Blinky & Tanya Run Scared

Federal Deputy Opposition leader Tanya (Once Was Warrior) Plibersek has been lately "calling on her party to compel MPs to vote for same-sex marriage, ending it as a conscience issue for the ALP... 'Labor has always been a party that is opposed to discrimination,' Ms Plibersek told Fairfax Media in an interview last week. 'It is a clear question. Do we support legal discrimination against one group in this country? Or do we not?'... A long-time supporter of same-sex marriage, Ms Plibersek said her position was 'fundamental to my politics'." (It's time: push to unite ALP on marriage, Judith Ireland, Sydney Morning Herald, 27/4/15)

Whatever one's position on same-sex marriage, the point I wish to make here is that Plibersek is clearly comfortable in speaking out on the issue, which, need I say, is as it should be if we purport to be a robust democracy.

Yet, on another issue fundamental to anyone who opposes discrimination wherever it rears its ugly head, she is curiously reticent:

"Mr Shorten and Ms Plibersek refused to answer questions about Palestine on Wednesday, with the deputy leader declaring 'I don't think today is the day for these other questions' following the execution of the Bali nine duo."  (Plibersek push on gay marriage backfires, James Massola, Sydney Morning Herald, 30/4/15)

And this while others in her party, particularly its justice [???!!!] spokesman, David Feeney, speak out loud and clear in defence of a certain entity founded on gross discrimination and inequality:

"... Mr Feeney questioned the push for a national conference resolution, which will be led by NSW frontbencher Tony Burke after discussions with Mr Shorten, for a future Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state in the absence of progress towards a two-state solution. Mr Feeney said that 'with so much going on in the Middle East, with more Arabs killed every year in Syria than have been killed in the history of Arab-Israeli conflict, the fixation on Israel is just that'." (ibid)

As for Labor leader Bill Shorten "who refused to answer questions on Wednesday," all it took was a mere phone call to get a reiterated pledge of allegiance reassurance from him:

"But president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Robert Goot, said on Thursday he had rung federal Labor leader Bill Shorten's office and been told that any moves to change the ALP's national position did not have Mr Shorten's approval." (Palestinians call for 'balance' on vote, Deborah Snow, Sydney Morning Herald, 1/5/15)

And this is despite Mr Goot's ECAJ colleague Alex Ryvchin asserting, in another context, the idea that the use of "terms such as 'Jewish lobby', 'Zionist lobby', and 'Israel lobby'" is "intended to appeal to antisemitic views of the Jews as exercising an extraordinary or dark power," and an example of "crude, conspiratorial thinking." (Activists corrupt noble principles in defence of Lynch, The Australian, 24/4/15)

(NB: For me to even hint that Mr Goot's ability to get just the answer he wants from Blinky Billy by means of a simple phone call (an ability you or I could only ever dream of) is an example of the Israel lobby at work is apparently conspiratorial thinking and "intended to appeal to antisemitic views." So, lest I be accused of same, let me state clearly that I'm absolutely certain Mr Goot had a great deal of difficulty getting through to Bill - Goot who? ECAJ? Never heard of it! - and I'm equally certain that his colleague, Mr Ryvchin had enormous difficulty getting his opinion piece published in the Australian. Oh yeah.)

But I digress. Back to Blinky. Frankly, I'm a bit worried about the guy. He's all over the shop if you ask me. I mean, look at this:

"Bill Shorten will anoint Nelson Mandela as a Labor hero at the July national conference, which will vote on a platform for 'a practical and pragmatic party, tinged and touched by a romantic spirit'." (Shorten to put Mandela on Labor pedestal, Sid Maher, The Australian, 21/4/15)

The problem with this is that Blinky seems blissfully unaware that Mandela once said (loud and clear I might add) the following:

"Arafat is a comrade-in-arms."

 "The people of South Africa will never forget the support of the state of Israel to the apartheid regime."

"We know all too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

The Real Mandela

At last, the real Nelson Mandela appears in the pages of the Fairfax press thanks to journalist Paul McGeough:

"History's airbrush was in overdrive as world leaders and the media farewelled a truly great leader of his people - South Africa's Nelson Mandela. There would be no talk here that might be read as legitimising armed struggle by whole populations who are denied their rights. It was just too mucky, wasn't it, to go into the violence of armed struggle. But in sanitising Mandela's story, it seemed we were being asked to deny an essential element of the fight for freedom in South Africa.

"It was lost on dignitaries, from US President Barack Obama down, that the real Mandela story is greater than the arc of his leadership, as traced in their speech-making. This is because when the bit about violence is included, an audience has a better sense of the frustration experienced by black South Africans and hence can more appreciate the challenges in Mandela's long and brutal walk to freedom.

"And that becomes a teachable moment for us all - that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter; and when the fighting has stopped, yes, it would be great to have him for dinner and hear a retelling of his account, on being released from prison, of his rebirth as a man of peace: 'As I walked out the door, towards the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in [a] prison.'

"Searching the Factiva global news archive in the 6 days after his death, there were more than 35,000 mentions of Mandela. But narrow the search by adding 'violence' or 'terror' and indeed it seemed history was being cleansed. Put 'violence' beside 'Mandela' and slightly less than 1,000 reports use the word; add 'terror' and the count shrinks to slightly more than 100, and a good number of those refer to the violence of others.

"Obama's blurring of the story was intriguing. Instead of remaining silent on Mandela and the African National Congress' resort to violence in the wake of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, in which forces of the white regime gunned down 69 peaceful demonstrators, Obama made the oblique suggestion that the whole struggle had been peaceful: 'Emerging from prison, without the force of arms, he would - like Abraham Lincoln - hold his country together...' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose predecessors were staunch allies of white South Africa through apartheid, didn't make the journey. But he, too, gilded the lily, describing Mandela as 'a man of vision, a fighter for freedom who rejected violence'.

"Now, go back in the archives, to Mandela's 1964 trial on charges of sabotage and treason. 'We were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the government,' he told the court. 'We chose to defy the government. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and when the government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.' Mandela went into greater detail on the rationale for the ANC's armed wing, of which he was the founder. 'I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love for violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after... years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the whites.'

"And notwithstanding pressure from Western capitals, Mandela refused to renounce violence or to disarm until the time of his choosing, i.e., when the deal was done with the white regime. And he could do the deal because of the man he was, including being a warrior for his people.

"Many Palestinians see their circumstances as apartheid-era South Africa replicated.* And while many went lightly on the role of violence in the African struggle, Netanyahu did get a shellacking at home. In Haaretz, Roy Isacowitz wrote: 'It's a pity that Netanyahu, vulgar and transparent as usual, tried to manipulate Mandela for his own purposes. It might be comforting to contrast the supposedly peaceful anti-apartheid legend with the obviously non-peaceful Palestinians - but that's not the way it was or is. Both sides wield violence in an armed conflict and state violence is no less lethal than the irregular kind.'

"The challenge for Obama and the rest then, is to back their rhetoric in the stadium with the kind of action their predecessors were reluctant to take when Mandela really needed help. They could speak up for political prisoners around the world, from China to Saudi Arabia; and instead of helping to manage the occupation, they might seek to have real effect in the Middle East peace talks, to honour Mandela's assertion: 'Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians'." (Sanitising Nelson Mandela's legend no help to today's fighters, The Sun-Herald, 15/12/13)

[*Not to mention many South Africans.]

Israel Lobbyist Fails Crocodile Dundee Test

Clarification:

In Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald, chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, tiresome tireless Israel lobbyist, and former South African apartheid-era journalist, Vic Alhadeff, portrayed his South African employer thus:

"I served as chief sub-editor of The Cape Times during the apartheid era - and Nelson Rohilahla Mandela was the unspoken presence in the room... As one of the nation's anti-apartheid newspapers, we were acutely aware that in our midst was a colossus whose time had come." (Media bans kept colossus out of sight, 7/12/13)

Just as well he said "one of" because really, to rephrase Crocodile Dundee, That wasn't "an anti-apartheid newspaper." This was "an anti-apartheid newspaper":

"The loss-making but hugely influential [Rand Daily] Mail had by then [1985] waged a lonely 30-year struggle on behalf of truth and decency against overwhelming odds. Scores of Kafkaesque laws circumscribed its coverage. It was infiltrated by government spies, communists and agents provocateurs. Its management was either inept or craven or both. Yet despite everything, and thanks to a succession of strong editors, the Mail not only survived but set a standard that all other media outlets in South Africa are still judged against." (The Daily Courage, Robin Knight, Time, 12/6/00)

Cautiously Fighting Apartheid

Fair dinkum,  despite the millions of black and coloured survivors of South African apartheid, the best the Sydney Morning Herald could come up with to commemorate the passing of Nelson Mandela in its Saturday edition was the testimony of a white man. And not just any white man either - Australia's most vocal defender of Israeli apartheid:

"I served as chief sub-editor of The Cape Times during the apartheid era - and Nelson Rohilahla Mandela was the unspoken presence in the room. A key instrument in the government's strategy of subjugating the country's black population while keeping the ruling white sector uninformed about the revolutionary movements fermenting beneath the surface was press censorship. It was illegal for newspapers to promote the aims of a 'banned' organisation... South Africans never heard from Mandela or his colleagues... [Yet] Mandela was there. Silenced. Casting a giant shadow. And as one of the nation's anti-apartheid newspapers, we were acutely aware that in our midst was a colossus whose time had come." (Media bans kept colossus out of sight, Vic Alhadeff, chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Sydney Morning Herald, 7/12/13)

One of the nation's anti-apartheid newspapers?

So just what was it that qualified a South African newspaper of the time to be described as anti-apartheid?

"We consistently erred on the side of caution because we knew from harsh experience what the penalties were for violating the censorship laws." (Riots of change, Vic Alhadeff, The Australian Jewish News, 26/6/09)

Consistently err[ing] on the side of caution. I see... so that's what brought apartheid to its knees. Who would have thought?

But what a modest man Alhadeff is! I bet you didn't know what a critical role he played in the Mandela story?

I thought not.

Come now, surely you don't think Mandela could have done it all by himself? No, contrary to current media adulation, great man though he was, Mandela was no saint. Not even close! There were actually times when he needed to be taken aside and told to mend his errant ways... which is where Alhadeff comes in:

"Firmly opposed to apartheid, [Alhadeff] worked against it and even confronted Nelson Mandela personally when he felt the great man had been hypocritical." (Former journalist Vic Alhadeff, abc.net.au, 22/1/08)

I told you what a modest man Alhadeff is. I mean, why else would he not include that particular revelation in his piece for the Herald?

Perhaps the editor of the 'Independent. Always' Sydney Morning Herald could prevail upon him to tell the full story in a future edition.

For those not into holding one's breath, see my 23/10/10 post SuperVic?

Mandela: 'Arafat is a Comrade-in-Arms'

If you search the Internet for evidence of Nelson Mandela's support for the Palestinian struggle, you'll generally come across this particular statement: "We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

Given that too little is known of his principled and unequivocal support for the Palestinians (never of course referenced in the mainstream media), I'm posting the relevant sections of an interview he did with the presenter of the US Nightline program, Ted Koppel in 1990. The interview took place at a public meeting in the City College of New York. At the time, Mandela, not long out of prison, was in the US on a tour, advocating for the continuation of international sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Needless to say, Koppel being Koppel, New York being New York, and the US being the US, the question of Mandela's links with Yasser Arafat and the PLO loomed large at the meeting.

Note that I've selected only Mandela's statements on this issue, simplified Koppel's rambling questions, and, in only one case, abridged Mandela's answer. The entire interview, along with Mandela's trademark dignity, gravitas and humour, can be enjoyed at youtube.com/watch?v=mMT36t (My tribute to vintage Nelson Mandela of South Africa part 2)

Mandela: We identify with the PLO because, just like ourselves, they are fighting for the right of self-determination.

Koppel: You met over 3 times with Yasser Arafat.

Mandela: Yasser Arafat, Colonel Gaddafi and Fidel Castro support our struggle to the hilt.

Koppel: You've said some controversial things which might alienate some people in this country. That could cause them to contact their congressman and say, 'Go ahead, lift the sanctions on the South African government.'

Mandela: One of the problems we are facing in the world today are people who do not look at problems objectively but from the point of view of their own interests. That makes things difficult because once a person is not objective, it is extremely difficult to reach an agreement. One of the best examples of this is to think that because Arafat is conducting a struggle against the state of Israel we must therefore condemn him. We can't do that. It is just not possible for any organisation or individual of integrity to do anything of the sort... It would be a grave mistake for us to consider our attitude towards Yasser Arafat on the basis of the interests of the Jewish community. We sympathise with the struggles of the Jewish people and their persecution right down the years... but that does not mean to say that the enemies of Israel are our enemies. We refuse to take that position. You can call it 'impolitical' [Koppel had been suggesting that Mandela needed to be more political/flexible to win American Jewish support] or a moral question [a Jewish leader had earlier accused Mandela of being amoral] but a man who changes his principles depending on who he's dealing with - that is not a man who can lead a nation... They must know what our stand is: Arafat is a comrade-in-arms and we treat him as such.

'Moses' Mandela

How sweetly they're singing now:

"Nelson Mandela was one of the most prominent role models of our time. He was the father of his nation, a man of vision, a fighter for freedom who denounced violence. He gave a personal example to his people during the long years he was imprisoned." Benjamin Netanyahu, israelhayom.com, 6/12/13

But back in the 70s and 8os they were singing a very different tune:

"The Israeli-South African relationship was not only about profit and battlefield bravado... After Menachem Begin's Likud Party came to power in 1977, these economic interests converged with ideological affinities to make the alliance even stronger. Many members of the Likud Party shared with South Africa's leaders an ideology of minority survivalism that presented the two countries as threatened outposts of European civilization defending their existence against barbarians at the gates.

"Indeed, much of Israel's top brass and Likud Party leadership felt am affinity with South Africa's white government, and unlike Peres and Rabin they did not feel a need to publicly denounce apartheid while secretly supporting Pretoria. Powerful military figures, such as Ariel Sharon and Rafael (Raful) Eitan, drew inspiration from the political tradition of Revisionist Zionism - a school of thought that favoured the use of military force to defend Jewish sovereignty and encouraged settlement of the biblical lands of Greater Israel, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sharon, Eitan, and many of their contemporaries were convinced that both nations faced a fundamentally similar predicament as embattled minorities under siege, fighting for their survival against what they saw as a common terrorist enemy epitomized by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) and Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)." (The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, 2010, p 8)

***

"The end of the Cold War dramatically altered the political and strategic landscape of Southern Africa. Cuban troops were already withdrawing from Angola when F.W. de Klerk replaced P.W. Botha as president in August 1989. The Berlin Wall fell 3 months later and de Klerk soon embarked on a radically different course that led to the release of Nelson Mandela in early 1990. With the Soviet and Cuban threat gone, South Africa could no longer appeal for Western support by invoking anticommunist arguments, nor could it rationalize repression of the democratic opposition by cloaking apartheid in Cold War rhetoric.

"... In Pretoria, the Israeli government went to great lengths to improve its image after Mandela's release. Veteran left-wing critics of apartheid were appointed to key posts, including Alon Liel, who became ambassador in 1992 and worked hard to redefine Israeli-South African relations for the postapartheid era. Even so, the legacy of the 1970s and 1980s left Mandela with a sour taste.

"A year before South Africa's first democratic elections, Elazar Granot of Israel's far-left Mapam Party addressed the delegates of the Socialist International - a global gathering of Social Democratic leaders attended by many European heads of state. Granot lavished praise on Mandela, comparing him to Moses and arguing that South Africa's president-in-waiting was even greater than Moses for he had actually reached the Promised Land. But Mandela did not succumb to his flattery. As Granot recalls it, the first words from South Africa's icon of foregiveness and reconciliation were: 'The people of South Africa will never forget the support of the state of Israel to the apartheid regime'." (ibid, pp 218-219)

That was in 1993. Today, neither the people of South Africa nor its government have forgotten worse-than-apartheid Israel's alliance with apartheid South Africa:

"As reported by South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper, Times LIVE, [and] Israel's Haaretz newspaper... South Africa's Minister for International Relations, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, has confirmed a long-standing South African government position of not engaging with Israel.  Speaking on Friday... Minister Nkoana-Mashabane said: 'Ministers of South Africa do not visit Israel currently... our Palestinian friends have asked us in formal meetings to not engage with the [Israeli] regime. We have agreed to slow down and curtail senior leadership contact with that regime until things begin to look better.' [She] also criticised the Israeli regime's recent announcement to build new, illegal, Jewish-only settler units on confiscated Palestinian lands: 'That arrangement there in Palestine keeps us awake... the last time I looked at the map of Palestine, I could not go to sleep. Its 'dots', smaller than those of the [former South African] homelands.'... Finally, [she] expressed her solidarity with the Palestinian people, saying: 'The struggle of the people of Palestine is our struggle'." (South Africa to 'curtail' relations with Israel, OptionsBDS South Africa, 2/12/13)

Fairfax's Israel Blog

What the... ?

The Fairfax website has recently added Zionist propagandist, Jewish Studies academic and scribbler for The Australian Jewish News Dvir Abramovich to its list of bloggers, with the job of "cover[ing] the Jewish world and Israel from a local and global perspective." Abramovich's blog is called Chutzpah. A more appropriate name might be Israel Rocks! or Israel Rulz, OK?

Abramovich's latest post, Israel's survival a huge achievement (26/4/10), is a veritable checklist of Zionist cliches and talking points:

There's the Israeli dream: "Born in the shadow of the Holocaust, Israel was carried in the hearts and minds of Jews for thousands of years and became a reality against all odds. Israel's founding fathers took one of history's greatest gambles and won."

But not the Palestinian nightmare.

There's a hyped Arab blitzkrieg: "On May 14 1948, as David Ben Gurion declared the new state's independence, warplanes rumbled overhead, attacking within 5 hours."

But no ethnic cleansing of Palestine's indigenous non-Jewish inhabitants from December 1947 to January 1949.

There's alleged applause from Nelson Mandela: "It's no surprise that Nelson Mandela was so moved by Israel's leaders that he required all African National Congress leaders read the writings of Israel's past prime ministers."

But no word on apartheid, Israeli-style. [See my 21/9/09 post Israeli Apartheid: The Jury's In ] Or Israel's defacto alliance with the apartheid regime in South Africa. Or Mandela's speech on The International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People (4/12/10) when he said: "When in 1977, the UN passed the resolution inaugurating The International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People, it was asserting the recognition that injustice and gross human rights violations were being perpetrated in Palestine. In the same period, the UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

There's the miraculous transformation of once "militarily inexperienced" and "persecuted" European Jews into state-of-the-art, go-anywhere-anytime arse-kickers.

But no passport fraud.

There's Israel's Law of Return, trumpeted as "the first universal immigration law in history [which] grants every Jew who needs and wants automatic citizenship."

But no 62-year refusal to implement the Palestinian refugees' Universal Declaration of Human Rights-backed right of return to their stolen homeland.

There's the miracle of "despite having to devote enormous resources to defence in 7 wars, [Israel] has managed to build a robust democracy."

But nothing about squillions in American aid and ordnance.

There's the - wait for it - "only democracy in the Middle East."

But no reference to the Great Gerrymander of 1948 which produced hundreds of thousands (now millions) of de-nationalised and disenfranchised Palestinian exiles.

There's a "flourishing oasis in the desert."

But no uprooted Palestinian orchards.

There's "extremists that constantly seek to torpedo any attempt at peace [and who] want to deny the simple pleasure of co-existence to Jews and Arabs who simply want quiet, normal lives for their children."

But no names. No Ben Gurion, Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, Olmert etc.

There's an imaginary siege: "At 62, Israel is still surrounded by external threats."

But no siege of Gaza.

There's a "tragic [- tragic! -] deadlock with the Palestinians."

But no Israeli refusal to allow Palestinian refugees to return or to end the occupation.

There's "Israel's [alleged] desire for a just peace [which] has never diminished."

But not its actual desire for maximum Palestinian land with minimum Palestinian people.

Now I wouldn't like you leaving this post thinking Abramovich isn't capable of criticism where criticism's due. He is. And criticism doesn't get much more swingeing than this: "The Israeli people have never claimed perfection. Mistakes are inevitable in a democracy."

Conscripting Gandhi

In his propaganda piece, Not the Gandhi of South Africa (The Australian - where else? - 11/7/08), Israel apologist Alan Gold (described as an "author" and "delegate to the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa") takes the sjambok to Nelson Mandela.

"I received an email from a SA friend," he tells us, "who has long been mystified by the international reverence of Mandela." Gold is equally mystified, considering that Mandela "was one of the leaders of the African National Congress, who created an armed wing called the Umkhonto we Sizwe or Spear of the Nation, which was dedicated to bombing civilian, industrial, military and government targets. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has accused it of torture and executions without due process. And far from being a prisoner of conscience... Mandela was jailed for advocating the violent overthrow of the government." He also, according to Gold, "refused to publicly denounce terrorism as a weapon." In brief, concludes Gold, Mandela is not the Gandhi of South Africa - who "showed the world that non-violent non-co-operation is a far deadlier weapon than bombs and bullets."

Put to one side Gold's failure to place Mandela's 'terrorism' in the context of the greater terrorism of the white supremacist regime. Put to one side the spectacle of an advocate for the state of Israel, a state which has been raining "bombs and bullets" on the indigenous people of Palestine since its inception, which was apartheid South Africa's staunchest friend and ally, and which is, in fact, today's sole remaining apartheid state (See my 14/6/08 post, A Certain Jewish Tree Planting Group), condemning the champion of a people who suffered and died under another rain of "bombs and bullets," many of them from Israeli arsenals. The double standard is standard for Zionist propagandists. It's the chutzpah of conscripting Gandhi, of all people, in the service of his 'cause' that interests me.

What did the Mahatma think of the project to turn Arab Palestine into a Jewish state? The following is taken from G H Jansen's Zionism, Israel & Asian Nationalism, pp 169- 173:-
"... the Zionists tried and failed to gain the friendship of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of modern India... The Zionists did not pursue Gandhi merely because he was an influence in Asia, rather because he had a large following in the West... He was, after all considered a saint by many, and his endorsement of Zionism would have given the movement a certain moral and ethical weight. But no such endorsement, or even an expression of sympathy with Zionist aims, was forthcoming from him. Gandhi totally rejected the idea of Zionism which produced the state of Israel. His opposition remained consistent over a period of nearly 20 years and remained firm despite the skilful and varied application to him of that combination of pressure and persuasion known as lobbying.

"The Mahatma's wholly negative reaction to Zionism may surprise some people who would assume that the man who strove to win equality for India's outcasts would, out of compassion, be moved into a position of sympathy for the Jews, the outcasts of European Gentile society, and consequently of support for the Jewish State. This did not happen for 2 reasons.

"First, Gandhi believed in seeing all sides of a question; it followed that the Mahatma would reject the idea of establishing the Jewish State in Arab Palestine without consideration for the native inhabitants, even though the Jews in Europe were being persecuted.

"Secondly, the Zionists who approached Gandhi did not succeed in linking in the mind of the Mahatma the fate of European Jewry with the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. His assessment of the problem of anti-Semitism and Jewish survival in Europe was based on his own experience with non-violence, first in South Africa, then in India, and on his belief in a multi-religious society...

"In [an] article [in his magazine Harijan on November 26, 1938], Gandhi wrote that his sympathies were all with the Jews, whom he had known intimately in South Africa and some of whom had become life-long companions... But this sympathy should not obscure the requirements of justice. Gandhi thought that the Jews, like other peoples of the earth, should insist upon making their home in their country of birth, instead of demanding a country belonging to other people. '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. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. 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. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French...'

"Gandhi admitted that the German persecution of the Jews had no parallel in history... But [he] prescribed an alternative to violence against the Nazis: defiant, non-violent resistance on the part of the German Jews. 'If I were a Jew and were born in Germany, and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest Gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon. I would refuse to be expelled or submit to discriminating treatment'...

"The Mahatma's post-war attitude was summed up in a conversation he had with Louis Fischer, in which the Mahatma stated that the Jews of Germany had made the mistake of submitting passively to Hitler... the Jews should not have offered themselves to the butcher's knife; 'they should have thrown themselves into the sea' and committed harikiri rather than submit. When Fischer asked if Gandhi meant that the Jews should have committed collective suicide, Gandhi replied: 'That would've been heroism. It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to the evils of Hitler's violence, especially in 1938, before the war. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions'.

"Lest it be thought too harsh a judgement it should be noted that when, concurrently with the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Israeli Government arranged educational displays on 'the holocaust' in Israeli schools, the younger generation of Israelis was neither moved nor impressed but merely enquired, with shame and indignation, why the German Jews had not fought back."