Mahatma Gandhi मोहनदास गांधी

In November 1938, a fortnight after Kristallnacht, he printed an article about the Jews. It contains two claims, and both must be quoted together. The first: "my sympathies are all with the Jews", the German persecution "has no parallel in history". The second: Palestine belongs to the Arabs, and it cannot be claimed by force of arms and English bayonets; to the Jews of Germany he recommended non-violent resistance where they were—to the point of readiness to die.

Martin Buber answered him in an open letter: non-violence presupposes an adversary with a conscience—and in Germany there was none. Gandhi did not reply. It is perhaps the hardest argument of the twentieth century about the limits of non-violence, and both sides of it are worth reading.