I AM used to being called an 'anti-Semite' for my criticisms related to Israel. Pointing out that the Jewish state had a terrorist prime minister in Menachem Begin, or was far too brutal in its treatment of Palestinians, has made me the target of some heated column responses. .
Therefore, it did not surprise me when Arun Gandhi, grandson of India's spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi and president of a nonviolence institute, received criticism last week for a controversial, 'anti-Semitic' essay in "On Faith", a Washington Post religious blog. My first amendment sense did tingle, however, when Gandhi was forced to resign and apologize for his remarks.
In his original essay, Gandhi made three main claims. First, he argued that Jewish identity continues to be "locked into the Holocaust experience," where Jews overplay the experience "to the point that it begins to repulse friends," and expect the whole world to regret what happened to them. Second, he said that prospects for Jewish identity were bleak, because of Israel's aforementioned "anchor to the past" and dependence on "weapons and bombs" for survival. Third, he concluded strongly: "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."
Gandhi's comments were simplistic,, but they were not 'anti-Semitic. And simplistic comments should not lead to resignations, apologies or retractions in a liberal democratic nation.On Faith's editor, David Waters, felt the piece was "controversial and inflammatory, but a lot of what we publish is, given the wide range of conversation on this site." Water's boss, Hal Straus, , was reported by the Washington Post as saying, "I read the piece as being a pacifist's critique of Israel's policy, not an anti-Semite's criticism of Jews
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