out a task of such extreme difficulty - and recognising that we have to overcome an internal resistance on the Jewish side, as foolish as it is natural - we are in need of the support of well- meaning persons of all nations, and we had hope of it. But now you come and settle the whole existential dilemma with the simple formula: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs.” What do you mean by saying that a land belongs to a population? Evidently you do not intend only to describe a state of affairs by your formula, but to declare a certain right. You obviously mean to say that a people, being settled on the land, has such an absolute claim to the possession of this land that whoever settles in it without the permission of this people has committed a robbery.
But by what means did the Arabs attain the right of ownership in Palestine? Surely by conquest and, in fact, a conquest by settlement. You therefore admit that, this being so, it constitutes for them an exclusive right of possession; whereas the subsequent conquests of the Mamelukes and the Turks, which were not conquests with a view to settlement, do not constitute such in your opinion, but leave the former conquering nation in rightful ownership.
Thus, settlement by force of conquest justifies for you a right of ownership of Palestine, whereas a settlement such as the Jewish one - whose methods, it is true, though not always doing full justice to Arab ways of life, were, even in the most objectionable cases, far removed from those of conquest - do not in your opinion justify any participation in this right of possession. These are the consequences that result from your statement in the form of an axiom that a land belongs to its population. In an epoch of migration of nations, you would first support the right of ownership of the nation that is threatened with dispossession or extermination. But once this was achieved, you would be compelled - not at once, but after the elapse of a suitable number of generations - to admit that the land belongs to the usurper.Hela Bubers brev finns att läsa här.