Calling Elie Wiesel onto the carpet

By J. Zel Lurie

J. Zel Lurie
J. Zel Lurie

DELRAY BEACH, Florida — Elie Wiesel asks “Why?”

In the current issue of Hadassah Magazine, Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Laureate for peace since 1986, tells the story of a television interview in which he was asked what he would say to God if he could talk to him. His answer was “I would say one word, why?”

Why did He allow six million Jews to be slaughtered?

There is no answer, just as there is no answer to the question Elie Wiesel put to me some 40 years ago.

“How is it,” he asked me. “in 1944 my father, a leader of the Jewish community in Siget, Romania never heard of Auschwitz?” They were totally surprised when they arrived at the platform in Birkenau and his mother and little sister were led off to the gas chamber.

I had no answer then, and I have none now.

My question to Elie Wiesel is simpler. I asked what happened to the man who traveled the world defending human rights wherever it was threatened. He flew to Argentina to help Jacobo Timerman. He led the march for Soviet Jews in Washington. He protested the massacre of the people of Darfur. Wherever human rights was threatened, there was Elie Wiesel defending the oppressed.

With one exception. He never mentioned the oppressed Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza strip.

When I became the founding president of the American Friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, the oasis of peace where Israeli-Arabs and Israeli-Jews live together and study together, he wrote a slogan for my first fundraising brochure which has never been surpassed in clarity and forcefulness. His slogan began “whenever Jews and Arabs live together and work together.” They create a magic which is unsurpassed. You maintained an interest in Neve Shalom through decades of work, fame and fortune, and on Rosh Hashanah 2000 you sent me this hand-written note. “Shana tova to you – do continue your work in Neve Shalom – it is more meaningful than ever in this crisis.”

Despite fat fees from Federations throughout the country for “an evening with Elie Wiesel,” he did not forget the members the UN press corps who welcomed him when he arrived from Israel in the 1950s. He spoke pro bono at a fundraising function in honor of Richard Yaffe of the Jewish Chronicle. The sponsoring organization was the predecessor of Meretz.

He said to me at this function: “I will do the same for you.” But I was never sufficient bait for a fundraiser in my honor.

Let’s go back to 1967. Both of us flew to Israel a few days after the six day war. You interviewed General Motte Gur who led Israeli forces into the Temple Mount. I was the first to publish the interview in Hadassah Magazine. You sent it out world-wide, never giving credit to Hadassah Magazine.

We learned that the IDF had raised the blue and white flag of Israel over the Temple Mount, but almost immediately General Moshe Dayan ordered it taken down. “We don’t need war with the entire Muslim world,” Dayan said.

Ever since the Temple Mount has remained under Arab jurisdiction with the Jews continuing to pray at its Western Wall, which for centuries had carried the name “The Wailing Wall”.

Israel is still sovereign over the Temple Mount, and its border police guard the entrances. In times of crisis, they may forbid entry of Arab males under 45.

Sovereignty over the Temple Mount remains one of the crucial issues which Palestinians and Israelis have never been able to compromise for a two-state solution.

So in 2001, one year after your Rosh Hashanah note to me, you finally broke your silence on the Palestinians.  You prefaced your article in The New York Times, titled “Jerusalem, My Heart” with a note saying that your silence over the years on the oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank had engendered many e-mails and open letters of protest which you ignored.

You wrote a beautiful prose poem on Jerusalem on the Jerusalem of your dreams, shared by millions of Jews over the centuries. It reminded me of a painting on my wall by a Kibbutz artist titled “Jerusalem”. The top part depicts a dreamy city while the bottom shows the city as it is.

I wrote at the time, “come down to earth, Elie”.

You have cast your lot with Israel’s right-wing government which supports the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and you do their bidding. Last summer, they began a campaign, led by an op-ed piece by the Israel ambassador Ron Dermer against Hamas in order to prevent the need to negotiate a two-state solution. The Israel ambassador and Elie Wiesel both ignored the fact that it is Mahmoud Abbas, the president of Palestine, and not Hamas with whom Israel must settle the borders of Palestine to end the occupation.

Elie’s contribution with a full-page ad in The New York Times, paid for by an orthodox group, in which you foolishly label Hamas as favoring child sacrifices. The London Times refused the ad as grossly exaggerated. They said it was “too forceful”. The Hamas campaign made no dent in Washington and has been abandoned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who talked to President Obama a couple of days ago. This is being written on Erev Yom Kippur. Netanyahu claimed that a new alliance of Israel with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt, in support of the U.S. campaign against ISIS makes it unnecessary for Israel to talk to Abbas. A pointed statement read to the press by the U.S. spokesman after the White House meeting, made it clear that Israel’s actions would poison the Arab lineup against ISIS.

Late in 1999, Eli told a Los Angeles paper, ” there will be peace in the next century. I am sure of it.” We still have 86 years in the “next century” to fulfill his prophecy. In the last century Elie Wiesel garnered 28 awards besides the Nobel Peace Prize together with 19 honorary degrees from leading universities and colleges. The list is “incomplete” says Wikipedia.

Enclosing, I would like to paraphrase Elie Wiesel’s immortal words to President Ronald Regan at the dedication of the German cemetery which contained graves of SS men. He said, “your place, Mr. President, is with the victims of SS.”

Elie, your place is with those who are working for a two-state solution, not with Israel’s right-wing coalition government who oppose it.

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Lurie, a centenarian, has had long experience as a journalist in Israel and the United States. He now lives in retirement in Delray Beach, Florida.  He may be contacted via jzel.lurie@sdjewishworld.com

1 thought on “Calling Elie Wiesel onto the carpet”

  1. Mr Lurie sounds like a jealous old man. Mr Wiesel has made a career of remembering the Holocaust. Since Lurie has not been able to surpass Mr Wiesel, he needed another schtick- so he found one. Aiding the enemies of the Jewish people. Mr Wiesel will be remembered long after he passes away. No one remembers Lurie even while he is still alive
    sad

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