Those who do not necessarily associate the name Gandhi with either humanitarian brotherhood or wisdom, and those who remember Mahatma’s idiotic thoughts about those facing the Holocaust ought to examine the latest Gandhi take on “the Jews” in the online edition of the Washington Post, this time from one Arun Gandhi.
He is self-identified as the “President and co-founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence” and “the fifth grandson of India’s legendary leader, Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi. He is president and co-founder of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, now at the University of Rochester in New York.”
In the
Post, he writes:
The holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful. But, it seems to me the Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty but the whole world must regret what happened to the Jews. The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger… We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity…
Everything in that brief excerpt alone is untrue for the following reasons:
1. The Holocaust was not just Hitler and a few SS “followers”; rather, it involved millions of followers (some of whom were active, some of whom were passive) in a systematic and near successful genocide of an entire people.
Neither Hitler, nor Himmler, nor Goebbels, nor any of the Nazi hierarchy could have wrought what they did without millions of German non-party guards, railroad employees, informants, and clerks and bureaucrats in the industry of death. Tragically this complaisance did not happen over night, but was prepped by years of National Socialist indoctrination that systematically and incrementally whipped up centuries old anti-Semitism by blaming — take note here, Mr. Gandhi — “the Jews” as being the “biggest players” in the world’s violence and problems.
2. Gandhi makes an incredibly asinine suggestion when he says, “But, it seems to me the Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty but the whole world must regret what happened to the Jews.”
Should the whole world not “regret” what happened to the Jews? Maybe sorta, kinda regret it? Are the Germans not supposed to feel guilty about the loss of six million under their auspices? And if all this should not be, as Gandhi implies, then is his assumed antithesis then correct?
To illustrate, try this counterfactual: “But it seems to me the Jews today should not only not want the Germans to feel guilty, but the whole world must not regret what happened to the Jews.”
3. “The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger.”
Creating an autonomous, self-sufficient nation, as well as the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, seems to qualify as both forgiving and moving on. Yet after five major wars against Israel since 1947, it is apparent that its neighbors can neither forgive its creation nor move on to accept its existence.
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