FATUOUS FAKIRS:

Master of moral relativism (YAACOV LOZOWICK, 9/01/04, Jerusalem Post)

Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent resistance against an oppressor is surely one of the most admirable political phenomena of the 20th century. Yet ultimately his success lay in his choice of oppressor. Say what you will about the British, they regarded themselves as basically decent and, faced with Gandhi's challenge, they ultimately backed down.

The Nazi, Soviet, Khmer Rouge, and Hutu genocidists never allowed the passivity of their victims to slow them down, not for a minute. When Gandhi's grandson, Arun Gandhi, recently visited Yad Vashem, it would have been fair-minded of him to reflect upon this distinction. Instead he took the opportunity to lecture the Jews on their mistakes: "We got rid of Hitler but not the philosophy of hate that still threatens and strikes," he admonished.

It's hard to know where to begin when someone implies that Zionism resembles Nazism as an ideology of hate. When someone stands at Yad Vashem and says that the practice of Zionism is akin to the persecution Jews suffered in Europe, he has opened an unbridgeable chasm between his version of events and the historical truth.

When Arun Gandhi says that the barrier Israel is building in the West Bank is worse than Palestinian suicide bombings, his listener can only reflect morosely on the devastation of moral thinking that is so common in our generation.

"Our generation"? The grandfather was no better:

In relation to the late war, one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: "What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?" I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the "you're another" type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer's GANDHI AND STALIN. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi's view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which "would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence." After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 2, 2004 6:35 AM