TREATING TERRORISM DIFFERENTLY

A Familiar Form of Terror
By Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary magazine
July14, 2016

At the moment we don’t know the identity or the motive of the person responsible for the Bastille Day terror attack in Nice, France. Speculation about whether this killer, who took the lives of scores of persons gathered to watch holiday fireworks, was a lone wolf terrorist inspired by ISIS is natural but premature. So, too, are any other theories. But while we mourn with the people of France and wait for more details to be released, it’s worthwhile pondering the terrorist’s choice of tactic: using a vehicle as a lethal weapon.
Viewing the horrifying videos being posted online or broadcast on television of the attack, there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Nice killer was using a truck to murder people and that his actions are obviously an act of terror. But what that brings to mind is the fact that when Palestinians do the same thing, many in the international community and the media treat Israeli efforts to take out the potential killer as unjustified and often dispute whether the attack was a form of terrorism.

After the erection of Israel’s security fence in the West Bank, the wave of suicide bombings in which Palestinians affiliated with both the mainstream Fatah movement and Hamas killed hundreds of Jews inside Israel during the second intifada came to a halt. Faced with a more formidable challenge to their ability to inflict mass casualties on Israelis, terrorists resorted to new tactics. One of their more popular choices was vehicular homicide. In incidents in Jerusalem and at security checkpoints in the West Bank, Israelis have been subjected to numerous attempted hit and run attacks. At least three were killed in such incidents last year at the start of what is now known as the “stabbing intifada.”

But such attacks are rarely referred to as terrorism in the international media. Outside of Israel, the press has often either ignored them or treated the nature of the incident as questionable even referring to them as accidents rather than terror. They also denounce Israeli defensive measures that aim, as authorities in France did in Nice, to shoot or otherwise disable the terrorist as an unjustified attempt to execute a possibly innocent person.

Part of the reason for this reluctance to label murder as murder is the inclination of many in the international community to treat Palestinian terrorism against Jews as being distinct from terror against non-Jews elsewhere. Those who think Israel has no right to exist assume Palestinian terror is in some way justified. Israelis and Jews are assumed to have somehow asked for it by insisting on their right to live in their ancient homeland.

But as the people of France and the United States have learned in Paris, San Bernardino and Orlando the last two years, terror is terror. Those inspired by Islamist groups make no distinction between Jews and non-Jews when they unleash their hate. Whether they use knives, guns, explosives or a vehicle, terrorism is just as awful.

It would be better if we didn’t have to get used to living in a world where terrorists sought to kill Westerners or Israelis. But just as more people are starting to understand that the war being waged against Israel shouldn’t be viewed as a different category of crime from the terror being visited upon he West, so, too, should we understand that when vehicles are used as weapons against Jews, it is just as much an act of terror as the atrocity that we have just witnessed in Nice.

ARTICLE: THE RISE OF THERESA MAY AND THE DECLINE OF BRITISH POLITICS

The rise of Theresa May and the decline of British politics
By Amy Davidson
The New Yorker
July 11, 2016

http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/the-rise-of-theresa-may-and-the-decline-of-british-politics

The story of how Theresa May, the United Kingdom’s Home Secretary, became the presumptive Prime Minister is one of tragi-farcical, politico-comic self-destruction. It has played out with slapstick speed since the morning after the nation voted to leave the European Union, two and a half weeks ago, and the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, who had campaigned against Brexit, said that he would resign rather than preside over it. At the time, Cameron figured that he’d stick around until November, and there was an assumption in many quarters that he’d be succeeded by Boris Johnson, an M.P. and the former mayor of London, who likes to preen about how disorderly he is. But on Monday, standing in front of 10 Downing Street, Cameron said that Britain would “have a new Prime Minister in that building behind me by Wednesday evening,” and that it would be May, who had his support. She might have been on the job even sooner than that, except that, this being Britain, taking power still involves a visit to the palace, and the Queen is out of town.

Brexit has not brought out the best in British political culture, and one can say that even as an American in the age of Donald Trump. The largest issues have been the careless smashing of alliances, the lies to and the scorn for voters (by both sides, if more by Leave) that enabled the Brexit victory, and the realization by non-British E.U. citizens that many of their neighbors view them as contemptible foreigners. But it’s worth noting that the whole shakeup has been conducted with a striking lack of dignity. Some of the most absurd claims have been pronounced in what Sarah Vine, the wife of the Justice Minister, Michael Gove, referred to in a parody-defying Daily Mail column as “erudite vowel sounds.” (Such sounds were how she could tell that the reporters gathered outside her window, as the sun rose on the Brexit vote tally, “weren’t the usual nocturnal neighbourhood ne’er-do-wells.” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3665146/SARAH-VINE-Victory-vitriol-craziest-days-life.html ) Gove, who was Johnson’s sidekick in the Leave campaign, turned on him, which meant that they both went down fast in the Tory leadership race, with much talk in the tabloids about knives in backs and fronts. The final self-inflicted blow, by May’s last-standing rival, the Energy Minister, Andrea Leadsom, was what might be called Mumgate. It started when the Times of London ran an interview with Leadsom on Friday with the headline

“BEING A MOTHER GIVES ME EDGE ON MAY—LEADSOM

Tory minister says she will be better leader because childless home secretary lacks ‘stake in future’”

It went on to quote Leadsom, who often included the phrase “as a mum” in her pro-Leave statements, as saying that May “possibly has nieces, nephews, lots of people. But I have children who are going to have children who will directly be a part of what happens next.” This, she said, set her apart from May as a potential leader. She added, “I am sure Theresa will be really sad she doesn’t have children, so I don’t want this to be ‘Andrea has children, Theresa hasn’t,’ because I think that would be really horrible.” But, she went on, “genuinely I feel that being a mum means you have a very real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake.” In other words, Andrea has children; Theresa hasn’t.

As a matter of logic, this disparagement of childless leaders is ludicrous. There are good and bad leaders with and without children, and one can just as glibly argue that the focus on one’s own children’s fortunes can be distracting for a politician. Among the more incoherent elements in Leadsom’s remarks to the Times was that May might think about the long-term state of the economy, while she herself would be properly focussed on her children’s more immediate job prospects. It is all the more strange for a spokesperson for Leave, a campaign built around the irrational power of patriotism, to assume that abstract love of country would not be motive enough. And, as a matter of politics, Leadsom’s comments were a wreck. She insulted the childless, and she seemed personally cruel to May, who has quietly said in the past that she is, indeed, sad about having never had children. (May, who is fifty-nine, has been married to her husband, a banker she met when they were both students at Oxford, for thirty-five years.)

A Conservative M.P., Sir Alan Duncan, called the remarks “vile,” tweeting, “I’m gay and in a civil partnership. No children, but ten nieces and nephews. Do I not have a stake in the future of the country?” Leadsom, as it happens, is also opposed to same-sex marriage. She might be understood, in American terms, as a cross between Carly Fiorina and Michele Bachmann, except with less experience than either. She responded to the Mumgate criticism by attacking the Times, tweeting that the story was “truly appalling and the exact opposite of what I said. I am disgusted.” Leadsom demanded that the paper release the transcript, which it did, along with the audio, and which not only confirmed the story but made Leadsom look worse. When the Times asked, “What is the main difference between you and Theresa May?,” her children and her “huge” family were practically the first things that Leadsom mentioned, after a passing reference to her knowledge of the economy and her “optimism.” She may have wanted to keep any discussion of her business career brief. Her years in the City, London’s financial district, had been one of her main political selling points, until it emerged that her résumé was exaggerated. Her claims that she had helped steer Barclays through the financial crisis were, according to executives who spoke to the Financial Times, based on a “somewhat fanciful” view of her position there. She hadn’t been headhunted to work at a hedge fund as a managing director; she had been a marketing director, and had been hired by her brother-in-law, who ran the fund.

And yet, after a series of votes by Tory M.P.s, Leadsom was the last remaining challenger to May for the Party leadership. How did what is still one of the world’s major powers end up in this state? Part of the blame goes to the tolerance of Johnson and his “shambolic” style of politics, for which he always seemed to want to be patted on the head and which finally, and too late, became too much for everybody. Johnson lost Gove’s support when, instead of sitting down after the referendum and making a plan for the next stage, he threw what the tabloids called a “boozy barbecue” during a weekend of partying that also involved cricket and the Ninth Earl Spencer. (That’s Princess Diana’s brother, whose third wife is planning a renovation of their castle.) Johnson, and an extraordinary number of other Tories, seem to have devoted their energies to pounding out duelling columns for the Daily Telegraph rather than to something like a real blueprint for Leave. Johnson also alienated Leadsom by first promising her a spot in his putative government and to give her that commitment in writing, and then claiming accidentally to have left that particular piece of paper on his desk, bumbling-Boris style. She wasn’t charmed. Why was anybody, ever? At the same time, the personality questions distract from a larger problem that the Brexit results exposed: the distance between party leaders and voters.

All this has meant that the Tory leadership fight has hardly touched on issues like May’s views on surveillance and the treatment of terror suspects, which have caused concern for civil libertarians. May had supported Remain in the Brexit referendum, in what has come to be seen as fundamentally an act of loyalty to Cameron; her own views on that, too, have been underexamined. “Brexit means Brexit, and we’re going to make a success of it,” she said on Monday. Meanwhile, the Labour Party is in the middle of its own leadership fight between Jeremy Corbyn, who has lost the support of the great majority of his party’s M.P.s, and Angela Eagle, who had been the shadow cabinet’s business secretary, before she and most of the other shadow ministers resigned en masse. There is something intriguing about women potentially taking charge of both parties, at a moment when so many men have knocked things down and then fled. (Nigel Farage, the head of the U.K. Independence Party, has also wandered off, saying something about wanting his “life back.”) Perhaps May can make the country seem a little less leaderless. Now Britain just needs to figure out where it’s headed. As he walked back into Number 10, Cameron, apparently not realizing his microphone was still on, was caught singing a little humming ditty. It went something like this: “Too-too, doh-doh, right.”

 

Among previous dispatches on Brexit:

* “After Brexit, Britain suddenly becomes European”

* Harvard Professor: Britain’s “lunatic referendum formula isn’t democracy”

* Welcome to Outstria, Beljump, Retireland, Quitaly, Portugo...

-- Tom Gross

 

* Please “like” these dispatches on Facebook here www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia, where you can also find other items that are not in these dispatches.

You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia

“THE REBBE’S STUDENT”

The Humble Nobility of Elie Wiesel
By Bernard-Henri Lévy
Project Syndicate
July 5, 2016

It begins in a world now gone, lying at the borders of Ruthenia, Bukovina and Galicia, forgotten places that were the glory of the Habsburg Empire and of European Judaism. Seventy years later, all that remains of this world are ruined palaces, empty Baroque churches and synagogues leveled and never rebuilt. And now it has lost one of its last witnesses: Elie Wiesel.

Wiesel survived the obliteration of this world, and from it fashioned a second birth, devoting his life, in fear and trembling, to resurrecting those who perished. That, for me, is what stands out in the life of the author of Night and Messengers of God.

In the years after 1945, Wiesel rubbed elbows with the greatest of the great. He garnered the same vast, worldwide, enduring admiration as Yehudi Menuhin. But he never stopped being that yehudi, that ordinary Jew, that survivor whose heart would pound as he passed through customs in New York or Paris.

Wiesel set himself one task, at once impossible and categorical: to become the living tomb, the cenotaph, of the beggars of Sighet, of the comically clumsy ghetto Hasidim, and of the countless campmates who had, in the face of God’s silence, chanted the Kaddish for their own passing. For this, he had only his tongue, and not even his native tongue, but the French that he learned in an orphanage for deported children at age 15 – and later turned into his violin. Without Wiesel, there would have remained no trace of countless lives reduced to ash and smoke.

I do not know if Wiesel was a “great” writer. But I am convinced that he, like Benny Lévy, another friend, believed that a Jew of his type does not come into the world to pursue literature as a profession.

Wiesel’s work has neither the inaccessible sublimity of Kafka, nor the paradoxically lofty power of Proust. It perhaps lacks the laconic grace of Paul Celan, who wrote that, in the country they shared, one finds nothing but books and men.

But he is one of the few to have spoken the unspeakable about the camps. He shares with Primo Levi and Imre Kertész – how many others? – the terrible privilege of having felt six million shadows pressing against his frail silhouette, in an effort to gain their almost imperceptible place in the great book of the dead.

His other great virtue, perhaps, is having ensured, through his work and henceforth in the minds of those inspired by it, that the dark memory of that exception that was the Holocaust will not exclude – indeed, that the Holocaust requires – ardent solidarity with the victims of all other genocides.

I picture Wiesel in 1979 on the Cambodian border, where I met him for the first time, his familiar mop of hair a jet-black wing hovering over his lean, handsome head. He was the first person I heard theorize on the sad imbecility of those who engage in competitive victimhood, those who insist that we have to choose our own dead – Jews or Khmer, the martyrs of this genocide or that.

I picture him seven years later in Oslo, where I accompanied him to receive the Nobel Prize that he wanted so much. At one point, his face suddenly darkened as if overtaken by an unexplained anxiety. In his expression – which could change in a moment from joy, gaiety and mischievous intelligence to the infinite sadness of one who will never recover from having seen the worst that humans can do – the sadness clearly seemed to have won.

“The Nobel Prize,” he mused. “From now on, I’ll be a Nobel prizewinner, but there is only one title that matters, which is rebbe (rabbi, teacher), and I know that I am not one. I know that I am and will always be no more than the rebbe’s student.”

Then there was Wiesel’s last meeting with François Mitterrand, the Sphinx, the Machiavelli of the Élysée Palace. In their previous encounters, the villager from Sighet and the bourgeois from the Charentes had engaged, icon to icon, in long and deep exchanges that, I believe, may have kindled some mutual affection. Wiesel had the feeling of rediscovering, under the president’s power, something of the priestly concern of Mitterrand’s namesake, François Mauriac, who had taken Wiesel under his wing on his return from Auschwitz and with whom he felt he had helped to mitigate the thousand-year-old strains between Jews and Christians.

But, then, in this last meeting, Wiesel learned, bit by bit, that Mitterrand the Marist prince had blithely gone off to play golf the day his loyal lieutenant, Pierre Bérégovoy, committed suicide, and that Mitterrand had continued, to the very last, to defend René Bousquet, head of the Vichy police and denouncer of Jews. Had Wiesel been deceived or co-opted? He had known court Jews. And now he had been consecrated as an official Jew, seeming to have forgotten the chilling maxim from Pirkei Avot (“Ethics of the Fathers”): “Seek not undue intimacy with the ruling power.” The fathers knew that the temptation of such consecration is a delusion and a trap.

Wiesel’s greatness was to have remained, under all circumstances – one of those humble Jews whom he considered the crown of humanity. His nobility consisted in never forgetting the lesson of the Rebbe of Vizhnitz, even after he had donned the robe of the man of letters, that he bore the burden of those, adorned in caftan and fur hat, who had wanted to be as elegant as the Polish nobles who led the pogroms against them.

And I believe that not a day passed in Wiesel’s long life as a celebrated intellectual, honored by great universities and consulted by presidents, without spending at least an hour poring over a page of the Talmud or the Zohar, knowing that initially he would understand nothing of what he read, but that this was the price of the only true celebration.

This was just what his people had done in Sighet, believing that one day the Messiah would come. And it is what we do today when we grasp that neither Cambodia, nor Darfur, nor the massacres in Syria, nor the need, anywhere on the planet, to drive out the beast that sleeps in man should divert us from the sacred task of saving what we can of memory, meaning and hope.

That is the lesson of Elie Wiesel. May it guide us through a time haunted, more than ever, by crime, distraction and forgetfulness.

 

MY HERO: ELIE WIESEL

My hero: Elie Wiesel by David Miliband
The writer and Holocaust survivor fought for justice, defending persecuted people of all races and religions. He taught us that the word ‘refugee’ need not be unpopular
By David Miliband
The Guardian
July 9, 2016

I met Elie Wiesel only once, in his New York office two years ago. He had joined the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee in 1985, and continued on our board of overseers. As the new president and CEO, I wanted his advice.

Wiesel remained doughty, passionate, inspiring. “I am a refugee but the word refugee is not popular,” he told me. “But everyone likes the idea of refuge. Fight for refuge. We all need refuge.”

I remember in that moment understanding the often-cited description that Wiesel believed in taking sides – someone who knew what he was for as well as what he was against. He understood, as well as anyone, the power of knowledge and truth in the battle against ignorance. His descriptions of his first visits to Germany, and his meetings with German youth who used education to overcome their own country’s past, are not just moving, they are testimony to an openness of mind even in the midst of the worst memories.

Wiesel’s enduring legacy will not only be his story of survival through the darkest hours of humanity amid the unspeakable horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. But also the inspiration of his lived life: his fight for truth and justice wherever he saw human dignity threatened. His visits around the world with the IRC led him to defend persecuted people of all races and religions.

This fight has never been more needed. Where globalisation should be bringing down barriers, the trend is towards putting them up. Dangerous populism and toxic xenophobia are again on the rise in Europe and the US – but also afflict minorities across the rest of the world. War and insecurity displaced a record 65 million people last year; and the system of international order that upholds peace and security is under threat.

But as much as Wiesel’s life reminds us of what we need to guard against, it also embodies what we must strive to emulate. He was not just a survivor, his story reminds us that when states open their doors to those fleeing persecution, they open their doors to knowledge, creativity and untold potential.

Wiesel’s memories have documented history, and his works have informed a generation. He taught us that, in the face of atrocity and tragedy, morality can prevail; that knowledge and truth are vital in the battle against ignorance and intolerance; and that the word refugee need not be unpopular. That is the lesson of Elie Wiesel.

CONTENTS

1. “Netanyahu traces path to power back to Entebbe, and lost brother” (By Jeffrey Gettleman and Isabel Kershner, New York Times, July 4, 2016)
2. Benjamin Netanyahu speech in Entebbe, today (July 4, 2016)
3. “Entebbe and the price of freedom” (By Jonathan Tobin, Commentary, July 4, 2016)
4. “This is how the State of Israel was born again 40 years ago” (By Fiamma Nirenstein, Il Giornale (Italy), July 2, 2016)

 

NETANYAHU TRACES PATH TO POWER BACK TO ENTEBBE, AND LOST BROTHER

Netanyahu Traces Path to Power Back to Entebbe, and Lost Brother
By Jeffrey Gettleman and Isabel Kershner
New York Times
July 4, 2016

JERUSALEM – Whenever he is facing a critical decision, whether for his country’s military or his own personal life, there is one person Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel says he routinely consults: his dead brother.

In a rare and unusually reflective interview, Mr. Netanyahu said he frequently held “hypothetical” conversations with Yonatan, a legendary figure in Israel who was cut down in his prime exactly 40 years ago as a young commando leading a daring hostage rescue in Entebbe, Uganda.

“Often I have to dispatch people to places where if there’s a failure, they won’t come back,” Mr. Netanyahu said in the interview on Friday in his Jerusalem office. “It’s in times like these that I consult with my brother – and they’re a lot more frequent than you might think.”

The prime minister set off early Monday on the same route as his older brother on the fateful day, flying across the Red Sea and into the heart of Africa to commemorate the Entebbe raid, and to push Israel’s interests on a continent that is ripe for investment and that Israel sees as a much-needed ally in an increasingly hostile world.

He is making the pilgrimage during something of an Entebbe renaissance. A book of testimonies by his brother’s fellow commandos in the operation, which was renamed posthumously in Yonatan’s honor, just came out in Hebrew; a new historical exhibit is up in Tel Aviv; and a leading Israeli newspaper has been running serialized articles. There has also been a blast of public commentary, some of it sharply questioning the lionization of Yoni, as he is better known.

The unusual partnership of the two brothers – one dead, one alive – has deeply changed this young country.

Benjamin Netanyahu, known as Bibi, is on track to be Israel’s longest-serving leader, and he traces his path to power directly back to his brother’s death. At the same time, the legend of Yoni Netanyahu – warrior, poet, inspirer, killer – has been shrewdly cultivated by his powerful family.

Israel has lost many soldiers in battle. Few have had as many streets, schools and parks named after them. Yoni and Bibi. Bibi and Yoni. For years, these paired nicknames have been hard to escape.

Mr. Netanyahu, 66, is calculating and gruff; he picks his words slowly and carefully, his deep voice coming across almost like a grumble. But when he spoke about his older brother, he seemed to drop his guard, at least a little.

“He had the soul of a poet,” the prime minister began. “He was a great writer, a great thinker, but he was also a man of action; he was a commander in battle unsurpassed, unmatched; he had the capacities of thought and action, rumination and purpose …” His voice trailed off. “He had a great soul.”

Looking back on Yoni Netanyahu is like looking back on any hero. It is hard to get a sense of what is real and what is myth.

He was the family star: a brilliant soccer player, a student council president, on the dean’s list at Harvard. By 1976, he was the commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ Sayeret Matkal, an elite, highly secretive unit of commandos specializing in what military analysts call “close work.”

On June 27 of that year, Palestinian and German terrorists hijacked an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris with more than 200 passengers. It was an era of hijackings: Benjamin Netanyahu, also in Sayeret Matkal, had been wounded during the freeing of a hijacked plane in Israel in 1972.

But the terrorists had learned from that one. This time they had the jet flown farther away than they thought the Israelis could ever reach, to the main airport in Entebbe, Uganda, which was in the grip of one of the most destructive and cartoonish characters to ever rule in Africa, Idi Amin.

Amin, who called himself the uncrowned king of Scotland and the “Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas,” had recently thrown in his lot with the Arab world, and he dispatched his soldiers to surround the hostages at the Entebbe airport.
The Israelis, at first, were inclined to meet the terrorists’ demands and free dozens of prisoners. It seemed impossible to stage a rescue.

Uganda was more than 2,000 miles away. Few of Israel’s planes had that range, and if anything went wrong, there was no backup. This was before cellphones and satellite images became ubiquitous: The Israelis did not even know how many Ugandan soldiers were guarding the airport or exactly where the hostages were being housed.

“The distance was long, time was short, and the situation was blind,” recalled Shimon Peres, 92, who was Israel’s defense minister at the time and went on to be prime minister and president.

It was when the terrorists began separating the Jews from the non-Jews, readying them for execution, that things changed. Mr. Peres, who lost members of his family in the Holocaust, remembered saying: “What? Again? Now that we have an independent Israel? No way.”

Within a few days, a long-shot plan began to take shape, and a key figure in forming it, former soldiers and officials said in recent interviews, was Yoni Netanyahu.
The idea was to land a cargo plane at night with a car inside, and have the commandos simply drive up to the airport as if they were Amin and his entourage returning from an overseas trip.

The plan almost worked. The Israelis landed without incident.

But as they were cruising up to the terminal in a black Mercedes-Benz doctored to look like Amin’s car, a Ugandan sentry stepped out from the darkness. Yoni shot at him, sparking gunfire that blew the Israelis’ cover.

When the hostages inside the airport heard all the shooting, “we were sure that was it,” recalled Sara Guter Davidson, who had been traveling to Paris with her family. “I just waited for my bullet, trying to cover my son.”

But in the smoke, fire and noise, miraculously, the hostages heard Hebrew.

“We couldn’t believe it,” Ms. Davidson said. “We could never even dream our army could get there.”

The Israelis rushed in, shot all the terrorists, and spirited out more than 100 people who were being held at the airport. Three hostages were killed in the crossfire, and one person lay slumped outside: Yoni, who had been shot in the chest.

There is still debate over who fired the bullet. A German? A Palestinian? A Ugandan soldier?

Back then, Israeli commandos did not wear body armor; it was too bulky, slowed them down. As Mr. Netanyahu’s other brother, Iddo, a doctor and a writer, said, in operations like these the difference between success and failure “hinges on a few seconds.”

Yoni Netanyahu, 30, died from internal bleeding shortly before the Israeli planes took off, capping one of the most dramatic rescues ever attempted and changing the world, in a way.

Israel, which had been wallowing in the shadow of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, got a huge morale boost; Jews around the world were proud.

Hijackings waned.

Amin’s downfall was hastened.

“Amin’s soldiers were furious,” said Ibrahim Mukiibi, who worked for Uganda’s foreign service at the time. “They were harassing everybody, out of anger, because they had been humiliated.”

After that, Amin began acting “more ferociously,” Mr. Mukiibi said. Soon most of the population had turned against him.

Yoni Netanyahu, the only Israeli soldier killed at Entebbe, became an icon in Israel and across the Jewish diaspora. Two movies about the raid came out in the next year, and a book of Yoni’s letters was eventually published, showing his intense patriotism and sensitivity. He had killed many people in battle and did not necessarily feel good about it, writing: “It adds a whole dimension of sadness to a man’s being.”

Benjamin Netanyahu said in the interview that Yoni’s death marked the birth of his political life. He organized conferences on terrorism, arguing that it was a new form of proxy warfare, in this case a way for Arab countries that had suffered military defeats to strike back at Israel.

Israel’s incoming ambassador to Washington was impressed. He asked Mr. Netanyahu if he wanted to serve as the embassy’s No. 2. That is how he began climbing what he called the “staircase” of Israeli politics.

Forty years later, the debate still rages: Should Yoni have fired at the sentry? Has his heroism been exaggerated?

“The Netanyahu family won the Israel branding championship and minimized the role of every other officer,” read a column published last year in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The prime minister seems to have steeled himself to such critiques, which resurface every year around the July 4 anniversary of Entebbe.

“The facts speak for themselves,” he said curtly.

When asked what he would have done had he been the prime minister at the time, facing spotty intelligence, the lives of 100 innocents on the line and long odds, Mr. Netanyahu looked around the room and paused for a few moments.

A military helicopter’s rotor blades beat outside. Bright Jerusalem sunshine flooded through the windows.

“Wow, I can’t tell you what I would have done,” he said. But, he continued, “I can tell you, without getting into details, what I have done, and the fact is, we’ve taken great risks, but you don’t necessarily know about them.”

As he said, whenever he has doubts about which way to go, he has a sounding board who is always available: Yoni.

 

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU IN ENTEBBE

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Monday, 4 July 2016), in Entebbe, Uganda, made the following remarks:

[TRANSCRIPTION]

“Thank you, Mr. President, for your gracious invitation, your extraordinary friendship in hosting this ceremony. With your permission, sir, I’d like to say first a few words in Hebrew to my people back home, but also to the soldiers and commanders who are with us today, many of whom participated in the historic rescue mission.

[TRANSLATION]

I am moved standing here as the Prime Minister of Israel, in this place that brought endless pride to our soldiers, to the IDF and to our nation. I am moved standing here, in the place where IDF soldiers liberated the hostages in the heart of Africa, thousands of kilometers from Israel, with the commanders and soldiers who took part in the operation. I am moved standing here with the relatives of Jean-Jacques Mimouni, Ida Boruhovitch, Pasco Cohen and Dora Bloch, who lost their lives at Entebbe. I am moved standing here in this place, right in the place where my brother Yoni, commander of the Special Forces unit, was killed while leading the force that stormed the old terminal, overcame the terrorists and freed the hostages.

Here, where the old terminal stood, our brethren were held hostage by cruel terrorists, and this is where our soldiers came to rescue them in a brilliant mission that is almost unparalleled in history. Entebbe is always with me, in my thoughts, in my consciousness and deep in my heart.

The hijacking of the Air France plane to Entebbe touched a raw nerve with the people of Israel. Thirty-one years after the Holocaust, Jews again had to undergo a separation of Jews and non-Jews by those who wanted to kill us. The terrorists freed the hostages of other nationalities, but they condemned the Jews to the terror of death.

Essential intelligence was provided by members of the Mossad, and the determination of the commanders, the soldiers and the pilots helped convince the Government of Israel to act. Each of you, soldiers and pilots who flew to Entebbe, those who are here and those who are not, members of the Air Force, the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, the Paratroopers, the Golani Brigade and the Medical Corps, each of you flew here without knowing if you would come home. You came to rescue, but you knew that in the event there was a problem, there would be no one to rescue you. And despite this, each of you fought to be on the planes because you understood the importance of the mission.

The late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin deserves tremendous respect for the leadership he showed when making the fateful decision to embark on the operation. Senior partners who approved the operation and its execution include Minister of Defense Shimon Peres, Chief of General Staff Motta Gur, Air Force Commander Benny Peled, Commander of the Infantry and Paratroopers Branch Dan Shomron, who commanded the entire operation, Commander of the Paratroopers Matan Vilnai, Commander of the Golani Brigade Uri Sagi and Commander of the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, my brother Yoni.

The General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, its commanders and its soldiers were tasked with the mission of killing the terrorists, incapacitating Idi Amin’s soldiers, grounding the MiGs and releasing the hostages. In less than an hour, our soldiers were back on their planes, but this time with the hostages, on their way home.

I wish to pay my respects to the Captain of the hijacked plane, Michel Bacos, who is in France. He and his crew stayed with the hostages out of an amazing sense of responsibility. For the families of the hostages killed during the operation and directly afterwards, the price was unbearable. The same is true for my family and for me. When Yoni died, our world was destroyed.

Not a day goes by that I do not think what might have been. If only I had not refused the unit commander, the late Uzi Yairi, who asked me to go to officers’ school. If only I had not consulted that Saturday with my older brother, who had just returned from Harvard and told me, “What’s the problem? Tell Uzi Yairi that I’ll take your place.” And then maybe Yoni wouldn’t have come to the unit, and then maybe he would not have died here at Entebbe. In any event, a short while after Yoni joined the unit, I also joined the officers’ course and we served together as commanders in the Special Forces unit.

Grief struck us, my family and the families of the hostages, as it strikes many families in Israel today, during these times of great cruelty. And despite this, the power of life sweeps us forward, and it brings us to times of hope and joy. However, the scars always remain, and they are not limited to bereavement. For 40 years, Paratrooper Surin Hershko has lived with the results of his serious injury. Surin told me more than once that if he had to do it all over again, even knowing the price, he would not hesitate for a moment. Surin Hershko represents the best, the most beautiful and noble parts of our people.

At Entebbe, justice overcame evil, and for this simple reason, the operation has earned the sympathy of the world and its praise. Operation Jonathan at Entebbe has become the symbol of standing strongly against terror. It set the rule that when the location of the hostages is known – action should be taken to rescue them. It improved Israel’s standing in the worlds and struck a deadly blow against terrorism. The battle against terrorism continues today. Terror threatens all countries and all continents, and we must stand against it united in spirit, a united front, in the spirit of Entebbe. This is the only way we will beat it.

Dear soldiers who fought in Entebbe, you were privileged to take part in an operation that will remain engraved in the history of our people for generations, and which is burned into the heart of everyone who wants peace. Those who follow in your footsteps, IDF soldiers from the same units that participated in the operation, are here today. As Prime Minister, I can tell you they carry the same spirit with them in their overt and covert missions, those close to home and those far away.

On behalf of the people and State of Israel, I salute you all.

[TRANSCRIPTION]

President Museveni, I want to thank you also for hosting the other African leaders who have so graciously come to meet me. The historic summit that will be held later today between the leaders of seven African countries and Israel testifies to the dramatic changes taking place in the relationship between Israel and Africa.

Africa is a continent on the rise. Israel looks forward to strengthening ties with all its countries. Many African leaders visit Israel; and I am proud to be the first Israeli prime minister in over 20 years to come to visit sub-Saharan Africa. After many decades, I can say unequivocally: Israel is coming back to Africa and Africa is coming back to Israel. All of our peoples will benefit greatly from our growing partnership.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a deeply moving day for me. Exactly 40 years ago, Israeli soldiers carried out the historic mission at Entebbe, and now I have the privilege to return here as Prime Minister of Israel with some of those same brave soldiers and some of those brave pilots who flew them here.

Forty years ago, they landed in the dead of night in a country led by a brutal dictator who gave refuge to terrorists. Today we landed in broad daylight in a friendly country led by a president who fights terrorists.

We have gathered here to mark an event that inspired the world and lifted the spirits of my people. At Entebbe, international terrorism suffered a stinging defeat. The rescue mission proved that good can prevail over evil, that hope can triumph over fear.

Today savage terror is once again sweeping the world. We must recognize that the battle against it is indivisible. When terrorism succeeds in one place, it spreads to other places. And when terrorism is defeated anywhere, it is weakened everywhere.

This is why Entebbe was more than an Israeli victory; it was a victory for all humanity in the fight against those who threaten our common civilization.

The raid on Entebbe was a watershed moment in the life of my people. For centuries, Mr. President, we were stateless and powerless to defend ourselves. No one came to our rescue. We were murdered by the millions. The rise of Israel changed all that. Time and again, Israel has successfully defended itself against enemies committed to our destruction.

But it was perhaps at Entebbe where this fundamental transformation was most dramatically seen by the world. On July 4, 1976, Israel launched the most daring rescue mission of all time to save our captive brethren in the heart of Africa. We were powerless no more. We would do whatever it would take to defend our nation and rescue our people.

That night 40 years ago also changed the course of my own life and the lives of those whose relatives died here, Jean-Jacques Mimouni, Pasco Cohen, Ida Boruhovitch and Dora Bloch.

My beloved brother Yoni, who led the force that stormed the old terminal, overcame the terrorists and freed the hostages, was the only soldier who was killed.

I learned from my brother and from others that two things are needed above all to defeat terrorism: clarity and courage. Clarity to distinguish good from evil; and courage to confront evil. Clarity is to know that nothing justifies terrorism. Nothing justifies the deliberate murder of the innocent, the systematic slaughter of civilians. We must condemn all acts of terrorism, whether they are perpetrated in Paris or Brussels, in Orlando or San Bernardino, in Tunis or Nairobi, in Hebron or Netanya. And alongside clarity, courage is the other indispensable quality needed to fight the terrorists and their sponsors, in order to defend our values and our lives.

Today, in this place, where free people delivered a devastating blow to the forces of terror, we and all the civilized nations must rededicate ourselves to the spirit of Entebbe, a spirit of daring and resolve, a spirit of courage and fortitude, a spirit that is determined as ever to defeat terror and to secure our common future.

Thank you, thank you all.”

 

ENTEBBE AND THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

Entebbe and the Price of Freedom
By Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary Magazine
July 4, 2016

Forty years ago today, Americans were in the midst of celebrating the bicentennial of the birth of their country when a contemporaneous event stirred the imagination of free people around the world. On July 4, 1976, Israeli troops traveled all the way to the middle of Africa to rescue more than 100 hostages held by Palestinian and radical German terrorists. At the time, the effort seemed a miraculous reaffirmation not only of Israeli courage but also of the will of free people to resist those elements that seemed determined to destroy all that the bicentennial symbolized to Americans. While Americans spend this day celebrating the anniversary of their freedom, they and other free peoples do well to remember the miracle of Entebbe and ponder the high price that was paid then and must continue to be paid if liberty is to survive.

The story of Entebbe is well known. Terrorists had hijacked an Air France plane and flew it to Uganda where the notorious dictator Idi Amin welcomed the terrorists and allowed them to use the Entebbe airport terminal to hold their captives. The prisoners, who had been separated Jew from non-Jew in an eerie echo of the Holocaust made all the more sinister by the presence of German terrorists, were threatened with death if Israel did not release other terrorist killers held in prison. While contemplating the possibility of complying with those demands, Israeli leaders also pondered the possibility of a rescue operation. In the end, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres ordered a seemingly improbable rescue attempt. The daring commando raid that followed succeeded against steep odds. Though three of the hostages were killed during the rescue (and one, an elderly woman who had been taken to a hospital, was subsequently murdered on the orders of Amin) more than 100 people were saved. Israeli forces suffered only one fatality – Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu – the commander of the ground forces who had bravely led the assault on the terrorist stronghold.

Unfortunately, Entebbe was just a foretaste of the long terrorist war waged against both Israel and the West that continues to this day. That conflict has been marked by some other victories – notably among them, the Navy SEAL operation that led to the killing of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden stands out – but also many defeats and setbacks suffered by Americans and Israelis.

Indeed, since then belief in our ability as free people to defend ourselves against those who wish to tear down the edifice of liberty has wavered at times. That is as true of Israelis as it is at times of Americans. Both nations have grown tired of the generational war that is being waged against the American “Great Satan” and the Israeli “Little Satan” by the new and more successful generations of terrorists that followed in the footsteps of the radical groups of the 1970s. Amidst the pessimism that so many of us feel about a struggle that has no end in sight, the celebrations that greeted the news of the spectacular heroism of Entebbe can seem like a lost dream.

Even in Israel, the commemoration of Entebbe is tarnished by the desire of many on the left to besmirch the Netanyahu name. For the opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (the younger brother of the Entebbe hero and himself a decorated veteran of the same celebrated Sayaret Maktal unit that Yoni commanded), the celebration of the Entebbe anniversary is an excuse to engage in partisan backbiting and historical revisionism. Criticisms of his visit this week to the place where his brother died as well as to demonstrate Israel’s growing ties in Africa demonstrates the depth of the derangement that Netanyahu inspires on the left, especially in the opinion columns of a newspaper like Haaretz.

But there is good reason to burnish the memory of that intrepid operation and the man who led the mission and selflessly stepped forward to face the fire of the enemy and fell in combat. It’s a reminder that even against steep odds, the forces of hate can be beaten even if the price of that victory is high. Just as America’s Founding Fathers were prepared to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for the defense of liberty, so, too, must each subsequent generation be prepared to make such sacrifices. Forty years ago, the Entebbe rescue seemed to many to be a reaffirmation of that same spirit of courage that created the United States. Today, we should take similar comfort from the memory of that victory. The sinister forces that threaten the liberties of free people have gained strength and the hate that nourishes their malice is also on the rise. But Entebbe should give all people of good will confidence to pay no heed to the voices which assert that liberty is in retreat and to carry on with the great and difficult work of defending the freedom that we Americans celebrate today.

 

THIS IS HOW THE STATE OF ISRAEL WAS BORN AGAIN 40 YEARS AGO

This is how the State of Israel was born again 40 years ago
By Fiamma Nirenstein
Il Giornale (Italy)
July 2, 2016

Only an unavoidable drive, a moral necessity dictated by history, could inspire, on the 4th of July forty years ago, an action like the one Israel dared carry out 3,500 kilometres from its borders, in Entebbe, Uganda, to rescue the 106 hostages held prisoner in the airport terminal by a Palestinian-German commando. It is perhaps the most incredible gesture ever made by a country to state a principle and to save over one hundred human lives. The commando of Israeli soldiers that carried out the mission consisted of one hundred young people divided into teams. The first assault team was led by Jonathan Netanyahu, the older brother of the current Prime Minister. “Yoni” was the only soldier to lose his life in Operation Thunderbolt, later renamed Operation Jonathan in his memory.

The objective was to rescue by surprise the Jewish prisoners held by the terrorists, thus definitely putting an end to the idea that Jews are easy prey of the Anti-Semitic furor that, in various forms, has persistently rained upon them throughout history while the world looks on with indifference.

Two members of the Palestinian group of Wadie Haddad, together with a German man and woman, Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann, members of the left-wing terrorist group Baader-Meinhof, high-jacked the Air France 139 flight from Tel Aviv to Athens and Paris. The terrorists boarded at Athens armed with guns and Molotov bottles hidden in candy boxes and a false Champagne bottle. Böse, who the night before had stayed at Hotel Rodos, penetrated the airplane pilot’s cabin while his comrades held the 246 passengers under threat of fire, declared himself the new commander of the flight now in the hands of the “Che Guevara Force”, as he called it, and renamed the plane “Haifa”.

The airplane was directed to land in Benghazi for refuelling and then on to Entebbe, in Uganda, the country of the violently crazy and opportunistic dictator Idi Amin Dada, who hosted and aided the terrorists in order to foster relations with the Arab world and exploit the prey the terrorists brought to the airport’s largest hangar. The entire kidnapping action can be divided into two phases, which evolved with increasing brutality as the actors inexorably revealed their roles. The Palestinians became the beasts on the leashes of the German communists whose behaviour progressively morphed into that typical of their Nazi parents by instinct and by choice.

From the very first, the obvious target are the Jews. The Jews are the typical new-ancient enemy, the hostage beyond the bars needed “to fight the Zionist imperialism and capitalism”, as Böse explained, reduced to objects, a human sub-species, bargaining chips to be exchanged with forty Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. The woman, in an escalating mimesis of the Kapo model, yells “Schnell, schnell” as she pushes the crowd of travellers towards the hangar/prison, like deportees getting off the train at Auschwitz. Sheonly showed a greater degree of hate when an elderly prisoner showed her the tattooed concentration camp number on his arm.

Together with Böse, once all of the terrified passengers have entered and slumped in a heap on the floor in a mingled mass of children and adults, she performs the ritual that most probably led the Israeli government to attempt the impossible: the selection of the Jews, providing Anti-Semitism with its modern face, i.e. its identification with the State of Israel. The passports are piled onto a table and all of the Israeli citizens are led into an adjacent hall through a hole prepared by Idi Amin Dada’s willing soldiers. Out of the initial 249 passengers,106 remain, including the French airplane crew members who refuse to abandon the prisoners. The Jews are called one by one, by name, and the emulation of a Nazi scenario becomes is clear. The other 148 passengers are released and allowed to leave on the Air France airplane, that takes off with its load of “Arians”.

To understand how Israel arrived at the decision to attempt the unattemptable, one must imagine that the scene in Jerusalem is of a total anguish: according to the tradition and to a famous movie about the operation, one of Yitzhak Rabin’s friends whose daughter was among the hostages asked him directly (in the midst of the storm of questions by the press, the radio, the public opinion to Shimon Peres, Ministry of Defence, to Motta Gur, Chief of Staff): “How long will we allow them to play roulette with our children?” The massacre of Maalot in 1974, in which the Palestinians had murdered 22 school children, was still fresh, as well as the Munich slaughter of the Israeli athletes. Terribly anxious days went by, and the uncertainty lasted throughout the eight-hour flight of the Hercules that transported to their target the Israeli rescue team through the night. The government permission arrived only when the commando was already close to its destination, flying through a lightning storm.

But in the three previous days, as the 4th of July midday deadline approached, when the terrorists said they would start killing the hostages, a plan had already been drafted in silence, tested, reviewed during anxious meetings. Mostly Netanyahu and Muki Betzer, who was at the head of the special Sayeret Matkal unit prepared it together with Commander Dan Shomron. Rabin, Peres and Motta Gur, even if they lacked all the information usually necessary for such a risky operation. Yoni met Shimon Peres in private when he and Rabin were on the brink of negotiating with the terrorists. Peres asked Yoni if he thought he could make it. Yoni answered that he thought it was possible, that they might well succeed, that often enough one didn’t have all of the necessary information when launching a large-scale operation. Rabin has finally been the one who had the guts to give the go-ahead.

Many important characters, such as Matan Vilnai or Shaul Mofaz and Ehud Barak (who organised the return refuelling operations in Kenya),were involved in the implementation and set-up of the plan at supersonic speed. From the first of four aircraft that left Tel Aviv on that night, counting on the surprise factor, a commando of 29 people on a Mercedes followed by two jeeps headed first towards the terminal, simulating a visit by Idi Amin Dada. A sudden gun battle with the guards, at the terminal, shot Yoni down but did not stop the liberation of the hostages and the killing of the terrorists. Despite shooting, the Israeli rescue team went ahead and succeeded.

Yoni’s fortitude – as well as Betzer’s, who today claims a greater amount of acknowledgement than the one he received in Yoni’s shadow – has left a permanent mark in Israel’s collective memory. The image of the generous young hero cut down in the field in the full of his young life, has become the model of insouciant audacity that the whole world envies of Israel, the same which has led this country to bomb the Osirak reactor (another mission impossible), and to kidnap Eichmann, as well as to win the Six-Day war with unimaginable speed.

Entebbe is, together with the Six-Day war, the achievement that more than any other has changed the image and the perception itself of the Jewish people in the eyes of the world. No longer sacrificial lambs but owners of their own lives, protagonists of actions deemed impossible by the largest part of humanity. No longer abandoned to their destiny and to the violence of their enemies, Jews had since those events the right to think that someone will come for them: they will be the Israeli soldiers.

Since Entebbe, Jews are no longer alone. Three Israeli hostages died, including an elderly woman who had the misfortune of being taken to an Ugandan hospital. Yoni’s death is one of Israel’s most tragic episodes. The explosion of joy for the return of children, wives, and mothers was wounded by this, just as today the daily joy of life of this alive democratic country is saddened by daily terrorist attacks. And as in the past, today very few in the world expresses solidarity for its tragedies, let alone comes in Israel help Israel, as the state of the Jews does for other countries plagued by terrorism.

In the wake of Entebbe, the UN Security Council debated a request for Israel’s condemnation – yes, that’s right – and Kurt Waldheim, its president, described the incident as a “serious violation of a member State’s sovereignty”. As a small consolation we can remember that the motion was rejected. But still today many of the responses Israel gives to terrorism are still a matter of blame for the UN.

ELIE WIESEL, 1928-2016

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and renowned Holocaust survivor, dies at 87
Author and human rights activist made perpetuating the memory of the Shoah his life’s work.
By Ronen Shnidman
Haaretz
July 2, 2016

Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, prolific author and outspoken activist Elie Wiesel died Saturday at the age of 87. Wiesel was perhaps best known for his major role in promoting Holocaust education, and for perpetuating the memory of the Holocaust in the post-World War II era with his memoir “Night,” based on his experience as a teenager in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in the Romanian town of Sighet, to Sarah and Shlomo Wiesel. His maternal grandfather, Dodye Feig, was a member of the Vishnitz Hasidic sect; his strong influence over Wiesel was seen later in some of his writings. Wiesel received a traditional religious education while growing up in Sighet; many years later, in 2002, he returned to his hometown to dedicate the Elie Wiesel Memorial House at the site of his childhood home.

The Wiesel family’s lives were seriously disrupted in 1940, when Hungary annexed Sighet and all the Jews in town were forced to move into one of two ghettoes. In May 1944, the Nazis, with Hungary’s agreement, deported the Jewish community of Sighet to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The teenage Wiesel was sent with his father Shlomo to the Buna Werke labor camp, a sub-camp of Auschwitz III-Monowitz, where they were forced to work for eight months before being transferred to a series of other concentration camps near the war’s end.

The malnourished and dysentery-stricken Shlomo Wiesel died after receiving a beating from a German soldier on January 29, 1945, several weeks after he and Elie were forced-marched to the Buchenwald camp. Wiesel’s mother Sarah and younger sister Tzipora also perished in the Holocaust. He would later recount those and other events in his 1955 memoir “Night.”

After the war, Wiesel was sent with other young survivors by the French Jewish humanitarian organization Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants to an orphanage in Écouis, France. He lived for several years at the home, where he was reunited with the only surviving members of his immediate family: his older sisters Beatrice and Hilda.

In 1948, the 20-year-old Wiesel pursued studies in literature, philosophy and psychology at the Sorbonne, but never completed them. Around the same time, after working a series of odd jobs including teaching Hebrew, Wiesel – who mostly wrote in French throughout his life – became a professional journalist, writing for both French and Israeli publications. In 1948, he translated Hebrew articles into Yiddish for Israel’s pre-state Irgun militia. Wiesel visited the nascent State of Israel in 1949 as a foreign correspondent for the French newspaper L’arche. He was subsequently hired by the daily Yedioth Ahronoth as its Paris correspondent, and also worked for the paper as a roving correspondent abroad. He also covered the 1961 trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann for the New York-based Yiddish newspaper The Forward.

It was during his time in Paris that Wiesel was said to have studied with a mysterious and renowned Jewish scholar known simply as Monsieur Chouchani (also spelled Shushani in certain sources) after meeting him at a synagogue. Wiesel described Chouchani in an article in Yedioth Ahronoth as “a modern legend,” and after the man’s death, went on to pay for his tombstone in Montevideo, Uruguay, and wrote his epitaph: “The wise Rabbi Chouchani of blessed memory. His birth and his life are sealed in enigma.”

Despite or perhaps because of the major traumatic impact the Holocaust had on his life, Wiesel did not write about those experiences until encouraged to do so during a conversation with French Nobel Laureate for Literature Francois Mauriac, in 1954. The original version of his first memoir was over 800 pages, written in Yiddish and entitled “Un di velt hot geshvign” (“And the World Remained Silent”). He wrote a much shorter version in French, published in 1958 as “La Nuit” and it was translated into English as “Night,” two years later. Despite, its eventual popularity, “Night” sold less than 2,000 copies in its first 18 months in the United States. However, the book did attract much attention among reviewers and created a higher media profile for Wiesel; it has gone on to sell more than six million copies.

In 2006, popular talk-show host Oprah Winfrey selected a new translation of “Night” by Wiesel’s wife Marion for her book club, helping to push the book to a top spot on The New York Times’ best-seller list for nonfiction paperbacks. The book now appears in 30 languages.

“Night” would form the first part of Holocaust memoir trilogy that would include “Dawn” and “Day.” All told Wiesel wrote more than 40 works of nonfiction and fiction, including “A Passover Haggadah” and “Wise Men and Their Tales: Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic, and Hasidic Masters.”

In 1955, Wiesel moved to New York to cover the United Nations. During his time in the city he was hit by a taxi, requiring a prolonged convalescence in the hospital. Following his recovery, Wiesel applied for permanent residency and in 1963 became a U.S. citizen; this was the first citizenship he held since becoming stateless during the Holocaust.

A longtime bachelor, Wiesel eventually met his wife to-be, divorced Austrian Holocaust survivor Marion Rose, in New York. They married in Jerusalem in 1969. Marion served as the English translator for Wiesel’s subsequent books.

The world-renowned Holocaust survivor received numerous awards and honors over the years, including the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom and the rank of Grand-Croix in France’s Legion of Honor, and he was knighted as Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Perhaps the highest honor of all was the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his role in speaking out against violence, repression and racism. Wiesel was also the recipient of over 100 honorary doctorates, and received France’s distinguished Prix Medicis for his 1968 book “A Beggar in Jerusalem,” describing the Jewish response to the reunification of Jerusalem following the Six-Day War.

In Israel, in 2007, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly suggested nominating Wiesel as candidate for president of Israel on behalf of the Kadima party, but Wiesel was said to have declined the offer. Olmert eventually selected Shimon Peres as Kadima’s candidate for president; Peres would later award Wiesel the President’s Medal of Distinction in 2013.

Despite his life experiences, Wiesel was not without a sense of humor, which he displayed, for example, when given the World Jewish Congress’ Theodore Herzl Award by former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in 2013. “There were two great men in Europe at that time: Herzl and Freud,” Wiesel was quoted as saying, by The Forward. “Luckily they never met. Just imagine Herzl knocking on the door of Dr. Freud: ‘I had a dream.’ Freud would have said, ‘Sit down. Tell me about your mother.’”

In addition to his writing, Wiesel enjoyed a second career as an academic. From 1972 to 1976, he was professor of Judaic Studies at the City University of New York. Thereafter, he was Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and a member of both its philosophy and religion departments. Wiesel was Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University (1982-83), and visiting professor of Judaic studies at Barnard College of Columbia University from 1997 to 1999.

It can be said, however, that Elie Wiesel was best known for his role in keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust and for promoting Holocaust education. Over the years, he spoke of these subjects innumerable times, before countless audiences, around the globe.

In 1978, U.S. President Jimmy Carter appointed him as chairman of the Presidential Commission on the Holocaust (later renamed the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council), a role in which he served until 1986. In that capacity, Wiesel became a major, driving force behind the establishment of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. His words, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness” are engraved in stone at the entrance to the museum.

In 1986, after receiving the Nobel, he and his wife established the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity to combat intolerance and injustice around the world through dialogue in general, and via programs for youth. The following year Wiesel served as a witness during the trial of war criminal Klaus Barbie in Lyons, France, during which he spoke of his bitter experiences in Auschwitz.

In 2003, Romanian President Ion Iliescu appointed Wiesel to lead the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania. This group, later referred to as the Wiesel Commission, was tasked with setting the record straight regarding the involvement of Romania’s fascist Iron Guard regime in Holocaust atrocities against Jews, Roma and others. The Romanian government recognized the commission’s findings, as published in 2004, including the assessment that between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews and over 11,000 Roma died during World War II as result of policies advanced by the Romanian authorities.

Following the commission’s work, the Romanian government also decided to mark October 9 – the day in 1941 that Romanian Jews were deported to ghettos and forced labor camps – as the country’s annual day for commemorating the Holocaust.

In 2012, Wiesel gave back the Grand Cross Order of Merit award he had received from Hungary in 2009, in protest of what he called the “whitewashing of tragic and criminal episodes” that happened in that country during the Holocaust.

In early 2006, around the time “Night” was re-issued, Wiesel took talk-show host Oprah Winfrey on a well-publicized trip to Auschwitz. Three years later, he accompanied President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on a trip to the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Also in the latter years of his life, Wiesel was in the headlines for an entirely unrelated reason: as one of the more prominent victims of Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity lost $15.2 million it had invested with Madoff, and the Wiesels lost their own life’s savings, reported to be around $1 million. The foundation later managed to raise about one-third of the money it lost to Madoff from sympathetic donors, and to continue to function. When asked to describe Madoff by a New York Times journalist, Wiesel said, “Psychopath – it’s too nice a word for him.”

Elie Wiesel was noted during his lifetime for using his celebrity appeal to promote Holocaust remembrance, but also to speak out on various political issues, including instances of genocide around the world. In September 2006, for example, he appeared with Hollywood actor George Clooney before the UN Security Council to bring attention to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. In 2007, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity issued a letter criticizing the denial of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks; it was signed by Wiesel and 52 other Nobel laureates.

Wiesel was concerned about human rights in general, serving on the International Council of the Human Rights Foundation and he spoke out against South African apartheid, Argentina’s policy of “disappearing” people during its Dirty War, and the Bosnian genocide during the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. In 2010, he came out publicly against the Netanyahu government’s decision to deport 400 children of migrant workers from Israel. Weisel was an advocate when it came to a host of Jewish issues, and in particular was stridently pro-Israel. Following a visit to the Soviet Union in 1965, he wrote about the plight of Soviet Jews in a book called “The Jews of Silence,” and spoke out in favor of the struggle to allow them to emigrate; he was also a vocal supporter of the immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. In April 2010, he took out advertisements in four major newspapers, criticizing the Obama administration for pressuring the Netanyahu government to halt construction in Jewish neighborhoods located across the Green Line in East Jerusalem. Wiesel repeated that tactic in 2013 when he took out a full-page ad in The New York Times calling on the U.S. administration to demand the total dismantling of the nuclear infrastructure in Iran because that country had called for Israel’s destruction.

In a 2012 interview with Haaretz, Wiesel said he would bequeath the archive of his writings to Boston University, where he had taught for decades. Wiesel is survived by his wife Marion, their son Shlomo Elisha Wiesel, and his stepdaughter Jennifer and two grandchildren

 

OBAMA: “ELIE WIESEL WAS IN MANY WAYS THE CONSCIENCE OF THE WORLD”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/07/02/statement-president-death-elie-wiesel

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
July 02, 2016
Statement by the President on the Death of Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel was one of the great moral voices of our time, and in many ways, the conscience of the world. Tonight, Michelle and I join people across the United States, Israel and around the globe in mourning the loss and celebrating the life of a truly remarkable human being. Like millions of admirers, I first came to know Elie through his account of the horror he endured during the Holocaust simply because he was Jewish. But I was also honored and deeply humbled to call him a dear friend. I’m especially grateful for all the moments we shared and our talks together, which ranged from the meaning of friendship to our shared commitment to the State of Israel.

Elie was not just the world’s most prominent Holocaust survivor, he was a living memorial. After we walked together among the barbed wire and guard towers of Buchenwald where he was held as a teenager and where his father perished, Elie spoke words I’ve never forgotten - “Memory has become a sacred duty of all people of goodwill.” Upholding that sacred duty was the purpose of Elie’s life. Along with his beloved wife Marion and the foundation that bears his name, he raised his voice, not just against anti-Semitism, but against hatred, bigotry and intolerance in all its forms. He implored each of us, as nations and as human beings, to do the same, to see ourselves in each other and to make real that pledge of “never again.”

At the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum that he helped create, you can see his words-”for the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” But Elie did more than just bear witness, he acted. As a writer, a speaker, an activist, and a thinker, he was one of those people who changed the world more as a citizen of the world than those who hold office or traditional positions of power. His life, and the power of his example, urges us to be better. In the face of evil, we must summon our capacity for good. In the face of hate, we must love. In the face of cruelty, we must live with empathy and compassion. We must never be bystanders to injustice or indifferent to suffering. Just imagine the peace and justice that would be possible in our world if we all lived a little more like Elie Wiesel.

At the end of our visit to Buchenwald, Elie said that after all that he and the other survivors had endured, “we had the right to give up on humanity.” But he said, “we rejected that possibility... we said, no, we must continue believing in a future.” Tonight, we give thanks that Elie never gave up on humanity and on the progress that is possible when we treat one another with dignity and respect. Our thoughts are with Marion, their son Shlomo Elisha, his stepdaughter Jennifer and his grandchildren whom we thank for sharing Elie with the world. May God bless the memory of Elie Wiesel, and may his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life.

 

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Update May 2, 2017: See also:

Revealed 50 years on: What Elie Wiesel wrote about the Six Day War (& “anti-Semitic UNESCO”)