Diary of a Walking Butterfly

“There is a fundamental principle. People have the right to defend their country from foreign occupiers, and people have the right to defend their country from invaders who are destroying their country. That to me is a very basic, elementary, and uncomplicated question.” - Norman Finkelstein

“Gandhi was not a categorical pacifist. His views were very clear. He said ‘I prefer that people use nonviolence. I think it’s morally superior. I believe its as effective as violence to achieve your goals but with much less cost.’ However he enters a two qualifications. Number one: you have no right to tell people they must use nonviolence because, and I’m quoting him, “according to the current standards of right and wrong, violence is allowed.” So you can’t say everyone has the right to use it except the Palestinians. No, you can’t do that. And he’s very clear on that. Number two, Gandhi is also very clear, and it will come as a surprise to many of you, Gandhi says, ‘if you do not have it in you to act nonviolently’ and for him it is a very high standard, for him to act nonviolently means to be willing to go, smilingly and cheerfully into gunfire and allow yourself to be killed, that’s for him what nonviolence meant, to march right into the gunfire and allow yourself to be killed. But he says a lot of people don’t have it in them. And he says if you don’t have it in you to meet that standard and you are humiliated,[and] abused by someone else, then he says, you better hit back – and you better hit back hard. Because for Gandhi there was nothing more disreputable than cowardice. …. That’s the real Gandhi, not the Hollywood Gandhi.”