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Elie Wiesel's Wrong Move on Peace
Elie Wiesel, the noted Nobel Peace Laureate and Holocaust survivor, has provoked a serious row with an open letter to President Barak Obama published last month in The International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. His opinion was strongly rebuked by Yossi Sarid, a former member of Knesset, and by a group of notable Jewish leaders and academicians who live in Jerusalem.
“There is no more moving prayer in Jewish history than the one expressing our yearning to return to Jerusalem. To many theologians, it IS Jewish history, to many poets, a source of inspiration. It belongs to the Jewish people and is much more than a city, it is what binds one Jew to another in a way that remains hard to explain, “said Mr. Wiesel in his letter.
Latter he added, “Today, for the first time in history, Jews, Christians and Muslims all may freely worship at their shrines. And, contrary to certain media reports, Jews, Christians and Muslims ARE allowed to build their homes anywhere in the city. The anguish over Jerusalem is not about real state but about memory.”
In an open letter published in Haaretz, Yosse Sarid stated, “Someone has deceived you, my dear friend. Not only may an Arab not build “anywhere,” but he may thank his god if he is not evicted from his home and thrown out onto the street with his family and property. Perhaps you have heard about Arab residents in Sheikh Jarrah, having lived there since 1948, who are again being uprooted and made refugees because certain Jews are chafing from Jerusalem’s space constraints.”
“Those same jealous Jews insist on inserting themselves like so many bones in the throats of Arab neighborhoods, purifying and Judaizing them with the help of rich American benefactors, several of whom you may know personally. Behind the scenes our prime minister and Jerusalem’s mayor are pulling the strings of this puppet show while in public deflecting responsibility for this lawlessness and greed. That is the real reason for the ‘new and old tensions surfacing at a disturbing pace’ of which you warn in your letter.”
“’Jerusalem is above politics’ you write. It is unfortunate that a man of your standing must confuse fundamental issues and confound the reader. Is it not politics that deals with mankind’s weightiest issues, with matters of war and peace, life and death? And is life itself not holier than historical rights, than national and personal memory – holier even than Jerusalem? The living always take precedence over the dead, as must the present and future over the past.”
Writing in The New York Review of Books, a group of 100 prominent Israelis write,
“…Your letter troubles us, not simply because it is replete with factual errors and false representations, but because it upholds an attachment to some otherworldly city that purports to supersede the interest of those who live in the this-worldly one. For every Jew, you say, a visit to Jerusalem is a homecoming, yet it is our commitment that makes your homecoming possible. We prefer the hardship of realizing citizenship in this city to the convenience of merely yearning for it.”
…”We invite you to our city to view with your own eyes the catastrophic effects of the frenzy of construction. You will witness that, contrary to some media reports, Arabs are not allowed to build their homes anywhere in Jerusalem. You will see the gross inequality in allocation of municipal resources and services between east and west. We will take you to Sheikh Jarrah, where Palestinian families are being evicted from their homes to make room for a new Jewish neighborhood, and to Silwan, where dozens of houses face demolition because of the Jerusalem Municipality’s refusal to issue building permits to Palestinians.”
“We, who live in Jerusalem, can no longer be sacrificed for the fantasies of those who love our city from afar. The Jerusalem of this world must be shared by the people of the two nations residing in it. Only a shared city will live up to the prophet’s vision: ‘Zion shall be redeemed with justice.’ As we chant weekly in our vigils in Sheikh Jarrah: ‘Nothing can be holy in an occupied city!’”
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Show All“'Those same jealous Jews insist on inserting themselves like so many bones in the throats of Arab neighborhoods, purifying and Judaizing them with the help of rich American benefactors, several of whom you may know personally. Behind the scenes our prime minister and Jerusalem’s mayor are pulling the strings of this puppet show while in public deflecting responsibility for this lawlessness and greed. That is the real reason for the "new and old tensions surfacing at a disturbing pace" of which you warn in your letter.'”
This statement may be the most elegant and articulate description of the situation in Israel that I've read.
Congratulations to Mr. Sand and the group of 100 Jewish citizens of Israel for responding to Wiesel's bullshit (Wiesel is one of the most overrated writers around).
Such responses to hasbaric nonsense from Jews of good conscience are the reason that I do not use the term 'Jew' or 'Jewish' when criticizing the Zionists whose greatest crime is their appropriation of Judaism's good name to justify ethnic cleansing and murder.
q
Wiesel is one of the most overrated *people* around.
For him, the Shoah is concurrently a spiked club of infinite durability, a shield from all assault however grounded, and an mantle of self-righteousness and ethnic superiority that will never wear out. The Shoah justifies all claims, excuses all excesses.
I find him vile.
Wiesel is a professional Holocaust survivor. He's built a lucrative career out of the Holocaust; is a pillar of the Holocaust industry.
Yes indeed! Ury Avnery has actually called him a "professional holocaust survivor".
Yup. Vile indeed. He is CEO of the whole Holocaust industry.
I think the correct spelling of his name is WEASEL...or it should be.
Excellent response to the annoyingly tiresome Weisel.
I was shocked to learn the other day that my son, an eighth grade public school student in the great state of Texas, was being forced to read Wiesel and was otherwise being indoctrinated in his school into a completely pro-Zionist point of view. My son is very well-read for a 13-year-old and immediately and resolutely rejected Wiesel's BS and all the associated BS praising Wiesel, but he said that virtually all of his fellow students swallowed it whole. That was disturbing.
Note that the 100 prominent Israelis criticising Wiesel criticize his political statement regarding Jerusalem, NOT his body of work on the Holocaust. Isn't it just possible that Wiesel's writing on the Holocaust can be considered separate from his point of view regarding Jerusalem? Much of the response here is to criticize Wiesel's body of work itself as 'Zionist propaganda', rather than criticize his political stance, and these critical comments are mostly juvenile ("Wiesel is a weasel") and without any substantive commentary on his actual literary work.
And its not like we're talking about a guy who writes books about gardening. He writes books about the most horrible expression of racism, corporatism, and totalitarianism in history! So perhaps a little more substantive discussion is in order here.
Kivals wrote this disturbing sentence: "My son is very well-read for a 13-year-old and immediately and resolutely rejected Wiesel's BS and all the associated BS praising Wiesel"
You write of 'Wiesel's BS and all the associated BS praising Wiesel' and seem to be referring to his writing on Zionism and Israeli, when his work mostly concerns the genocide of Europe's Jews. I'm going to assume 'Zionism' is what you are calling BS, that you are not calling the Holocaust BS, but choose your words more carefully, because there are sadly large pockets of Jew-hatred developing among critics of Israel. Holocaust denial is no longer the exclusive property of white supremicists; some critics of Israel, mostly opportunists like the President of Iran, openly endorse it now. And sadly I see it showing up sometimes in the comments sections of leftist and supposedly pro-peace websites.
Kivals also referred to being assigned to read Weisel as being indoctrinated into 'a completely pro-Zionist point of view.' Kivals please explain what book your son was assigned to read and how it is Zionist propaganda. What exactly was it that your sons fellow students swallowed whole, and what 'bs' didn't he believe? Was it that Jerusalem is the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish people (which IS bs) or was it that Europeans killed 1 out of 3 Jewish persons on the planet in just a few years?
To simply recognize the horror of the holocaust doesn't mean you endorse any kind of Zionism. In fact, it is essential for anyone who fights fascism and racism to study and understand the holocaust, just as it is essential to study and understand the Nakba.
If you have educated yourself on the Nakba, and if you have opposed Israel's racist and illegal tactics remember this: you ever find yourself bristling instead of sympathizing when you hear of Jewish victimization during WWII, then you better check yourself. IF YOU USE RACISM (JUDENHASS/JEW-HATRED/ANTI-SEMITISM) TO FIGHT RACISM (ISRAEL'S OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE) THEN YOU ARE STILL PROMOTING RACISM.
He writes books about the most horrible expression of racism, corporatism, and totalitarianism in history!
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*Recent* history, possibly? In the 13th c., the Mongols killed everyone they came across who wasn't a Mongol, which was a good few more than 6M.
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there are sadly large pockets of Jew-hatred developing among critics of Israel.
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I'm as certain as I can be that this is a function of the Zionist demand that the interests of Zionism be treated as the interests of Jews coupled with the really horrible number of Jews who take for granted (I try to be charitable and presume it's unthinkingly) that "Israel has a right to exist [on Palestinian land]".
If you were more familiar with CD and its comment threads regarding issues concerning Israel or Zionism, you would understand how improbable it would be to find a comment here questioning the existence of the Holocaust and how likely it would be to find comments describing the dishonesty and shamelessness of shielding Israel's policies from criticism by constantly bringing up the Holocaust. Given this environment, it would be a waste of time for me to explain that neither I nor my son was questioning the Holocaust or Wiesel's descriptions of it.
Oh, and my son tells me the Wiesel piece that he was objecting to was his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in which he basically said that Israel can do no wrong.
Kivals, excellent response!
Although i did find my share of antisemitism on this site in the past year, to be honest. It actually made my skin crawl.
That is the truth.
rita
Excellent post Socialist Jew. And Kivals also gave an excellent response to it.
As a Jew myself, who has been enraged by zionism for years, i understand. And i do see israel as fostering antisemitism quite intentionally for reasons too numerous to list at this moment in my exhausted state.
The most obvious is to give it legitimacy.
Well-stated response to Wiesel's arrogance and bigotry concerning Jerusalem.
My father, 50 years ago, pointed out the venal maliciousness of Elie Wiesel.
Elie Wiesel was never about peace. Elie Wiesel is just about revenge. Like Obama's "peace prize," Wiesal's was just another shameful act by that corrupt and idiotic Nobel Peace Prize committee. May they never hand out another one of those political fetishes.
It is Elie Wiesel and Israelis who have tarnished the memories of the Holocaust. Since when did there exist a God who encouraged ignorance, forgetfulness and vengence?
Zionist fanatics like Weisel have long since forsaken the traditional values of Judaism, or common human decency for that matter, in favor of their new religion, Israelism. Any lie will do if it is in support of the Jewish state. Let's not kid ourselves, Weisel is not "misinformed." His lies are premeditated and calculated to misinform others in order to promote the Zionist colonization of Palestine.
What a nice surprise! Wiesel-irreverence is more "mainstream" than I'd realized, judging from the comments so far.
I don't remember when I first became aware of Wiesel, but after a short while, I began to instinctively distrust his status as a heroic iconic Holocaust Survivor and arch-spokesman for its victims.
I noticed that Wiesel often trotted out, or was trotted out, to provide definitive statements on Zionist-related issues as if he were an amalgamation of Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.
Norman Finkelstein's "The Holocaust Industry" confirmed my suspicion that there was less to Wiesel than met the eye. It answers the question, "Who died and put YOU in charge?"
Several years back I went to see Wiesel speak in Denver... a very large venue and a large crowd.... I'm not sure but I think it was a Holocaust Memorial week event of some kind. At any rate, he gave a most inspiring talk about tolerance, kindness and other things that had me nearly bursting with wanting to interject... 'what about the Palestinians.... aren't they human, TOO? Don't they suffer too?... Can you really not even SEE them as real people who actually matter?' --but a young man in the audience--an audience obviously quite pro-zionist in ideology---beat me to it. He had the temerity to ask a couple brief questions of that nature. It was as though a taboo curse word had been used in polite company and the question was literally ignored... utterly as though it never happened. Mr. Wiesel went on as before, but for myself and possibly others in that huge auditorium, was revealed to be just another limited human being with little capacity for complexity.
I think there is a psychological pathology in some who have formed a whole identity and cosmology of exclusivity and self-protection that cannot be penetrated with inconvenient realities or mature responsibilities to anything or anyone outside a small cocoon of perceived safety.... How it is that some Jews--even Holocaust survivors---are able to avoid succumbing to the delusions of being forever stuck in the fears of the past as if encased in amber like a specimen of victimhood? I think it's a matter of open-heartedness and open-mindedness that enables them to move beyond the stuckness of victimhood and recognize the humanness in the feared 'other'. I pity those who remain stuck in that trap of blind deadness--or, worse, hatred, while the whole of life awaits to be embraced and lived.
Two recent events spring to mind to illustrate this... a Palestinian 'Remember the Nakba' photo exhibit/talk where a Palestinian man felt the need to pass his father's Palestinian passport around the room just to prove that there once was an actual Palestinian state... that his people really did and still do exist... Christian, Muslim and Jew were all there, as were those unaffiliated with any religion, just offering their support-- ... and then just this week a talk at the University of Denver by a Col. Gruber of the IDF, lecturing about "Ethics in the Field". The talk rapidly degenerated into an ongoing argument between the lecturer and his handful of ardent supporters and those in the audience who wanted to call Mr. Gruber on his adherence to a view of reality that was clearly not shared by many. It was painfully apparent to anyone present how there is a vast chasm between those willing to view Palestinians as a culture worthy of EXISTING and those who regard them as belligerently in the way of a dream of settlement expansion that has no room in it to inquire how the colonization of an already settled land can possibly be less than enthusiastically welcome... or accomplished 'ethically' utilizing tanks, guns, white phosphorus, billions in US tax funds, the building of enormous apartheid walls and legitimizing of capricious deportations, evictions, checkpoints and arrests ---let alone murderous bombings.
Friends, if we human beings can figure this out--- how to live in peace without the insistence upon a fearful, fearsome hierarchy of domination by economic and military force--- it will be no less an achievement than the invention and spread of language or the discovery of fire.
Sioux Rose
MATANGICITA: Wise, powerful, and articulate post. Your conclusion is luminous.
Glad to see you back!
I am deeply moved by and grateful for the eloquence (and, unfortunately it must be said, courage) of Jews, in Jerusalem or elsewhere, who write as those quoted here do.
Thanks to all of you.
"Such responses to hasbaric nonsense from Jews of good conscience are the reason that I do not use the term 'Jew' or 'Jewish' when criticizing the Zionists whose greatest crime is their appropriation of Judaism's good name to justify ethnic cleansing and murder."
Good on you quickstepper.
"And perhaps that helps explain the lethargy of the typical American Jew when it comes to *actively* challenging the wrongs of Israel (instead of paying lip service to the notion that "something isn't right over there' but going along to get along with their Jewish peer group)? There are lots of Jewish people in my neighborhood, but the local mainstream Jewish organizations uttered nary a peep against Cast Lead - in fact, actively supported it."
yohocoma, polls have shown that American jews are not all that loyal to Israel...
http://www.israelpolicyforum.org/analysis/finding-new-voice-american-jews-and-peace-process
Zionism hurts Jew and Arab alike.
Something i just remembered.
A few years ago, Kofi Anan was speaking a Yad Vashem in tel aviv during holocaust rememberance day. Many internationals were there.
Weisel strongly objected when in his speech, Anan referred to the holocaust as a (i forget the word), but something like a poignant and powerful experience of 'man's inhumanity to man'.
He said that it is *not* an example of man's inhumanity to man. He was offended by it's being put into that category.
Wow! It spoke volumes to me. He is so invested in it. He doesn't want to get over it. by the way. He has a new novel that just came out.
In Taos NM Elie Wiesel's "Night" is classified as fiction in the local library. My published Creative Non-Fiction instructor had listed it as non-fiction, and I tried reading it that way, without success. There is very little in the book that is based on experienced events, with the emphasis on created imagery that one is asked to believe as being true, although the majority is either second hand or imagined by the characters themselves.
In trying to understand how and why it was written I discovered that the book may very well have been "planted" by another who used Elie used to further a Zionist agenda. In that sense their does indeed seem to be grounds for Finkelstein's assertion of a "Holocaust industry".
Kudoos to all the Israelis who DO recognize the common thread of humanity, and see equal value in ALL human beings, and their right to be treated with dignity and respect. Many Israelis seem as much a captured by their ruling elite as folks here in the States.
yohocoma-How do you know that these "mainstream Jewish organizations" represent most Jews? That's like assuming that every Polish-American belongs to The Polish Falcons or that all Arab-Americans belong to CAIR.
"Jews have a special responsibility to disavow and challenge Israel's actions and ideological underpinnings - its whole murderous existence is carried on in their name."
I really don't think the sins of Israel should be laid at the feet of American Jews, especially when they don't seem to be really invested in Israel either way. Blame the elites. They're the ones playing chess in the Middle East and are the only people really benefitting from the bloodshed and chaos there.