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UK Paper’s Book Review Attacks Elie Wiesel for Supporting Israel

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avatar by Adam Levick

Opinion

Late Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel speaks about a report he helped prepare discussing the situation in North Korea at the United Nations in New York, Nov. 16, 2006. Photo: Reuters / Chip East / File.

A review of a new book in the UK’s The Telegraph tried to attack the late Elie Wiesel for supporting Israel.

“Joseph Berger’s judicious and well-crafted portrait of this remarkable man stops short of hagiography, [but] its reverentially respectful tone leaves its impact a bit flat,” writes How Elie Wiesel taught the world to face the horror of the Holocaust,” June 4).

A few paragraphs in, the Telegraph author writes this:

[Wiesel] was righteously furious with God, who had mysteriously abandoned the Chosen Race in its darkest hours… [emphasis added]

First, we’re not aware of any writing by Wiesel referring to Jews as the “Chosen Race” — which is curiously capitalized by the journalist. Nor, for that matter, do we know of any Jewish figure who’s used that term. Indeed, the characterization of Jews as “race” is a relatively recent phenomenon. While the idea of Jews as the “chosen people“ is common — often meant to refer to the task of “communicating the monotheistic idea and a set of moral ideals to humanity” — the term “Chosen Race more resembles the concept used by the Nazis to refer to the alleged racial supremacy of Aryans. It’s unsettling, to say the least, that the reviewer decided on that specific rhetorical formula.

Even worse, Christiansen calls out Wiesel, the late Holocaust survivor, for his “moral blind spot” regarding Israel:

Wiesel was to all intents and purposes a Zionist, and such was his fealty to Israel that he could never bring himself to issue more than polite suggestions that its government should be a beacon of probity and currently wasn’t. He rejoiced in the outcome of the Six Day War and remained silent on the illegal settlements: his compassion would extend to Armenians, the Vietnamese boat people and black South Africans, but he had nothing to say in defence of brutally disenfranchised Palestinians.

This is just a suggestion, but perhaps the next time that Telegraph editors commission a review on a book about a Holocaust survivor, they might want to insist that the contributor has at least a passing understanding of what Zionism means.

If for “all intents and purposes” a “Zionist” — as if Wiesel’s belief in the country’s right to live was somehow less than clear.

As Christiansen acknowledges, Wiesel spent his life not only writing and talking about the Holocaust, but speaking out against other acts of mass slaughter, as well. However, the suggestion that — for the sake of moral consistency — he was thus obligated to advocate on behalf of the Palestinians rests on the perverse suggestion that they were, too, victims of something akin to genocide.

Wiesel “rejoiced in the outcome of the Six Day War” (as Christiansen writes) because Jews – for the second time in 19 years, and just 22 years after the Holocaust — successfully defended themselves against enemies who again sought their annihilation.

As Anshel Pfeffer wrote shortly after Wiesel’s death in response to those rushing to vilify him for his putative sins, “his goals were to make sure the Jews who had died were not forgotten and that those who lived could survive and prosper,” while still finding time “to speak out on behalf of Cambodians, Bosnians, Rwandans and other genocide victims.”

Elie Wiesel had nothing to apologize for.

Adam Levick serves as co-editor of CAMERA UK — an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.

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