The president of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at the University of Rochester resigned Thursday amid criticism of a short opinion piece he wrote for The Washington Post online titled “Jewish Identity Can’t Depend on Violence.”
Penned by Arun Gandhi, the fifth grandson of Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi, the article was widely condemned. The essay was first posted on Jan. 7 on WashingtonPost.com’s On Faith blog, a commentary consortium of some of the world’s leading religious scholars. The blog’s editors, Sally Quinn and Jon Meacham published an apology today (Jan 18).
“As ‘On Faith’ readers know, a post by Arun Gandhi on January 7 has produced an enormous response from readers who found Gandhi’s initial remarks anti-Semitic and his subsequent apology insufficient,” the apology states. “When we undertook this project over a year ago, we wrote that our goal was to shed light on a subject”
Gandhi, who is in India, could not be reached for comment. His three-paragraph article, published Jan. 7, accused Jews of using the Holocaust to promote a culture of violence.
Gandhi was expected to return next week to meet with the Seligman and board of the Institute for Nonviolence.
Source: www.jewishjournal.com
Date: Jan 18, 2008
By Brad A. Greenberg
