umkahlil

Oprah Winfrey says that Elie Wiesel’s Night "should be required reading for all humanity."

Why?

Elie Wiesel’s experiences haven’t taught him empathy.

Daniel McGowan of Deir Yassein remembers quotes Noam Chomsky, “Far from being a great humanitarian, Wiesel, as Noam Chomsky contends, is simply ‘a terrible fraud.’”

Why?

McGowan states in a letter to Pastor James Gerling, “When asked about the oppression and dehumanization of Palestinians by Israel, he ‘abstains’ and dismisses the subject claiming ‘I cannot say bad things about Jews,’ or ‘Such comparisons are unworthy.’

“He degrades Palestinians with racist remarks, such as claiming they use their children as shields for adults throwing stones and worse.”

McGowan provides further information about Wiesel:

“He knows from personal experience that on April 9, 1948 Arab civilians, including women and children, were murdered in cold blood in the village of Deir Yassin on the west side of Jerusalem by Jewish terrorists known as the Irgun and the Stern Gang. Wiesel worked for the Irgun, not as a fighter, but as a journalist and knows the details of this infamous (but not the only nor the largest) massacre of Arabs by Jews. And while he piously demands public apologies for atrocities committed against Jews (for example in 1946 at Kielce, Poland), he has never been able to apologize for the atrocities committed by his own employer.”

So why do Chomsky and McGowan say that Elie Wiesel is a fraud? I will quote liberally from McGowan here:

“Perhaps it is because Wiesel, who has written literally volumes Against Silence, remains silent when it comes to issues involving Palestinians—issues such as land expropriation, torture, and abrogation of human rights. He gets great press coverage when he piously declares that the Kosovars must be allowed to return home, even though he has never given support to the right of 750,000 Palestinians driven out in 1948 to return to their homes in Israel. Nor does he show any concern about the ethnic cleansing continued by Israel after the 1967 war and, indeed, continued to this very day in Jerusalem and in Hebron.

“Perhaps it is because Elie Wiesel proclaims with great piety that “the opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference” while he remains totally indifferent to the inequality and suffering of the Palestinians. Perhaps it is because he enjoys recognition as “one of the first opponents of apartheid” in South Africa, while he remains totally silent and indifferent to the apartheid being practiced today in Israel. Forty-five percent of the people living within the borders controlled by Israel are not Jews; even if they have Israeli citizenship, they have fewer rights than “the chosen people,” if they do not have Israeli citizenship, they have virtually no rights at all.

“Perhaps it is because he decries terrorism, yet never apologizes for the bloody terrorism perpetrated by his employer, the Irgun, for whom he worked from November 1947 to January 1949 in Paris as a journalist for Zion in Kanf.
“Although Wiesel had intimate knowledge of the terrorism perpetrated by the Irgun at Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948, he refuses even to comment on it. He dismisses this act of terrorism in eight short words in his memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea. He remembers the Jewish victims at Kielce, Poland (July 1946) with great anguish and angst, but ignores twice as many Palestinian victims of his own employer. The irony is breathtaking.

“It is even more shocking that the world’s best known Holocaust survivor can repeatedly visit Yad Vashem (the most famous Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem) and yet keep silent about the victims of Deir Yassin who lie within his sight 1,400 meters to the north. He bitterly protests when Jewish graves are defaced, but has nothing to say when the cemetery of Deir Yassin is bulldozed. He refuses even to acknowledge repeated requests that he join a group of Jews and non-Jews who wish to build a memorial at Deir Yassin.

“Elie Wiesel may profess modesty and claim he is “not a symbol of anything” but, unfortunately, he has become a symbol of hypocrisy.”

So, my question to Oprah Winfrey is why travel to Auschwitz with Wiesel and why feature him on your show? Why are high school students required to read Night? Wiesel has learned nothing from his experiences. He denies the right of return to Palestinians and says that Palestinians' "faces are twisted with hate." What is the purpose for studying the Holocaust and for Oprah's love fest with Wiesel? It would appear that it is to further Jewish supremacy in the Holy Land and to hasten the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/books/16cnd-oprah.html?emc=eta1

http://umkahlil.blogspot.com/2005/03/elie-wiesel-fraud.html

http://wreport.org/backissues/1099/9910059.htmlww.washington