{"id":290143,"date":"2025-03-17T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=290143"},"modified":"2025-03-16T08:59:25","modified_gmt":"2025-03-16T08:59:25","slug":"bertrand-russells-message-on-palestine-israel-the-day-before-he-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/03\/bertrand-russells-message-on-palestine-israel-the-day-before-he-died\/","title":{"rendered":"Bertrand Russell\u2019s Message on Palestine\/Israel the Day before He Died"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string yt-core-attributed-string--white-space-pre-wrap\" dir=\"auto\" role=\"text\"><span class=\"yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color\" dir=\"auto\">This statement on the Middle East was dated 31 Jan 1970 and read on 3 Feb, the day after Bertrand Russell\u2019s death, to an International Conference of Parliamentarians meeting in Cairo.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bertrand Russell\u2019s &quot;Last Message\u201d Israel and Palestine (He died the next day)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/i3aTOdappSM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>TRANSCRIPT<\/em>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The latest phase of the undeclared war in the Middle East is based upon a profound<br \/>\nmiscalculation. The bombing raids deep into Egyptian territory will not persuade the civilian<br \/>\npopulation to surrender, but will stiffen their resolve to resist. This is the lesson of all aerial<br \/>\nbombardment.<\/p>\n<p>The Vietnamese who have endured years of American heavy bombing have responded not by<br \/>\ncapitulation but by shooting down more enemy aircraft. In 1940 my own fellow countrymen<br \/>\nresisted Hitler\u2019s bombing raids with unprecedented unity and determination. For this reason, the present Israeli attacks will fail in their essential purpose, but at the same time they must be condemned vigorously throughout the world.<\/p>\n<p>The development of the crisis in the Middle East is both dangerous and instructive. For over 20<br \/>\nyears Israel has expanded by force of arms. After every stage in this expansion Israel has<br \/>\nappealed to \u201creason\u201d and has suggested \u201cnegotiations\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>This is the traditional role of the imperial power, because it wishes to consolidate with the least<br \/>\ndifficulty what it has already taken by violence. Every new conquest becomes the new basis of<br \/>\nthe proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression.<\/p>\n<p>The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right<br \/>\nto annex foreign territory, but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much<br \/>\nmore aggression the world will tolerate.<\/p>\n<p>The refugees who surround Palestine in their hundreds of thousands were described recently by<br \/>\nthe Washington journalist I.F. Stone as \u201cthe moral millstone around the neck of world Jewry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Many of the refugees are now well into the third decade of their precarious existence in<br \/>\ntemporary settlements. The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was \u201cgiven\u201d<br \/>\nby a foreign Power to another people for the creation of a new State. The result was that many<br \/>\nhundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless.<\/p>\n<p>With every new conflict their number have increased. How much longer is the world willing to<br \/>\nendure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right<br \/>\nto the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the<br \/>\ncontinuing conflict.<\/p>\n<p>No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country;<br \/>\nhow can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would<br \/>\ntolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient<br \/>\nof any genuine settlement in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>We are frequently told that we must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews<br \/>\nin Europe at the hands of the Nazis. I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate any suffering.<br \/>\nWhat Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify<br \/>\nthose of the present is gross hypocrisy. Not only does Israel condemn a vast number. of refugees<br \/>\nto misery; not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel<br \/>\ncondemns the Arab nations only recently emerging from colonial status, to continued<br \/>\nimpoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.<\/p>\n<p>All who want to see an end to bloodshed in the Middle East must ensure that any settlement does<br \/>\nnot contain the seeds of future conflict. Justice requires that the first step towards a settlement<br \/>\nmust be an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in June, 1967. A new world<br \/>\ncampaign is needed to help bring justice to the long-suffering people of the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>____________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Bertrand-Russell-e1549195572994.jpeg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-127367 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Bertrand-Russell-e1549195572994.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"128\" \/><\/a><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i>Bertrand Arthur William Russell, <\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i>(18 May 1872 \u2013 2 Feb 1970), <\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i>3rd Earl Russell, was a British Nobel Literature laureate, philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, and political activist . <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This statement on the Middle East was dated 31 Jan 1970 and read on 3 Feb, the day after Bertrand Russell\u2019s death, to an International Conference of Parliamentarians meeting in Cairo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[122,767,85],"class_list":["post-290143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-video-clips","tag-bertrand-russell","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290152,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290143\/revisions\/290152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}