July 6, 2016
An obvious and oft-sighted
criticism of the Nobel Peace Prize is just how many of its recipients have
virtually no connection to the cause of peace or its advancement. If anything,
often it seems a reward for its negation. Henry Kissinger, recipient in 1973,
would have to be the gold standard here. That very year saw Kissinger
orchestrate the destruction of democracy in Chile, and that was only after the
secret bombing of Cambodia was concluded. Of course, stretch it forward and
backward a couple of years and Kissinger’s trail of destruction extends from
Bangladesh to East Timor.
A few years later, Mother
Theresa made an odd choice given the extra pain deliberately inflicted on the
poor in her clinics and her support for Indira Gandhi’s suspension of civil
liberties. And in 1994 the triumvirate of Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and
Yitzhak Rabin can hardly be deemed inspiring. Barack Obama got the nod less
than a year into his presidency. It’s a good bet there are many in Pakistan,
Yemen, and Honduras that would question the wisdom of that selection.
The year 1986 saw the Nobel go
to recently deceased Elie Wiesel. Wiesel was famous for his novel/memoir Night
and for being, according to the Nobel Prize’s webpage, ‘the leading spokesman
on the Holocaust’, therefore seemingly by definition an alleged spokesman on
human rights. A quick scan through many of the obituaries written for Wiesel
the past couple of days show this quote from his Nobel acceptance speech given
prominent status:
I swore never to be silent
whenever human beings
Endure suffering and humiliation.
We must always
Take side. Neutrality helps
the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the
tormentor, never the tormented.
A noble sentiment indeed but
not one that seemed to inspire Wiesel to live up to his peace prize, in fact
evidence suggests Wiesel had a soft spot for war, at least war in the Middle
East. Four years before giving his acceptance speech of Israel’s 1982 invasion
of Lebanon, where even an Israel commission found the Israeli military
indirectly responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre, “I support
Israel-period. I identify with Israel-period.” When asked to comment of the
massacre: ‘I don’t think we should even comment’, then commenting he felt
‘sadness with Israel, not against Israel’ with nary a peep about the actual
victims. Some years later Wiesel would be wheeled into the spotlight by the
Bush administration to endorse the forthcoming invasion of Iraq. His statement
at the time read: ‘Isn’t war forever cruel, the ultimate form of violence….And
yet, this time I support President Bush’s policy of intervention when, as is
this case because of Hussein’s equivocations and procrastinations, no other
option remains’.
In the midst of another
Israeli operation in Lebanon, this one in 2006, Wiesel stood in front of a
crowd in Manhattan (along with then Senator Hillary Clinton) and declared
“Israel defends herself, and we must say to Israel ‘Go on defending yourself.’”
His final years didn’t slow him down. Wiesel took out a full page ad in
newspapers across the country during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict fully
supporting Israel’s effort (Human Rights Watch went on to document several
instances of war crimes by the Israeli military) without a syllable about
diplomacy except that ‘before diplomats can begin in earnest the crucial
business of rebuilding dialogue…the Hamas death cult must be confronted for
what it is’. That ad was criticized by a large group of Nazi holocaust
survivors in a subsequent ad in the New York Times which stated ‘Furthermore we
are disgusted and outrages by Elie Wiesel’s abuse of our history in these pages
to justify the unjustifiable: Israel’s wholesale effort to destroy Gaza and
murder more than 2000 Palestinians, including hundreds of children.’
If being consistently hawkish
on matters in the Middle East wasn’t enough for the press and governing elites
to question Wiesel’s peace credentials, after all there aren’t too many wars
the estates don’t get behind, it is hard to believe Wiesel wasn’t pushing his
luck with some of his pieces in the Times over the years. Consider his 2001
piece Jerusalem in My Heart. Wiesel began with the following:
As a Jew living in the United
States, I have long denied myself the right to intervene in Israel’s
internal debates. I consider Israel’s destiny as mine as well, since my memory
is bound up with its history. But the politics of Israel concern me only
indirectly.
Strange as it was to be
claiming neutrality not only in the face of his constant support for wars
involving Israel and in light of his famous stand of neutrality as evil, Wiesel
goes on in the same essay to renounce any such neutrality on the question of
Jerusalem.
Now, though the topic is
Jerusalem. Its fate affects not only Israelis, but also Diaspora Jews like
myself. The fact that I do not live in Jerusalem is secondary; Jerusalem lives
in me…That Muslims might wish to maintain close ties with this city unlike any
other is understandable.
But for Jews it remains the
first. Not just the first; the only.
This ode to fundamentalist
thought, enhanced further by Wiesel pointing out that Jerusalem is mentioned
more than 600 times in the Bible (a statement that ignores the fact that up to
a fifth of Palestinians are Christians, and it’s worth asking how many times
Jerusalem is mentioned in the Torah if this line of thought is to be pursued),
is followed by the blatant lie, long universally known to be false, that
“incited by their leaders 600,000 Palestinians left the country (in 1948)
convinced that, once Israel was vanquished, they would be able to return home”.
Wiesel then ended with a call
to defer the question of Jerusalem until all other pending questions are
resolved, perhaps for 20 years to allow “human bridges” to be built between the
two communities- which would figure to leave the city completely in Israeli hands
until these bridges are built or at least until the rest of the world accepts
that it belonged there all along.
About five years later (August
21, 2005) Wiesel was at it again with a bizarre piece titled The Dispossessed.
It was another putrid effort that spoke of peace while covertly praising the
worst of Zionist mythology. The title referred to the last holdouts of Israeli
settlements in Gaza and reading between the lines Wiesel hints that the
evacuation, where the settlers received generous compensation packages from the
government, had the aura of a pogrom.
The images of the evacuation
itself are heart-rending. Some of them unbearable. Angry men, crying
women. Children led away on foot or in the arms of soldiers who are
sobbing themselves.
Those “dispossessed” by
Israeli soldiers were the hardcore remnant of a Greater Israel ideology more
committed to fleeting territorial dreams than individual homes- most of the
Gaza settlers saw the writing on the wall of left prior to the events Wiesel
describes with such anguish. Of course Israel has long subsidized its
settlements that have been declared illegal by the international community
(including the U.S.). But of this remnant Wiesel reminds his readers: “Let’s
not forget: these men and woman lived in Gaza for 38 years in the eyes of their
families they were pioneers, whose idealism was to be celebrated”. Given the
complete lack of interest Wiesel displays to Palestinian feelings on the same
issue can it be reasonably assumed that Wiesel shares that same sentiment?
And here they are, obliged to
uproot themselves, to take their holy and precious belongings,
their memories and their prayers, their dreams and their dead, to go
off in search of a bed to sleep in, a table to eat on, a new home, a future
among strangers.
When Wiesel does turn to the
Palestinians it is to criticize a lack of gratefulness in the face of noble
Israeli concessions:
And here I am obliged to step
back. In the tradition I claim, the Jew is ordered by King Solomon “not
to rejoice when the enemy falls”. I don’t know whether the Koran suggests
the same…I will perhaps be told that when the Palestinians cried at the
loss of their homes, few Israelis were moved. That’s possible. But how
many Israelis rejoiced?
After this demonization,
‘perhaps be told’ of ‘possible’ Palestinian suffering (and King Solomon may
have been correct about not rejoicing when enemies fall but that isn’t quite
how one recalls the conquering of the Canaanites as recorded by scripture),
Wiesel again ends his essay with a call for a “lull” to allow “wounds to heal”-
during which time Israel can presumably redraw the borders of the West Bank
making a functional Palestinian state impossible. Again, like in the previous,
essay he mentions the sadness he feels over Palestinian hatred of Jews; so much
for neutrality.
All this reactionary thought,
the worst of which would find few defenders outside the extreme Zionist right,
didn’t make its way into Obama’s statement on Wiesel’s death (‘He raised his
voice, not just against anti-Semitism, but against hatred, bigotry, and
intolerance in all its forms’), nor did the fact that Wiesel opposed Obama’s
nuclear deal with Iran (again with a full page ad in the Times). The Times itself
conveniently overlooked the words Wiesel wrote for the paper in its very long
obituary. If it is a timeless truism that the greatest gift modern marketing
can bestow on anyone in its graces is the luxury of being judged by reputation
and not by actual words and deeds, is it ever truer than for another Nobel ‘Peace’
prize winner?
Joseph Grosso is a
librarian and writer in New York City.
No comments:
Post a Comment