Just how unable are we to discuss Jews and their attitudes and behavior? An amazing admission from the Washington Post’s ombudsman recently tells it: very unable. As in, don’t even think about it, or you’ll lose your job.
Deborah Howell, in a Sunday center-of-the-page column, responded to the controversy surrounding an online column by Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, which was solicited by the Washington Post’s online “On Faith” website for reactions to the PBS series “The Jewish Americans” (no need to wonder about where that presentation was coming from, trust me). Gandhi? That’s right. The grandson of the Gandhi.
Gandhi’s sin? The question put to the panelists, of which he was a member (but now may be removed), was, “PBS is airing a series on ‘The Jewish Americans.’ We know what ‘Jewish identity’ has meant in the past. What will it mean in the future? How does a minority religion retain its roots and embrace change?” Gandhi’s response, said Howell, included the following:
Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the Holocaust experience… It is a very good example of how a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends…The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger. . . . The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak. . . . 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.
Needless to say, any suggestion that Jews have done anything untoward creates a hysterical reaction, even when the suggestor is the grandson of a veritable god of pacifism. Under Jewish pressure, Gandhi resigned from his post at the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at the University of Rochester. How’s that for Jewish commitment to peace?
As for Howell, she simply condemns Gandhi’s article, without any specific refutation, and declares that “the piece should not have been published.” End of story.
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But of course, for racially conscious whites and others, the Washington Post’s censorship of criticism of Jews is not the end of the story. The criticisms should be made, heard, and weighed for credibility. The course of action chosen by the Post — and those calling for Gandhi’s head — creates a dangerous corking of legitimate discussion. That same corking has contributed to unchecked policies of open immigration and Middle East warfare, both of which have hurt whites — to say nothing of Palestinian suffering.
Christopher Donovan is the pen name of an attorney and former journalist.