Unearthed Gandhi WWII letter wishes Jews 'era of peace'

On the same day World War II broke out in Europe, Mahatma Gandhi wrote a short Jewish New Year greeting to a local Indian Jewish official, offering ominous good wishes to his "afflicted people."
"You have my good wishes for your new year," Gandhi wrote to Avraham Shohet, the head of the Bombay Zionist Association, on Sept. 1, 1939. "How I wish the new year may mean an era of peace for your afflicted people."
"My sympathies are all with the Jews," Gandhi wrote in a 1938 article in his Harijan publication. "If there ever could be a justifiable war, in the name of and for humanity, war against Germany to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war."

Gandhi was equally coy about supporting Jewish aspirations for independence in the Holy Land, saying the Jews should engage only in non-violence against the Arabs and "offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them."