Elie Wiesel: "Will the world ever learn?"

There is at least one person who spoke at the UN yesterday to whom we should listen: Elie Wiesel.

CommonGroundRadio still features a transcript of his comments on the fiftieth anniversary of the rebirth of Israel in 1998. He said this about the Holocaust he had survived.

I still don't understand it. To me the entire period is a question mark.... I, I don't know why it happened, how it happened. Why to my people? Why the killers were perfect killers? Why the victims were perfect victims? Why a nation of culture and art and education, a nation that had at that time the best universities in the world, could have produced killers? I, I don't, I don't know the answers today....

If we think of that period nothing really is left to hope for. The deception of humanity was such and the crime was of such magnitude that, how can one have faith in humanity afterwards? But then once again we say, because there is no hope I must invent it. And because there is no faith I must imagine it.

In 2003 Wiesel wrote about American intervention in Iraq (Los Angeles Times)

Under normal circumstances, I might have joined those peace marchers who, here and abroad, staged public demonstrations against an invasion of Iraq. After all, I have seen enough of the brutality, the ugliness, of war to oppose it heart and soul. Isn't war forever cruel, the ultimate form of violence? It inevitably generates not only loss of innocence but endless sorrow and mourning. How could one not reject it as an option?

And yet, this time I support President Bush's policy of intervention to eradicate international terrorism, which, most civilized nations agree, is the greatest threat facing us today. Bush has placed the Iraqi war into that context; Saddam Hussein is the ruthless leader of a rogue state to be disarmed by whatever means is necessary if he does not comply fully with the United Nations' mandates to disarm. If we fail to do this, we expose ourselves to terrifying consequences.

In other words: Though I oppose war, I am in favor of intervention when, as in this case because of Hussein's equivocations and procrastinations, no other option remains.

The recent past shows that only military intervention stopped bloodshed in the Balkans and destroyed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Moreover, had the international community intervened in Rwanda, more than 800,000 men, women and children would not have perished there.

Had Europe's great powers intervened against Adolf Hitler's aggressive ambitions in 1938 instead of appeasing him in Munich, humanity would have been spared the unprecedented horrors of World War II.

Does this apply to the present situation in Iraq?
It does.

And yesterday at the first ever UN General Assembly commemoration of the liberation of Nazi death camps, Wiesel said (NY Times),

"I am convinced if the world had listened to those of us who tried to speak, we may have prevented Darfur, Cambodia, Bosnia and naturally Rwanda," said Elie Weisel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, author and Auschwitz survivor.

He ended his remarks saying, "The question I have is, 'Will the world ever learn?' "

An afterthought

The NY Times also quotes Kofi Annan:

"On occasions like this, rhetoric comes easily ....
We rightly say, 'Never again.' "

I had to laugh. There was Kofi Annan quoting Rabbi Meir Kahane for all the world to hear!

In 1968, Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League and adopted as its motto this shortened version of the slogan of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters:

"Never again will Jews stand by
as their brothers cry for help."

Kahane and the JDL were later identified as one of America's most dangerous extremist groups and were placed on an American government watch list.

You have to laugh at the great irony of it all.

Maybe the world is learning, in spite of itself.

UPDATE - Everyone writing me today is offering corrections; I guess that's better than no emails at all:)

I am informed by the JDL that the Jewish Defense League is not affiliated in any way, shape, or form with Kach or Kahane Chai; nor is the JDL is on ANY Government watch list (Kach and Kahane Chai are.)

I also got the link wrong for the (legitimate) Jewish Defense League website, which I've now corrected. My apologies for the errors --Yael