Gandhi on Jews. Part 3: Israel, A Culture Of Violence & Love Hugs

“Like a cancer cell that spreads through the body, this regime infects any region. It must be removed from the body.” Ahmadinejad said on comparison of Israel to cancer. Then, following his obsession (a magnificent one as Douglas Sirk’s film title with Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson) with anatomy of the human body, he declared: “This entity [Israel] can be compared to a kidney transplanted in a body that rejected it.”  “Yes, it will collapse [Israel] and its end will be near.”, he said once categorically. His physical obsession went even further when he consoled Hugo Chavez‘s mother with a hug! After that moment was captured by photographers, a clergy in Tehran had the occurrence to affirm: “We know that no unrelated women can be touched unless she is drowning at sea.”

While words can never fully express how much someone means to us, body language can still provide comfort and solace following the death of a loved one. “So death is at work in us, but life in you.” (2 Corinthians 4:12)
He showed his soft side to the world by giving a love hug. A photo of lifeguard Iranian former President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “Almondnutjob”, in a sea of sorrows, holding the hand of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s mother and appearing to brush his face against her cheek. The Iranian government tried to deflect the criticism by claiming the photograph was faked. A group of extremists telling an extremist who is mourning another extremist that he’s being too extreme in the wrong direction, or not extreme enough in the right direction?

Maybe that’s why the driving force behind contemporary anti-Semitism is such unhealthy obsession of many Muslim communities against the human body.

It is difficult to find an example of another country in the world that face so much multiplicity and variety of constant menace. This fixation usually involves prejudicial, brainless and sometimes vitriolic condemnation of the Jewish state, with absurd characterizations of Israel as an apartheid nation that tortures Palestinian Arab children. Israel confront several existential threats on a daily basis like rockets, terrorists, organizations, cyber attacks, internal problems and mainly external military dangers from hostile regimes who wants to exterminate the whole country population out of existence. For hundreds of years, Jews depended on pity; they had no land and no army, and what they got in return were inquisitions, pogroms and the Nazi genocide. The Holocaust also taught them that freedom and justice come to those who are prepared to fight for them.

But said the above, does militant non-violence works when one of the parties to a conflict considers the other infra-human, no different from a lifeless object and does not recognize its right to exist on earth?

One modern thinker pursuing such a path is David Shulman, an Israeli academic deeply influenced by Gandhi. He doesn’t realize just how patronizing he comes across towards the violent Palestinians who promote violence: They are wonderful, simple, innocent people whose struggle to eke out a meager living is cruelly sabotaged by a malevolent Israel. He is a professor of humanistic studies, and has said categorically: “…unless the Occupation ends, there will also, in the not so distant future, be no Jewish state.” He goes on to claim that Jews in Israel are paranoid idiots who just love to imagine a world full of terrible threats: “Like many Israelis, he [Netanyahu] inhabits a world where evil forces are always just about to annihilate the Jews, who must strike back in daring and heroic ways in order to snatch life from the jaws of death. I think that, like many other Israelis, he is in love with such a world and would reinvent it even if there were no serious threat from outside.”

A magnificent hug. Rock Hudson, wanting to be a Doctor is told that: “It will consume you, it will become an obsession, you will become a doctor, and when you do, it will be a Magnificent Obsession…” Dictators when they come to power have a tendency for paranoia and may share a combination of personality disorder traits such as intolerance, narcissism, anti-Semitism and sadism. Hugging each other may cure such symptoms, not only benefits mentally diminishing stress to the hugger and the huggee equally, also helps to lowers blood pressure. But if someone cannot find a human being nearby to give a hug…, just step to a nearby park, garden or forest; have you ever heard about hugging a tree? Trees are a good listener…, they act as a shock absorber…, plus they are the strongest buddy to lean on… (but don’t expect a hug back) In Iran, more than 13 per cent of the country is covered by forests, did you know that? Even, do you know that a major tourist attraction is a tree? Yes, it is not   “Almondnutjob”. It is called Sarv-e Abar-Kuh and it is over 4000 years old, the oldest living thing in Asia and the second oldest tree in the world! So why the heck there is so much fundamentalism up there? Because the actual President neither the former one, “Almondnutjob” (as it should be they who must lead by example), don’t hug trees! THIS IS A COURTESY CALL TO ALL EXTREMISTS OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN: PLEASE HUG TREES! Because life is short and at the end of the road “…health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.” (Herophilus).

When Jewish people asked for a national home, Gandhi said that would be in fact a reason to provide justification to the Nazis to expel them. He argued that the Jews should not attempt to form a homeland in historic Palestine:

“They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart. The same God rules the Arab heart who rules the Jewish heart. They can offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them. They will find the world opinion in their favor in their religious aspiration. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of nonviolence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.”

He may said that many years ago, but nowadays, Gandhi’s grandson, Arun, a mild-mannered 70 plus year old writer and peace activist, who until recently ran the MK Gandhi Institute of Peace and Non-Violence at the University of Rochester, New York, wrote in “On Faith”, a Washington Post-Newsweek blog: “[The Holocaust] is a very good example of how a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends… It seems to me the Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty, but the whole world must regret what happened… When an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on, the regret turns into anger.”

Arun Gandhi blamed “Israel and the Jews” for being the biggest players in creating “a culture of violence”. He instantly became a martyr for Palestine activists, even though Palestinians have, on the whole, steadfastly refused to adopt Gandhian non-violence against their “Israeli occupiers”. He said: “Apparently, in the modern world, so determined to live by the bomb, this is an alien concept. You don’t befriend anyone, you dominate them. We have created a culture of violence (and Israel and the Jews are the prime instigators) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity.” His “magnificent” obsession with “the Jews” is truly bizarre, and it is this obsession that has turned this struggler for non-violence into an anti-Semite.

As the Swiss psychotherapist Carl Jung noted: “I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life.” Arun, David and “Almondnutjob” certainly they are affected by a polluted political ideology
which prevents them to see the tree of life in the forest. Life moves pretty fast, if they don’t stop and look around once in a while, they can miss it.

P.S.: If you just walk up to a tree and hug it immediately, that might be rude, so it’s probably good to talk to it first. Maybe say, “Hey, how ’bout a hug?”, and see how it goes from there. If you look for motivation examples during the days you struggle… for the moments where you may need that extra push… or in times of both weakness and strength, know that if Rex Harrison talked to animals, a tough man like Clint Eastwood can even talk to trees…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn8YubD01sk

And if you ask who made the trees, here Elvis tells you the answer… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jvtp-iDjXE

Trautman: Look John Gandhi Rambo, we can’t have you running around out there neglecting friendly Jews just… because of a chocolate dessert!
Rambo: They are not friendly civilians! They do not deserve a kitchen for their own.
Trautman: But I’m your friend John! At the time of the British I was there with you knee-deep in all that blood and guts. I covered your ass more than once.
Rambo: I wanted the Arab food to become popular, not the Jewish one. But they kept pushing for a cooking-range in that middle-east land Sir, they are chocoholics!
Trautman: Well, you have to understand that there’s nothing better than a good friend, except a good friend with chocolate…
Rambo: They cook spanish “Pescaíto frito” and eat sufganiyot with too much sugar which make me puke. Furthermore I prefer the doughnut just filled with strawberry and with vanilla ice-cream on top…
Trautman: Look Johnny, let me come in and get you the hell out of there!
Rambo: They drew first blood… I mean… chocolate syrup…They are creating a culture of violence cooking too deep-fried food. In choosing a dessert I won’t tolerate them to overshadow the Indian “Jalebi”. Les jeux sont faits; translation: The game is up; translation: I’ll not let even the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads…, to cook their own meals… I’m the righteous dude.
Trautman: John Gandhi Rambo, are you still reading me? ‘Jackdaw leader’ to ‘Birdie’! Rambo! Acknowledge!