Chronicles of Mahatma Jimmy
In the course of an extraordinarily productive day yesterday, the new York Sun's Daniel Freedman advanced the story of Jimmy Carter's 1987 support for the return of a deported SS concentration camp guard, discussed by former Justice Department attorney Neal Sher in a detailed column last month. Yesterday morning Dan noted the Arutz Sheva story based on an interview with Sher. I cautioned Dan against relyling on Sher's word alone and urged him to obtain and provide the ocular proof.
Then Dan obtained and provided what appears to be the ocular proof. He obtained and posted a copy of the letter with the handwritten note apparently added by Carter here. Finally, he wrote today's Sun story: "President Carter interceded on behalf of former Nazi guard."
The Carter Center did not respond to Dan's call for comment yesterday. Assuming the note is in fact Carter's, I think that it represents something significant beyond Carter's professed humanitarian motives. Recall Carter's unceasing respect and regard for Yasser Arafat. Put it in the context of Carter's hostility to Israel on display in Carter's current book.
Carter seems to me to have something in common with Mahatma Gandhi, an admirer of Hitler who offered Carter-like advice to the Jews of Germany, complete with a South African twist:
Having rejected both the plea that Palestine should be offered as a place of refuge for the Jews and the idea that the Western democracies should launch a war to overthrow Hitler, Gandhi offered only one avenue for the Jews to resist their persecution while preserving their “self-respect.” Were he a German Jew, Gandhi pronounced, he would challenge the Germans to shoot or imprison him rather than “submit to discriminating treatment.” Such “voluntary” suffering, practiced by all the Jews of Germany, would bring them, he promised, immeasurable “inner strength and joy.” Indeed, “if the Jewish mind could be prepared” for such suffering, even a massacre of all German Jews “could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy,” since “to the God-fearing, death has no terror.”See also Larry Arnn's comparison of Gandhi and Churchill: "The person of the century." Reader William Katz also directs us to Joshua Muravchik's timely Commentary essay: "Our worst ex-president." I hope later to pursue the comparison of Carter and Gandhi in this regard with some expert assistance.According to Gandhi, it would (for unexplained reasons) be “easier for the Jews than for the Czechs” (then facing German occupation) to follow his prescription. As inspiration, he offered “an exact parallel” in the campaign for Indian civil rights in South Africa that he had led decades earlier. Through their strength of suffering, he promised, “the German Jews will score a lasting victory over the German Gentiles in the sense that they will have converted [them] to an appreciation of human dignity.” And the same policy ought to be followed by Jews already in Palestine enduring Arab pogroms launched against them: if only they would “discard the help of the British bayonet” for their defense, and instead “offer themselves [to the Arabs] to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger,” the Jews would win a favorable “world opinion” regarding their “religious aspiration.”
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