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Daniel McGowan   Washington Report On Middle East Affairs   Oct/Nov 1997   Wiesel is a terrible fraud
"He decries terrorism, yet never apologizes for the terrorism perpetrated by his employer, the Irgun, for whom he worked from November 1947 to January 1949." — Daniel McGowan

The following letter written by Daniel McGowan about Elie Wiesel was taken from the web site of Bradley R. Smith's Committee for Open Debate On the Holocaust (CODOH), whose home page can be accessed by clicking this URL, www.codoh.com, or else the CODOH logo below:

External link to CODOH

The McGowan article appears on the CODOH web site at:  http://www.codoh.com/newsdesk/970706.HTML


Note: The following letter, submitted to the Jerusalem Post by Prof. Daniel McGowan, Professor of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, and dated July 6, 1997, was published on p. 49 the Oct./Nov. issue of Washington Report On Middle East Affairs:
Re: your June 12 [1997] article on Elie Wiesel, pp. 32-33:

Elie Wiesel, the American icon of Holocaust survivors, has won hundreds of prestigious awards.  Still, he is referred to by Noam Chomsky and others as "a terrible fraud."  Why? Perhaps it is because this man 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 basic human rights.

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 decries terrorism, yet never apologizes for the terrorism perpetrated by his employer, the Irgun, for whom he worked from November 1947 to January 1949.  Indeed, as author David Green points out, he chooses to stay at the King David Hotel, site of Irgun's most notorious act of terrorism (although Prime Minister Netanyahu begs to differ, calling it a guerrilla operation, not terrorism).

But even the prime minister cannot whitewash the terrorism perpetrated by the Irgun at Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948.  Elie Wiesel worked for the Irgun as a journalist for its newspaper, "Zion in Kamf," before, during and after this horrific massacre and yet 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 the Palestinian victims of his employer.  The irony is breath-taking.  It is even more shocking that the world's best known Holocaust survivor can visit Yad Vashem 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 to answer 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.

[End]


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