A crime against humanity

Mohandas Karamchand ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi (1869 – 1948) was the unquestioned leader of Indian nationalism in the decades before independence. For much of his time in the spotlight he was universally known throughout India as Bapu (the Father of Nation).

Albert Einstein said this of him:

“We may all be happy and grateful that destiny gifted us with such an enlightened contemporary, a role model for the generations to come. Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood.”

Barack Obama said this before the Indian Parliament in 2010:

"I am mindful that I might not be standing before you today, as President of the United States, had it not been for Gandhi and the message he shared with America and the world."

The man was a very big deal indeed. Which, hopefully, may cause a few sceptics and the odd PC fashion-follower to sit up and pay a bit more attention to the following.

On 16 March 1921, he was quoted thus by The Daily Herald:

“No influence, direct or indirect, over the Holy Places of Islam will ever be tolerated by Indian Mussulmans. It follows, therefore, that even Palestine must be under Mussulman control… No canon… of ethics or war can possibly justify the gift by the Allies of Palestine to Jews.”

Gandhi published the weekly magazine, Young India, from 1919 to 1932. The following quotations are taken from this publication.

“Britain has made promises to the Zionists… The Jews, it is contended, must remain a wandering race unless they have obtained possession of Palestine… They cannot possess Palestine through a trick or a moral breach. Palestine was not at stake in the War. The British Government could not dare have asked a single Muslim soldier to wrest control of Palestine from fellow-Muslims and give it to the Jews.

By no canon of ethics or war… can Palestine be given to the Jews as a result of the War. Either Zionists must revise their ideal about Palestine, or… ENGAGE IN A ‘HOLY WAR’ WITH THE MUSLIMS OF THE WORLD WITH THE CHRISTIANS THROWING IN THEIR INFLUENCE ON THEIR SIDE.” (23 March 1921)

“The Jews cannot receive sovereign rights in a place which has been held for centuries by Muslim powers by right of religious conquest. THE MUSLIM SOLDIERS DID NOT SHED THEIR BLOOD IN THE LATE WAR FOR THE PURPOSE OF SURRENDERING PALESTINE OUT OF MUSLIM CONTROL.” (6 April 1921)

Following the closure of Young India, Gandhi began publishing Harijan in 1933. It closed in 1948, the year he was assassinated. The following quotations are taken from the 26 November 1938 edition of this weekly publication:

“The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine…

PALESTINE BELONGS TO THE ARABS IN THE SAME SENSE THAT ENGLAND BELONGS TO THE ENGLISH OR FRANCE TO THE FRENCH. IT IS WRONG AND INHUMAN TO IMPOSE THE JEWS ON THE ARABS…

The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely IT WOULD BE A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY TO REDUCE THE PROUD ARABS SO THAT PALESTINE CAN BE RESTORED TO THE JEWS PARTLY OR WHOLLY AS THEIR NATIONAL HOME… Nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.

Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth.”

Gandhi also said this:

“This cry for the national home affords a colorable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews. But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone…

The crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth is being visited upon his whole race with unbelievable ferocity. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified.”

Gandhi’s ‘mad… intrepid youth’ was one Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Polish Jew who had assassinated the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris on 7 November 1938. This was immediately followed by the event now known to history as Kristallnacht (Crystal Night).

91 Jews lost their lives during the disturbances and 30,000 were subsequently arrested. The Times wrote at the time:

"No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenseless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday."

This was the background against which Gandhi penned his article. However, by June 1940, he was saying something very different:

“HITLER IS NOT A BAD MAN… THE GERMANS OF FUTURE GENERATIONS….WILL HONOUR HERR HITLER AS A GENIUS, AS A BRAVE MAN, a matchless organizer and much more.” (Harijan - 22 June 1940)

I wouldn’t have a clue as to what changed the great man’s mind. Or, indeed, if it changed at all. Expediency and realpolitik might have been at work in either or both of the statements.

On 7 January 2008, Gandhi’s grandson, the journalist Arun Gandhi, said this in The Washington Post:

“Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust experience, a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends…

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.”

As a result of the subsequent attentions of the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Gandhi jnr. was forced to resign his post as President of the M.K. Gandi Institute for Non-violence at the University of Rochester in Tennessee, a college he founded himself in 1991.

Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Jews have upset a great many people since they came out of the desert and began slaughtering the Canaanites more than 3,000 years ago. It’s just that the western world's politicians and mainstream media tend not to mention them.

The fact that, to all intents and purposes, the Jews own and control both might have something to do with the reluctance.