Elie Wiesel, Again

By Nancy Almendras

I suppose it is inevitable that Elie Wiesel turns up in the New York Daily News reminding everyone of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "murderous regime."

Wiesel, the icon of what Norman Finkelstein calls the "Holocaust Industry," starts off in his typically "holier-than-thou" fashion in his lead sentence:

"Those among us who thought that the victory of allied democracies in 1945 would mark the end of hate and state-sponsored racism were naive."

Wiesel is anything but naive. Daniel McGowan of Dayr Yassin Remembered in a letter to Pastor James Gerling wrote the following 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."

Wiesel, or "one of the world's leading moral voices," according to the Daily News ( a solid education in English literature with thorough grounding on the theme of "appearance versus reality" has served as a buffer to withstand the pretensions of Wiesel and other apologists for a certified "racist" and "murderous" regime) attributes a lot of words to Ahmadinejad, but none of them are in quotes, and even if they were, since he doesn't read Farsi, his pronouncements are of little merit other than as base propaganda to further the "clash of civilizations" myth in order to serve a proven "racist" and "murderous" regime.

In fact, Jonathan Steele and Juan Cole have made a good case that Ahmadinejad doesn't call for the destruction of Israel, which actually would seemingly make him less offensive to naive Mr. Wiesel than say a whole host of anti-Zionist Jews and many, myself included, whose goal is the destruction of Israel as a Jews preferred and privileged state; i.e, a state for all its citizens, and a state that respects international law and the inalienable rights of the ethnically cleansed Palestinians to return to their homes. Nothing murderous or hateful about that, but Wiesel's denial of this inalienable right is facilitating ethnic cleansing, which he, of all people, should know is a war crime.

Wiesel is counting on "naive" Americans to equate the destruction of Israel as a Jews preferred and privileged state with some sort of obscenity. Hardly. What is the obscenity is the real destruction wrought by Zionism on the true heirs of the land for over one hundred years now, culminating in the ethnic cleansing in 1948 of seventy-five percent of Palestinians on what is today Israel. And the real horrors of Zionism continue unabated and facilitated by shills like Wiesel to whom the New York Daily News provide space for their odious black propaganda.

How many kids did Ahmadinejad injure while they were sitting in their classroom this month, Mr. Wiesel? How many kindergarten teachers did Ahmadinejad kill while they were holding their toddlers on their lap? How many kids did Ahmadinejad kill in this week? How many cabinet ministers did Ahmadinejad bring into a courtroom in chains inside a wooden cage? How much land did Ahmadinejad steal this week, Mr. Wiesel? How many extended families did Ahmadinejad wipe out this summer, Mr. Moral Compass? How many ten-year old kids did Ahmadinejad kill this weekend? How many poor people in refugee camps is Ahmadinejad bombing? For how many amputees is Ahmadinejad responsible? How many villages did Ahmadinejad wipe out? How many refugees did Ahmadinejad create? How many houses did Ahmadinejad demolish? How many olive trees did Ahmadinejad uproot and then sell? How much gold did Ahmadinejad's soldiers rip off from houses they broke into? How many wells has Ahmadinejad poisoned? How many cluster bombs and landmines has Ahmadinejad set down? What chemical weapons has Ahmadinejad used on civilians? How many people does Ahmadinejad refuse the right to return to their homes to be buried? Does Ahmadinejad prevent people who fall in love from living together if they're not the right religion? Does Ahmadinejad deny native born Iranians the right to live with their spouse and children in Iran? Did Ahmadinejad's lobby lead America into a war which has destroyed Iraq, destroyed American lives, and destroyed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives?

Israel has more than proven itself "racist" and "murderous" from the beginning of Zionism's little social engineering project in Palestine. Wiesel defends it while writing Ahmadinejad should be "persona-non-grata" and "turned away everywhere." I say Wiesel the hypocrite needs a strong dose of his own medicine.

Nancy Almendras
Deir Yassin Remembered