The Limits Of Non-Violence

Fascinating Social Affairs Unit review by Christie Davies of the current National Portrait Gallery "World's Most Photographed" exhibition.

The reviewer looks at the photos of Kennedy, Hitler and Gandhi, but it's this aside which struck me.

When in 1938 leading Jews wrote to Gandhi for support he replied that they should challenge the Germans to shoot or imprison them rather than submit to "discriminatory treatment". Voluntary suffering would bring them "inner strength and joy" and if they were all massacred it would be a lasting victory for it would bring the Nazis to "an appreciation of human dignity". As for those who had escaped to Palestine, well they should "offer themselves to the Arabs to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger".

Gandhi had the good fortune to grow up and live in the British Empire, first in South Africa and then India, rather than in Germany or the then German Empire. On his visits to England he was able to address mill-workers, journalists, the great and the good of Britain.

The last time large numbers of people in England were massacred because of who they were rather than what they did was probably during the Saxon (and perhaps Danish) invasions, when the native population of what is now England was ethnically cleansed. Even William I's infamous Harrying of the North was based on a need to crush armed revolt.

Alas, while Hitler may or may not have had an appreciation of human dignity, he didn't consider the Jews to be human. And the fate of Jewish mothers and children is a fair guide to what would happen were the fate of Israel to rest with the Arab nation.