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Worthy of reading, regarding Elie Weisel…<br class="">
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<div class="">Begin forwarded message:</div>
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<span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">From:
</b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class="">Mazin Qumsiyeh <<a href="mailto:mazin@qumsiyeh.org" class="">mazin@qumsiyeh.org</a>><br class="">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">Subject:
</b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class=""><b class="">[HumanRights] Dehumanizing and delegitimizing</b><br class="">
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<span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">Date:
</b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class="">July 7, 2016 at 1:17:48 PM CDT<br class="">
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<span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">To:
</b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class=""><<a href="mailto:brussel@uiuc.edu" class="">brussel@uiuc.edu</a>><br class="">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1.0);" class=""><b class="">Cc:
</b></span><span style="font-family: -webkit-system-font, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif;" class="">Human Rights Newsletter <<a href="mailto:humanrights@lists.qumsiyeh.org" class="">humanrights@lists.qumsiyeh.org</a>><br class="">
</span></div>
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<div class="">
<div class="">There is a growing movement of applying Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions<br class="">
(BDS) on Israel just like we did to defeat apartheid in South Africa.<br class="">
Zionist apologists are understandably declaring war on this nonviolent and<br class="">
moral movement. In many countries including several states in the USA,<br class="">
there are attempts to delegetimize the movement and declare BDS illegal. Of<br class="">
course this is contrary to the principles of free speech and free<br class="">
association. People's right to boycott was recognized in key legal<br class="">
precedents but more legal challenges are needed to dispel the myth that<br class="">
engaging in BDS is somehow illegitimate. Israeli apologists around the<br class="">
world engage in all sorts of dirty tricks to keep the racist system going<br class="">
(a racket to keep the flow of cash if I may say so). Having faced Israeli<br class="">
apologists in public debates, many do not want to debate again because they<br class="">
lose badly as they attempt to delegitimize and dehumanize their victims.<br class="">
They have no facts and they are defending injustice. So they resort to<br class="">
personal attacks and strange racist mythologies (for example that we<br class="">
Palestinians sacrifice our children for publicity or that we "hate Jews").<br class="">
This is expected from colonial power to dehumanize their victims.<br class="">
<br class="">
Elie Wiesel died recently. He spent most of his life defending Israel and<br class="">
dehumanizing Palestinians. He was challenged on many occasions to say<br class="">
something about the Palestinian victims and all he could muster was<br class="">
regurgitating Zionist lies about colonizers needing to “defend themselves”.<br class="">
Here is what a real prophetic Jew (Sara Roy who teaches at Harvard) wrote<br class="">
on September 9, 2014<br class="">
<br class="">
Mr. Wiesel,<br class="">
I read your statement about Palestinians, which appeared in The New York<br class="">
Times on August 4th. I cannot help feeling that your attack against Hamas<br class="">
and stunning accusations of child sacrifice are really an attack, carefully<br class="">
veiled but unmistakable, against all Palestinians, their children<br class="">
included. As a child of Holocaust survivors—both my parents survived<br class="">
Auschwitz—I am appalled by your anti-Palestinian position, one I know you<br class="">
have long held. I have always wanted to ask you, why? What crime have<br class="">
Palestinians committed in your eyes? Exposing Israel as an occupier and<br class="">
themselves as its nearly defenseless victims? Resisting a near half century<br class="">
of oppression imposed by Jews and through such resistance forcing us as a<br class="">
people to confront our lost innocence (to which you so tenaciously cling)?<br class="">
<br class="">
Unlike you, Mr. Wiesel, I have spent a great deal of time in Gaza among<br class="">
Palestinians. In that time, I have seen many terrible things and I must<br class="">
confess I try not to remember them because of the agony they continue to<br class="">
inflict. I have seen Israeli soldiers shoot into crowds of young children<br class="">
who were doing nothing more than taunting them, some with stones, some with<br class="">
just words. I have witnessed too many horrors, more than I want to<br class="">
describe. But I must tell you that the worst things I have seen, those<br class="">
memories that continue to haunt me, insisting never to be forgotten, are<br class="">
not acts of violence but acts of dehumanization.<br class="">
<br class="">
There is a story I want to tell you, Mr. Wiesel, for I have carried it<br class="">
inside of me for many years and have only written about it once a very long<br class="">
time ago. I was in a refugee camp in Gaza when an Israeli army unit on foot<br class="">
patrol came upon a small baby perched in the sand sitting just outside the<br class="">
door to its home. Some soldiers approached the baby and surrounded it.<br class="">
Standing close together, the soldiers began shunting the child between them<br class="">
with their feet, mimicking a ball in a game of soccer. The baby began<br class="">
screaming hysterically and its mother rushed out shrieking, trying<br class="">
desperately to extricate her child from the soldiers’ legs and feet. After<br class="">
a few more seconds of “play,” the soldiers stopped and walked away, leaving<br class="">
the terrified child to its distraught mother.<br class="">
<br class="">
Now, I know what you must be thinking: this was the act of a few misguided<br class="">
men. But I do not agree because I have seen so many acts of dehumanization<br class="">
since, among which I must now include yours. Mr. Wiesel, how can you defend<br class="">
the slaughter of over 500 innocent children by arguing that Hamas uses them<br class="">
as human shields? Let us say for the sake of argument that Hamas does use<br class="">
children in this way; does this then justify or vindicate their murder in<br class="">
your eyes? How can any ethical human being make such a grotesque argument?<br class="">
In doing so, Mr. Wiesel, I see no difference between you and the Israeli<br class="">
soldiers who used the baby as a soccer ball. Your manner may differ from<br class="">
theirs—perhaps you could never bring yourself to treat a Palestinian child<br class="">
as an inanimate object—but the effect of your words is the same: to<br class="">
dehumanize and objectify Palestinians to the point where the death of Arab<br class="">
children, some murdered inside their own homes, no longer affects you. All<br class="">
that truly concerns you is that Jews not be blamed for the children’s<br class="">
savage destruction.<br class="">
<br class="">
Despite your eloquence, it is clear that you believe only Jews are capable<br class="">
of loving and protecting their children and possess a humanity that<br class="">
Palestinians do not. If this is so, Mr. Wiesel, how would you explain the<br class="">
very public satisfaction among many Israelis over the carnage in Gaza—some<br class="">
assembled as if at a party, within easy sight of the bombing, watching the<br class="">
destruction of innocents, entertained by the devastation? How are these<br class="">
Israelis different from those people who stood outside the walls of the<br class="">
Jewish ghettos in Poland watching the ghettos burn or listening<br class="">
indifferently to the gunshots and screams of other innocents within—among<br class="">
them members of my own family and perhaps yours—while they were being<br class="">
hunted and destroyed?<br class="">
<br class="">
You see us as you want us to be and not as many of us actually are. We are<br class="">
not all insensate to the suffering we inflict, acceding to cruelty with<br class="">
ease and calm. And because of you, Mr. Wiesel, because of your words—which<br class="">
deny Palestinians their humanity and deprive them of their victimhood—too<br class="">
many can embrace our lack of mercy as if it were something noble, which it<br class="">
is not. Rather, it is something monstrous.<br class="">
<br class="">
Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern<br class="">
Studies, Harvard University.<br class="">
-------------------<br class="">
Max Blumenthal similarly wrote a poignant reflection on the hateful<br class="">
tribalist opportunist Elie Wiesel<br class="">
<a href="http://www.alternet.org/print/grayzone-project/huge-part-elie-wiesels-legacy-being-whitewashed" class="">http://www.alternet.org/print/grayzone-project/huge-part-elie-wiesels-legacy-being-whitewashed</a><br class="">
<br class="">
But our problem is not with Wiesel now, he is gone. Our problem is with<br class="">
those who are around trying to go more right wing hoping somehow that saves<br class="">
the silly notion of a "Jewish state". It is not less crazy than an Aryan<br class="">
white state or an Islamic state or a Christian state. All such concepts are<br class="">
destined for the dustbin of history. Isn't it also boring to try to create<br class="">
monolithic societies? Isn't it time people respect other religions and<br class="">
cultures and learn to share in equality this beautiful earth instead of<br class="">
spoiling it?<br class="">
<br class="">
From here in Palestine we cry out for justice and for simple human rights.<br class="">
The rights of refugees to return and the right to live in our lands<br class="">
peacefully regardless of our faiths/beliefs. First do no harm. Here are my<br class="">
reflections on our responsibility (the Savior in each of us) that I wrote<br class="">
six years ago and is still relevant today<br class="">
http://qumsiyeh.org/thesaviorineachofus/<br class="">
<br class="">
Stay human and welcome to visit us in Palestine<br class="">
<br class="">
Mazin Qumsiyeh<br class="">
Professor and (volunteer) Director<br class="">
Palestine Museum of Natural History<br class="">
Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability<br class="">
Bethlehem University<br class="">
Occupied Palestine<br class="">
http://qumsiyeh.org<br class="">
http://palestinenature.org<br class="">
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