Friday, September 19, 2008

Great Moments In The History Of Pacifism: Gandhi's Love Letters to Hitler




From Front Page Magazine:


On September 25, five American religious organizations plan to host a Ramadan dinner for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his upcoming visit to the United States. These include the Mennonite Central Committee, the Quakers, the World Council of Churches, and Religions for Peace. How is it that these Christian “peace” organizations are willing to break bread with a declared warmonger and Holocaust denier? An answer lies in the troubling history of these organizations – a history that includes a shameful alliance with Nazi Germany during World War II.

The pacifist-Nazi axis dates to the 1930s. None other than the worldwide spokesman for non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi, wrote letters to Adolph Hitler that were deferential in their tone and abhorrent in their implications. A 1939 letter was apologetically described by Gandhi as a “mere impertinence” and included the following signoff: “I anticipate your forgiveness, if I have erred in writing to you. I remain, Your sincere friend, Sd. M. MK Gandhi.” In a letter dated December 24, 1940, Gandhi assured Hitler that he had no doubt of “your bravery or devotion to your fatherland.”

Zionist appeals for Gandhi to support a national home for the Jewish people, meanwhile, fell on deaf ears, as he insisted that “Palestine belongs to the Arabs.” Not only did Gandhi reject the cause of a Jewish state but he effectively echoed Nazi propaganda, as with his warning that “this cry for the national home affords a colorable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.”

Even more supportive of Hitler were the Mennonites. In a letter dated September 10, 1933, the Conference of East and West Prussian Mennonites from the German city-state of Danzig wrote to the Fuhrer to express its “deep gratitude for the powerful revival that God has given our nation through your energy” and wished Hitler a “joyful cooperation in the up building of our Fatherland through the power of the Gospel.”

If its enthusiasm for hosting Ahmadinejad is any guide, the Mennonite Church has learned little from this dark chapter in its past. On the contrary, the church’s alliance with the Iranian leader is an extension of its hard-line anti-Israel politics, which find expression in its funding of books advocating the so-called “right-of-return” for Palestinian Arabs – a policy that, if implemented, would mean the destruction of Israel.

One finds a similar antagonism for the Jewish State in the activism of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the “peace” arm of the Quakers. As an example of what it calls “Quaker values in action,” the AFSC includes its campaigns to “challenge” American support for Israel. A supporter of the PLO, the AFSC not only backs radical anti-Israel groups like Zochrot but opposes Israel’s attempts to defend itself against Palestinian terrorism. That the Quakers are now willing to sit down to dinner with the man who has openly called for Israel to be wiped off the global map should not be entirely surprising.

By any reasonable standard, self-styled peace activists might be expected to condemn leaders who support terrorism and who unashamedly seek the destruction of other nations. But just as advocates of non-violence found a way to accommodate the genocidal designs of Adolph Hitler, so they have been willing to make peace with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And just as Gandhi never expressed remorse for his “dear friend” letters to Hitler, its unlikely that these supposed believers in non-violence will break a dinner date with his Iranian heir.

16 comments:

Damien said...

Pastorius,

This goes a long way to show the danger of wishful thinking and how the peace at any price crowd really wants peace at any price!

Pastorius said...

Hey Damien,
How are you doing?

You've been quiet lately.

Damien said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Damien said...

Pastorius,

I've been doing okay. I just had a lot of work to do and I had to get my mind off of some of the unpleasantness for a while. Thanks for your concern.

Pastorius said...

This is unpleasant stuff.

Damien said...

Pastorius,

Yeah, but I do appreciate what you guys are doing. Someone has to do it.

Pastorius said...

Thanks, Damien.

One time about two years back, I found myself sitting at the breakfast table, calmly eating eggs, bacon, and pancakes, and all the while, I was staring at a computer screen with a photo of a woman who had been beaten to a bloody pulp by a band of marauding, raping, and pillaging Muslim men in Sweden.

I stepped back for a second and realized that I had become completely desensitized to the stuff I put in my mind. If I could eat breakfast and gaze at that woman's bloodied, pulpy face, there had to be something a little bit wrong with me.

I considered quitting.

But, I have decided that I have to do this. Everyone else burns out.

I just accept my desensitization as my battle wounds.

Other men and women have to put up with far worse.

At least I can sit here in my nice home, with my nice family, and eat bacon and eggs. So what if I have almost no feeling for what I do anymore.

Well, no feeling other than perpetual outrage.

Anyway, maybe readers could understand, then, why I can be such an asshole at times.

I don't think I started out this way.

If you read back to my CUANAS blog back in April 2004, the voice in which I wrote was completely different.

Damien said...

Pastorius,

You peaked my curiosity.

Anonymous said...

Ah, so it was that iconic photo of the blonde with the blood-splattered face that did it for you.

Well, welcome to the cold-hearted mofo club.

Epaminondas said...

I really can't begrudge true pacifists and true Christians carrying thru to the ultimate end of their ideals.

It is up to the rest of us to ceaselessly point out that these ideals are meant for those of us who don't restrain them, and that others, whose ideas see them viewed as fools, future victims, and future 2nd class citizens - will eventually ignore as insignificant anything they have to say, think or believe ...while those beliefs are being exterminated, along with their children's ability to adhere to them.

BTW
Nobody burns out.
Everybody plays.
It's that some people don't realize it.

Pastorius said...

Anonymous,

The picture of the chick with the blood-spattered face didn't do anything to me and that is the point. I felt nothing, except the intellectual apprehension that I OUGHT to be outratged.

Pastorius said...

Epa,

You ought to try to turn that into a saying.

That is wisdom.

Anonymous said...

Fatigue and desensitization is temporary. Intensity of empathy for individual victims, as in the example of the pulped female rape victim made public on the web by Fjordman, weakens as similar images become daily fare. Outrage or empathy may be pushed aside for the sake of temporary respite.

But it IS temporary as evident in the immediate reaction to daily jihad. That gut stabbing sensation provokes one to periodically state his opposition with the most intense commentary one can muster against Islamic infiltration.

Proof is exhibited each time long absent familiar posters show up with piercing commentary - desensitization is temporary - survival instinct is not.

[ . . ]
=\o/=

Pastorius said...

Anonyouse,
Well put. And, yes, you are correct, it was the photos of the blonde from Fjordman's post to which I am referring.

Let me be clear, thought, that those photos are not what desensitized me. They are simply the thing that made me realized that I was desensitized.

The single event, which crystalized my wrath into an unending sense of will against Islam, was the 7/7 bombings in London.

I spent time in that neighborhood, and my experience there has convinced me that the entire Muslim community was complicit in those bombings.

When I realized that I became convinced that we have very few friends who self-identify as Muslims.

That is tragic, but we must face facts.

The Undercover Mosque video provided the hard evidence for what I am saying. Lord Ahmed, the highest ranking Muslim member of Parliament tells us that mosque is the height of moderation, but some infidel gets it in their mind to carry a camera into the mosque, and what do we find?

It is the opposite.

So, even Lord Ahmed is in on the conspiracy of silence (Omerta - to keep with my ongoing Islam is racketeering analogy).

Muslims are like the people in the bad neighborhood who know the gang members who killed the kid in the driveby, but none of them will turn the gang in, because they are afraid, and in some sense they even identify with the gang more than the authorities.

Islamic civilization, wherever it exists on our Earth, is sick. And, it needs to be stopped.

Anonymous said...

Pastorius stated: "I spent time in that neighborhood, and my experience there has convinced me that the entire Muslim community was complicit in those bombings."

EXACTLY!! . . .the entire Muslim community IS and REMAINS complicit - as demonstrated yet again - in response to the mass distribution of "OBSESSION".

The indignant outrage emanating from the Islamic community is not aimed towards the 'aberrations' of Islamic piety exhibited in the DVD. Since the release of "Obsession" there exists not one example of the broader muslim community addressing a single purveyor of the hate inciting sermons exhibited in Obsession.

They aim their fury at those who dare expose it. If that is not demonstrating massive complicity - nothing will.

[ . . ]
=\o/=

Pastorius said...

Their complicity is beyond our imagination. They know all those people in their mosques are preaching Jihad, and they all keep quiet about it.

All of them.

They are complicit in seditious activity.

When is the last time anyone heard of a Muslim coming out and sayin, "Seditious activity is going on at my Mosque"?