Elie Wiesel’s Anti-Iranian Agenda
by Stephen Lendman
On December 18, The New Times ran a full-page anti-Iranian ad. It did so disgracefully. On December 19, the Wall Street Journal published it.
It’s an Elie Wiesel rant. It’s hateful. It’s racist. It’s malicious misinformation. It’s typical Wiesel. It’s titled “Iran Must Not Be Allowed To Remain Nuclear.” More on it below.
Wiesel is no humanitarian. He’s a shameless self-promoter. He’s a holocaust exploiter. He made a career as a pseudo-official spokesman.
Norman Finklestein calls him the “resident clown” of the holocaust circus. He described him as “vain, arrogant, gullible, naive about international affairs, (and defender of) the worst excesses of previous Israeli governments.”
Chomsky calls him “one of the major frauds of our time.” He’s an apologist for Israel’s worst crimes.
His “shameful subservience to the State of Israel (is) all the more grotesque in his case because of the pretense of saintliness,” Chomsky explained.
He’s a notorious Islamophobe. He ignores Palestinian suffering. “I cannot say bad things about Jews,” he stresses.
He claims Jerusalem “belongs (exclusively) to the Jewish people.” He dismissively ignores its Islamic and Christian importance.
He ignores history. Other times he reinvents it. He perpetuates the myth about Arab nations attacking Israel in 1967.
IDF forces launched premeditated aggression. It was planned long in advance. When it was too late to matter, Israeli generals admitted it.
In 1972, then IDF chief General Haim Barlev said:
“We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the six-day war, and we had never thought of such a possibility.”
In 1978, then IDF air force commander General Mordechai Hod said:
“Sixteen years of planning had gone into those initial eighty minutes. We lived with the plan. We slept on the plan. We ate the plan. Constantly we perfected it.”
Other Israeli leaders and generals voiced similar sentiments. Israel faced no threat. It wasn’t attacked. It committed premeditated aggression. Wiesel lied claiming otherwise.
Howard Zinn called his refusal to include exhibits documenting Nazi-inflicted suffering on non-Jews in the Holocaust Museum one of the most “shameful moments” in recent memory.
Wiesel said including them would “falsify reality.” He called doing so tantamount to “stealing the holocaust from us.”
In February 2010, he endorsed a full-page ad urging lethal aggression on Iran. Doing so promoted genocide. The New York Times, Washington Post, and other prominent US broadsheets published it.
Wiesel’s rap sheet includes support for Zionist terrorism. From 1947 – 49, he was a journalist for Irgun. Future Prime Minister Menachem Begin headed it.
It committed appalling crimes. It massacred 92 Brits, Arabs and Jews at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel.
It was involved in the infamous Deir Yassin massacre. Dozens of Palestinian men, women, children, the elderly and infirm were indiscriminately slaughtered. Those trying to escape were shot in cold blood.
Wiesel called Israel’s so-called War of Independence “a new dawn.” He “was thrilled as (he) followed events in the Holy Land.”
“For (him), it was not a war of conquest, but a return, a liberation.”
He turned history on its head. He ignored Palestinian suffering. He turned a blind eye to mass slaughter and displacement.
He still claims Palestinians left voluntarily. He ignores overwhelming evidence proving otherwise. He one-sidedly supports Israel. He once publicly said:
“I support Israel – period. I identify with Israel – period. I never attack, I never criticize Israel.”
Wiesel is one of many deplorable Nobel Peace Prize recipients. He’s a shameless bigot. He pretends otherwise. During his 1986 Nobel address, he said:
“The world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”
He built a career doing it. He’s on the wrong side of history. He condemns victims. He vilifies Palestinians for praying to the wrong God.
He praises oppressors. He supports the worst of Israeli crimes. He does so unconscionably.
On January 24, 2001, he titled a New York Times op-ed “Jerusalem in My Heart,” saying:
“I consider Israel’s destiny mine as well.” Jerusalem’s “fate affects not only Israelis, but also diaspora Jews like myself.”
“Jerusalem lives within me. (It’s) at the center of my commitments and my dreams.”
It’s “anchored in Jewish tradition. (It’s) the national landmark of that tradition. It represents our collective soul. (It) binds one Jew to another.”
“Why are the Palestinians now so anxious to make Jerusalem their capital?
Wiesel ignored history. He still does. Jerusalem is religiously important for Christians, Muslims and Jews.
Zionists consider it Israel’s historic capital. It’s symbolic of Judaism’s post-WW II revival and prominence.
For Christians, it’s where Jesus lived and died. It’s Islam’s third holiest site.
The Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque rank after Mecca’s Sacred Mosque and Madina’s Mosque of the Prophet.
Wiesel whitewashed history. He told it his way. Doing so shows contempt for non-Jews.
“I continue to believe in peace with all my heart,” he claimed. He turns a blind eye to Israel’s slow-motion genocide. He wants Jerusalem exclusively for Jews.
Respectable publications wouldn’t touch his discriminatory rants. New York Times editors embrace it.
AIPAC published his latest broadside. It’s the text of his New York Times/Wall Street Journal ad. It targets Iran. He’s done it before. He does it shamefully. It’s typical Wiesel.
He turns truth on its head. He does it consistently. He does it repeatedly. He deserves condemnation, not op-ed space.
“If there is one lesson I hope the world has learned from the past, it is that regimes rooted in brutality must never be trusted,” he said.
“And the words and actions of the leadership of Iran leave no doubt as to their intentions.”
“Should the civilized nations of the world trust a regime whose supreme leader said yet again last month that Israel is ‘doomed to annihilation,’ and referred to my fellow Jewish Zionists as ‘rabid dogs?’ ”
“Should we who believe in human rights, trust rights, trust a regime which in the 21st century stones women and hangs homosexuals?”
“Should we who believe in freedom trust a regime which murdered its own citizens in the streets of Tehran, when the people protested a stolen election in the Green Revolution of Summer, 2009.”
Fact check
Iran supports peace. It abhors war. It hasn’t attacked another nation in centuries. Israel does it repeatedly. So does America. Wiesel didn’t explain. Malicious misinformation substituted for truth and full disclosure.
Independent analysts believe Israel is self-destructing. An earlier CIA study suggested that within two or three decades, Israel in its present form won’t exist. The handwriting is on the wall.
What’s happening is “an inexorable movement away from a two-state to a one-state solution, as the most viable model based on democratic principles of full equality that sheds the looming specter of colonial Apartheid while allowing for the return of the 1947/1948 and 1967 (Palestinian) refugees,” it said.
“The latter (is) the precondition for sustainable peace in the region.”
Iran doesn’t hang homosexuals. Saying so is another Wiesel canard.
In 1983, stoning to death for adultery was added to Iran’s penal code. Other than one time, it was never imposed. In 2012, it was officially removed.
America executes dozens of prisoners annually. Many are innocent victims. Five killing methods are used: hanging, electrocution, gas chambers, firing squads, and lethal injection (LI).
LI is most commonly used. Death this way is slow and painful. It constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. It’s another form of torture.
Israel executes Palestinians extrajudicially. Since 2000 alone, thousands were killed in cold blood.
Civilians are considered legitimate targets. Children are treated like adults. Torture is official policy. So is longstanding militarized colonization, occupation and apartheid.
Iran’s so-called Green Revolution was made in America. It followed the June 12 election.
ABC News reported a secret Bush order. A CIA-instigated “black” operation followed. It was launched to destabilize Iran’s government.
Ahmadinejad won by a landslide. He got nearly 63% of the vote. He won legitimately. He bested his nearest rival nearly two to one. It didn’t surprise. Independent pre-election polls predicted he’d win overwhelmingly.
Iranian elections shame America’s sham process. Illusion substitutes for reality. People have no say. Monied interests run things.
Both parties are two sides of the same coin. Politicians are bought like toothpaste. Voters get the best democracy big money can buy.
Israel Arab citizens lack political power. Muslim Knesset members are treated like potted plants. Often they’re publicly scorned. They’re vilified for being non-Jews. Racist discrimination works this way. In Israel, it’s institutionalized.
Don’t expect Wiesel to explain. His entire anti-Iranian rant made painful reading. It substituted lies and racist hate for truth.
He wants much more than Iran’s peaceful nuclear program dismantled. He wants the Islamic Republic destroyed.
Perhaps he wants another holocaust. He came perilously close to suggesting it. He urged lethal aggression in 2010. Maybe again in his next rant.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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