The Apotheosis of Moral Mediocrity - Elie Wiesel

Obituary pages in 'liberal' newspapers have recently been filled with sonorous tributes to Elie Wiesel, author of Night, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, who died on July 2 last.  Wiesel, of Romanian-Jewish background, was once described by the LA Times as 'the most important Jew in America'.  He contributed to the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.   His Nobel citation in 1986 described him as a 'messenger to mankind', and noted his 'practical work in the cause of peace'.

Unfortunately, Wiesel's work in one of the fields closest to him was not particularly peaceful, or humane.  He disavowed the task of holding Israel to account for its crimes of war and occupation.  In fact he was a crucial figure in  placing the Holocaust as a central feature of American cultural-political life (as documented by Peter Novick), and in mobilising and instrumentalising the Holocaust legacy in the defence of Israel.  This was a task he continued to carry out right up to Israel's most recent murderous bombardment and re-invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2014.  

Wiesel's passing is not worth mourning.  He has been one of the great hypocrites of recent times.

Some reading of a somewhat more bracing kind than is to be found in the bland mainstream:

Sara Roy, a Jewish scholar and the child of Holocaust survivors, is one of the great experts on the history of the Gaza Strip

A Response to Elie Wiesel

 

Corey Robin, an American-Jewish political theorist and expert on the radical right: 

My Resistance to Elie Wiesel

 

David Shasha, a Brooklyn-based scholar of Sephardic history, on Wiesel and Primo Levi:

Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi: A study in contrasts

 

And Alex Cockburn's tremendous slash-and-burn critique of Wiesel, from 2006:

Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”

 

Conor